Abdullahi Khalif Noor is a Somali refugee, who was a cab driver living in Seattle when convicted of rape and assault, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He has always maintained his innocence. He challenged his convictions in Washington state courts, arguing that prosecutors had suppressed evidence of his innocence in violation of due process and Brady v. Maryland.   Unsuccessful in the Washington state courts, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. He was again unsuccessful, and sought to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Ordinarily, when a party loses in federal district court they can immediately appeal the decision. But Mr. Noor was barred from doing so because he had not obtained a document Congress has required habeas petitioners receive from federal courts before they can appeal since 1908 — then called a certificate of probable cause, but now called a certificate of appealability (COA).

Federal and state constitutional law requires prosecutors to inquire into and disclose misconduct by members of their prosecution teams. In Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court has applied those principles, and others, in cases that have led to the mass exoneration of people convicted of drug crimes with the assistance of former state chemists who committed misconduct. In Graham, the ACLU and public defenders are asking the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to apply those same principles to a situation where the U.S. Department of Justice has alleged a pattern or practice of misconduct by members of a police department—specifically, the Narcotics Bureau of the Springfield (MA) Police Department. The Springfield investigation was the DOJ’s sole pattern-or-practice investigation during the Trump Administration, but the DOJ has opened several such investigations during the Biden Administration. Graham appears to be the first state supreme court case in the country to consider whether DOJ pattern-or-practice findings can trigger duties under state law to investigate and disclose the misconduct alleged by the DOJ. In a major victory, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in January 2024 that the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office violated its duties to disclose and inquire about exculpatory evidence of widespread misconduct by Springfield police.

Hasson Bacote, a Black man from Johnston County, North Carolina, is challenging his death sentence under the first-of-its kind law, the North Carolina Racial Justice Act (RJA). He argues that race played an impermissible role in jury selection, not just in his case, but in all death penalty cases in North Carolina. Mr. Bacote’s case may signal the beginning of the end of the death penalty in North Carolina. A trial court will begin to hear evidence in the case on February 26, 2024.

When a prisoner pursues state post-conviction DNA testing through the state-provided litigation process, when does the statute of limitations for a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 procedural due process claim begin to run?