One and a Half Cheers for SCOTUS
Cato Daily Podcast
Cato Institute
4.6 • 949 Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cato's Clark Neily and Mike Fox give the most recent SCOTUS term a B- grade on criminal law. While they celebrate some unanimous victories like Barnes v. Felix (requiring courts to consider totality of circumstances in police use-of-force cases) and Martin v. United States (allowing federal tort claims against law enforcement), they express frustration with the Court's repeated refusal to hear cases involving the "petty offense doctrine," appellate waivers in plea bargains, and felon-in-possession gun laws—all issues with clear circuit splits that affect large numbers of people.
The episode concludes with a celebration of Fox's efforts that led to presidential pardons for John Moore and Tanner Mansell, achieving justice where the courts failed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Clark Neely, senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. |
| 0:08.8 | And I'm Mike Vox, a legal fellow with the Cato Institute's project in criminal justice. |
| 0:12.5 | So today we're going to talk about the most recent Supreme Court term and specifically how that was for criminal law. |
| 0:19.0 | As usual, pretty awful. But Mike, for grading on the curve, what |
| 0:22.6 | kind of grade would you give this most recent term? Well, go with a B minus. So not unremittingly horrible, |
| 0:28.5 | but not necessarily super encouraging. Is that fair? Yeah, that's accurate. Right. So there were a couple |
| 0:34.2 | rays of sunshine. Let's start with that to set the tone. Why don't you |
| 0:38.5 | take us through the case of Barnes v. Felix? Tell us what was going on, what was it |
| 0:43.5 | issue, and how the court came out. We'll take that one. We'll kind of hand that back and forth. |
| 0:46.7 | Yeah, absolutely. So Barnes v. Felix started out in Harris County, Texas, where Mr. Ashton |
| 0:52.1 | Barnes was driving along the interstate when he was pulled over by a Harris |
| 0:55.8 | County Constable is worth noting in this case that the Harris County Constable's office got money |
| 1:01.0 | in their budget from collecting toll revenue. So there was a perverse incentive for constables to |
| 1:06.7 | stop people front-paid tolls. And he was pulled over for unpaid toll tags on the rental car that his girlfriend rented. |
| 1:12.7 | That was the point of the stop. And so there may have been a bit of a financial motive there, correct? |
| 1:17.1 | Exactly right. All right. So what happened during that traffic stop real quick? Yeah. So during the stop, |
| 1:21.5 | Deputy Felix had asked Mr. Barnes to pop the trunk. Mr. Barnes got a little bit nervous, started to drive away. |
| 1:28.6 | As he was driving away, Deputy Felix jumped onto the runner of the front passenger side door and fired, I believe, two rounds point blank hitting Mr. Barnes in the head. |
| 1:38.8 | Driver's side door. |
| 1:39.7 | Driver's side door, yes. |
| 1:40.7 | Fire blindly into the vehicle, killing Mr. Barnes, whose mother, I believe, then filed suit, |
| 1:48.5 | a wrongful death suit against the constable. |
... |
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