A very interesting case came before the Supreme Court involving an alleged drug trafficker who claimed she was unaware that she was transporting drugs.
The Supreme Court, with one vote from a liberal justice, upheld the verdict, but Trump-appointed Justice Gorsuch wrote a scathing dissent after having sided with the other two liberal justices.
Talking Points…
- The case
- Gorsuch goes off
- Analysis
Delilah Guadalupe Diaz was found guilty of importing methamphetamine across the U.S. southern border. This charge requires the government to be able to prove that she was aware she was holding the drugs when arrested. Diaz, of course, claims that she was unaware of the drugs being planted in her car. And her defense team contended that prosecutors violated federal evidence rules by having an expert testify to the mindset of “most” drug traffickers.
The decision came down 6-3 to uphold the verdict, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson voting to uphold the conviction and Justice Gorsuch crossing over to vote with the other two liberal justices.
All of Trump’s appointees have come under scrutiny for previous decisions when siding with the liberal justices, but Gorsuch, in particular, seems to have a soft spot for criminal justice reform along liberal lines. To that point, he wrote a scathing dissent calling out Justice Thomas’ majority opinion as well as the other members for holding up this conviction.
In part, Gorsuch wrote:
“The upshot? The government comes away with a powerful new tool in its pocket.
“Prosecutors can now put an expert on the stand—someone who apparently has the convenient ability to read minds—and let him hold forth on what ‘most’ people like the defendant think when they commit a legally proscribed act. Then, the government need do no more than urge the jury to find that the defendant is like ‘most’ people and convict.”
Thomas justified the majority opinion and the testimony of the expert witness, stating:
“An expert’s conclusion that ‘most people’ in a group have a particular mental state is not an opinion about ‘the defendant.’”
Gorsuch pointed that out in his dissent as well, stating:
“What authority exists for allowing that kind of charade in federal criminal trials is anybody’s guess, but certainly it cannot be found in Rule 704.”
I tend to lean into Thomas’ opinion in this case, as the expert testimony merely states what is typical, not necessarily what this particular person was thinking or doing at the time. Furthermore, just about anyone caught transporting drugs is going to say they were unaware of the fact they were being used as a mule. Call me a skeptic, but I don’t believe it, considering the current situation at the border.
But again, I think Gorsuch bringing this up is a good thing for the court. While siding with liberals may upset some, I happen to think this just shows how truly balanced the court is right now, even though Democrats and the media would love us all to believe the court is stacked with hard-right conservatives. That is clearly not the case here.
