Much has been written about the qualified immunity decision in Jamison v McClendon. I want to add a thread aimed at public defenders & judges. Look at pgs 51-56 and you will see Judge Reeves explicitly taking race into account when determining if consent was voluntarily given. /1 Defenders should encourage courts to consider race when thinking about how people interact with police (and judges need to agree that it matters). When police exert their power, how a person experiences that display of authority is informed by that person’s race. /2

Short thread on Wilson v. Sellers: SCOTUS says federal habeas courts should presume that summary state affirmances rely on the same reasons given below and courts should look through those summary decisions when doing a 2254(d) analysis. But it also says.../1 that the unreasonableness of the lower court's decision may itself provide some evidence to rebut the presumption that the higher court actually relied on that reasoning. This seems crazy to me and, at first read, sounds like SCOTUS is saying that state court decisions can .../2