Ramsey County Law Library Blog

You may have caught the recent story of nearly 900 immigrants who recently became American citizens in a St. Paul ceremony.  One particular immigrant-cum-citizen had recently been affected by President Trump’s new executive order regarding immigrant travel that had temporarily kept her from returning to Minnesota.   The controversial  order has since been put on judicial hold, but none of these brand-new citizens will have to be concerned with it when making future travel plans. This story illustrates that where citizenship is concerned, it is obviously easier to be born a citizen per the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause than it is to obtain such status later in life.

This citizenship distinction wasn’t always so clear.   The elusive but pivotal Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark was decided in 1898, only two years after Plessy v. Ferguson.  In said case, Wong Kim Ark was born in 1873 in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents. His parents later returned to their homeland, but Ark remained in San Francisco, occasionally traveling to China to visit his folks. It was only on his return home from such a visit in 1895 that he was detained by border officials and not allowed back in.  This was due to strict enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act under which he was not considered a citizen. Ark contested his exclusion, asserting that he was in fact a citizen and thus the Act did not apply to him. The end decision was the literal and absolute interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s opening clause, “[A]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

President Trump has called for an end to what he calls “birthright citizenship,” which is at odds with the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment.   This year’s ABA Law Day theme happens to be [T]he Fourteenth Amendment: Transforming American Democracy. Beyond just the citizenship clause, expect to hear more about the Fourteenth Amendment and our planned Law Day celebration in weeks to come.

Voter eligibility and disenfranchisement is a subject this blog has looked at before, especially as it relates to felons. Different states have different levels of participation allowed by felons, with Minnesota falling somewhere in the middle by allowing felons to vote again after completing their entire sentence including probation.  With this limitation in mind, Minnesota Statute §204C.12 states that election judges must give ballots to voters who have been challenged as ineligible to vote, but who self-certify that they are in fact eligible. Recent local news presents the scenario where the polling roster might have someone marked as challenged due to status as a felon, as well as ward of the state, or non-citizen status. If the potential voter certifies that they are none of those things, election judges are being told that they should allow the person to vote.

In a case currently filed in the Second Judicial District, the Minnesota Voter Alliance asserts that the polling roster should be taken as the final word, and that the election judges should not be allowed to override it by letting the person vote.   They have encouraged election judges to refuse to follow the rule, claiming there is more election fraud in Minnesota than is officially acknowledged.  The Minnesota Secretary of State’s office says that refusing to apply the rule is not an option, and that only a court has the authority to challenge the statute. (See how the Secretary of State’s 2016 Election Judge Guide explains how the situation should be handled.) In the delicate operation of conducting democratically sound elections, election fraud and voter disenfranchisement are the two opposite sides of the same coin. State officials have asserted that the danger of election fraud is minimal.  Other groups assert that the real danger is not fraud, but voter suppression.  A judge will rule on this issue today (Friday), at least for purposes of the upcoming election.  It could easily find its way to the Court of Appeals or the Minnesota Legislature, especially if there are close election results.

Minnesota came into focus last week as part of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.  Specifically, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras was part of a short list of potential U.S. Supreme Court appointees that Mr. Trump might pick if he were to be elected.  (Like the late Justice Rosalie Wahl, Stras has his beginnings in Kansas.)  A graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law, Justice Stras clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  Before then he held other clerkships and also practiced white collar criminal and appellate law in the firm of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood.  He became an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School in 2004, which he held until his appointment to the Minnesota Supreme Court by Governor Tim Pawlenty on July 1, 2010.  He was a popular professor at the “U”, as is reflected in the University of Minnesota Law Review’s tribute to Justice Stras.

In its recent article, the Minnesota Lawyer pointed out that Mr. Trump may be employing political strategy with his short list. (In fairness, what isn’t political when you are running for president?) All the names on his list are not only conservative thinkers in the judicial realm, but also hail from the Midwest.  Mr. Trump’s election game will likely depend on appealing to Midwestern states.  (“Conservative” can be a rather circumstantial concept where justices are concerned.  Stras dissented with Justice Alan Page in the headliner DWI case of State v. Bernard, now awaiting its final fate at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.)   Stras was previously named in this blog as the author of this fascinating historical article on Minnesota’s first U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Pierce Butler.  Stras may not have a long judicial record to his name, but check out some of these other articles to learn more about his analytical approach:

• Judges’ Perspectives on Law Clerk Hiring, Utilization, and Influence , 98 MARQ. L. REV. 441, 453 (2014).
• The Incentives Approach to Judicial Retirement, 90 Minn. L. Rev. 1417 (2006).
• Navigating the New Politics of Judicial Appointments 102 NW. U. L. Rev. 1869
• Retaining Life Tenure: The Case for a “Golden Parachute” 83 Wash. U. L.Q. 1397

Of course, being on a presidential candidate’s short list of possible appointees is not a sure route to the nation’s highest bench.  Not even being an official appointee of a sitting president to an actual vacancy is a sure thing, as Merrick Garland can attest.

The fate of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) remains in limbo. Last year Federal District Court Judge Donovan Frank ruled that the Program constituted unconstitutional confinement.  More recently, the Judge Frank ordered specific changes to the program, but the State appealed this ruling and the Program continues as usual.

Recent news has cast light on some of the program’s candidates for “graduation” if you will. Of note, Oliver Lenell Dority has served at the MSOP for roughly 20 years, and will soon be provisionally discharged.  Dority was sent to prison in 1995 after pleading guilty to raping two women. He was civilly committed to the program in 2009.  Since he will be settling in St. Paul, the Police Department held a public meeting this week for residents to ask questions. Similarly, Christopher Coker of Minneapolis has sought release to a halfway house following his commitment to the MSOP fifteen years ago.  He was originally convicted for the rapes of three teenage girls in three incidents over 1991 and 1992.  Recently the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the decision of a special panel which concluded that Coker should be released to a halfway house in light of his treatment progress, despite conflicting reports submitted by the Minnesota Department of Human Services stating that Coker wasn’t ready for this step. In an unpublished decision written by Chief Judge Edward Cleary, the Court of Appeals concluded it was permissible for the panel to give increased weight to the positive report presented by Coker’s primary in-house therapist.

Created in 1994, the MSOP presents a phased-treatment program, implying that offenders can “graduate” if they successfully complete their treatment. So what exactly does it take to graduate from the program?  Among its numerous policies, the MSOP offers a general outline of its graduation standards (See Phase III on deinstitutionalization and reintegration).  In addition, news articles reveal Dority’s lawyer stating that he cooperated in the program and was never sent back to lower levels, and security guard testimony that Coker had been on over 30 chaperoned visits outside the facility without incident.  Over the two decades of MSOP’s existence, very few participants have “graduated,” and these were all provisional discharges.  (None have been released outright.)  Interestingly, the provisional release rate has picked up in recent years, perhaps indicating a new commitment on MSOP’s part to holding up the program’s “graduation” ideal.  (Pressure from a federal court might do that, subsequent appeal filings aside.)  The dilemma might simply be that while citizens are understandably concerned about the possibility of a sex offender living in their community, no sex offender can be asked to do the difficult work of changing themselves without some hope of eventually regaining at least some of their freedom.