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Melecia Baltazar-Sebastian v. United States
Paid petition · United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, No. 20-60067 · judgment March 10, 2021
Before the decision, about 2.2× the 4.1% base rate. The model weighted this up for a Fifth Circuit decision below, a circuit split argued in the petition, and a dissent in the court below (flagged in the petition).
Questions presented
The Bail Reform Act (BRA), 18 U.S.C. § 3142(b), authorizes Article III courts to order individuals released from pretrial detention if they are neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community. In this case, as in many others, the executive branch declined to release petitioner as an Article III court had ordered. Instead, executive branch officials kept her in detention and changed the claimed statutory basis for her detention to immigration detention pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 18 U.S.C. § 1226(a). The questions presented are:
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Whether it violates the separation of powers for executive branch officials to keep a person in civil detention on the basis of factual findings that necessarily conflict with the factual findings of an Article III court.
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Whether the BRA prohibits the United States from transferring a person into INA custody following a BRA release order except pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3142(d). (I)
Counsel of record
For petitioner
Andrew Timothy Tutt
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer
For respondent
Brian H. Fletcher
Acting Solicitor General
Case
Conference history
Distributed for 1 conference
Proceedings
- Oct 12 2021Petition DENIED.
- Sep 22 2021DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 10/8/2021.
- Sep 17 2021Waiver of right of respondent United States to respond filed.
- Sep 10 2021Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due October 14, 2021)