Adderall, deportation, and confession before the Supreme Court

Adderall overkill? Every year, the United States deports about 30,000 people for drug crimes. Moones Mellouli was one. A citizen of Tunisia, Mellouli came to the United States on a student visa a decade ago. He earned advanced degrees and became an actuary and a professor. By 2009, he’d earned permanent-resident status.

The following year, 2010, he found himself in jail for driving drunk. Police in Kansas found four Adderall pills in his sock. The prescription medication is used to treat hyperactivity disorders. It’s also widely used by college students to stay awake, and that’s an illegal use for a controlled substance under both Kansas and federal law.

Mellouli pleaded guilty to a lesser offense, misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. His sock was that paraphernalia. But the lesser offense carried a heavier penalty than he expected. The government deported him.

Federal law says the government can deport people convicted “of a violation of … any law of a state … relating to a controlled substance.” Mellouli’s lawyer argued he shouldn’t have been deported because he was convicted of possessing paraphernalia, not a controlled substance itself.

The federal government’s lawyer, Rachel Kovner of the solicitor general’s office, argued the sock still “related to” a controlled substance, and therefore deportation was correct.

But the justices seemed perturbed by what they saw as a case of federal overreach, in which immigrants are deported for minor drug offenses. In the past 10 years, the high court has overruled three such deportations, one involving a single Xanax tablet.

Late for court. Last year, Bobby Chen filed a handwritten petition asking the Supreme Court to hear his case, even though he had no lawyer and no money to pay the filing fee. Chen’s house was demolished by the City of Baltimore, and he seeks recompense. The justices agreed to take his case, one of only 75 or so accepted out of roughly 10,000 petitions each year. But Chen, after getting the court’s attention, went missing. Deadlines for filing court documents came and went, so his case was dismissed just last month. But now Chen is back. He says he was injured on a trip out of state and missed the court’s multiple attempts to contact him. And now he has a high-powered lawyer representing him for free: Paul Clement, the former U.S. solicitor general, a regular before the high court. Clement has asked the court to reinstate Chen’s case. On Feb. 20, the court will sit in conference and, among other things, decide whether Chen gets another chance.

Unprotected speech. In May, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that a priest’s conversation with a minor during a confession might not be protected from disclosure. The case involved a woman who said she was abused by a parishioner when she was a minor. The woman is suing the church for negligence for letting the abuse continue. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decided not to review the case, letting stand the ruling that a priest might have a duty to report alleged abuse.

Life in prison. Lester LeRoy Bower stands convicted of killing four men. He’s been on death row in Texas for 30 years. Bower’s lawyers contend that long stretch on death row is, in itself, unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. This week, the three-decade wait was finally scheduled to end in Bower’s execution, but the U.S. Supreme Court stopped it.

About the constitutional question, the court won’t conference again until next Friday. That’s when the justices get together to decide whether to take cases. Presumably, Bower is content to wait for their answer.

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