In Galloway v. Mississippi, the ACLU represents a man on Mississippi’s death row whose trial attorneys relied on a mere twenty-two-page presentation in support of a life sentence, without first conducting the background investigation that would have enabled them to make informed decisions about what evidence to present. A constitutionally adequate investigation would have uncovered voluminous mitigating evidence that could have caused the jury to decide for life instead of death. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected Mr. Galloway’s claim by speculating that trial counsel had an alternative “strategy” that precluded their doing a full presentation of the abuse he suffered as a child and his mental disabilities—even though Mr. Galloway’s lawyers asserted no such strategic judgment.

Whether a content-based regulation that burdens adults’ access to protected speech has to be merely reasonable to satisfy the First Amendment because it was passed in the name of protecting children from sexual material online.

This case is about whether states can hold people criminally liable for obstructing a passageway based solely on their participation in a peaceful march on public sidewalks and streets, without evidence that they knowingly or intentionally obstructed any passageway themselves or directed, authorized, ratified, or intended that others do so. Representing three protesters who were convicted under such circumstances in Texas state court, our petition urges the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm that, under settled constitutional law, the answer is “No.”

This long-running Oklahoma death-penalty case raises two issues:   1) Will the State of Oklahoma be permitted to execute Glossip, despite overwhelming evidence that he is innocent, and despite a confession by the State’s Attorney General that the state obtained his conviction by hiding crucial evidence impeaching its star witness?; and   2) Will the Court reaffirm its longstanding commitment to Due-Process-Clause precedent requiring the government to disclose favorable evidence in its possession to the accused and to correct false testimony introduced against the accused?