Of the five decisions announced on Thursday by the Mississippi Supreme Court, all five were reversals. I don't ever remember seeing that happen.

In a unanimous decision that overturned a Court of Appeals decision, the high court held today in Rowland v. State, No. 2008-CT-00731-SCT, that a petitioner never loses the right to attack collaterally a conviction resting on a denial of a fundamental constitutional right. The ruling clarifies precedent, cited by the Jackson Court, that had held that fundamental constitutional violations "may" be immune from the statute of limitations. For the first time, the Court confirmed on today that such violations not only may be immune but are immune.

The decision explicitly overruled a series of conflicting cases from years past and is, by any measure, a landmark ruling in the realm of post-conviction relief.

Although Chief Justice Waller didn't come out and explicitly address the now-year-old rumors that he's considering a 2011 run for governor, he did begin his address by coyly telling the crowd, "I have an announcement to make!" Of course, then he launched into some joke about a talking dog (which, in all honesty, would have been pretty funny if it hadn't stood in for a potentially major political announcement).

But after the joke, he spent most of the rest of his time detailing the steps that he's taken to lighten the financial burden placed by the judiciary on the state budget. It wouldn't be hard at all to imagine such an account existing as part of an overarching theme of fiscal responsibility.

Additionally, Waller apparently told Paul Gallo this morning something about being committed full-time to being chief justice until "something else" comes along. That's about as full-throated as a non-denial denial can get.

Of course, whether that means that Chief Justice Waller is just dancing around a decision that he's already made is anyone's guess. My gut instinct is that he truly hasn't made a decision, but clearly, he's keeping his options open. And why not? Assuming that Waller would run as a Democrat, his current competition for the nomination would be a Delta lawyer and a mayor from southeast Mississippi...not pushovers, but not juggernauts, either. For a guy whose network and name recognition would allow him to raise money pretty quickly, entering the race now doesn't appear to have any discernible advantage over holding off until, say, February or March.

As I tell all my clients, there's never any telling what the members of the Supreme Court will do with any given question, and the best you can hope for while you wait is the solace that you have a legitimate chance. For now, as far as hopeful Democrats are concerned, that may be the best that they can hold on to, as well.

I'll be livetweeting during most of the speeches at my Twitter feed, @willbardwell, but I might not be camped out until a few minutes before Chief Justice Bill Waller takes the stage at 10. Regardless, there almost certainly will be more than enough snark to go around, so if that's your thing, then follow and don't be shy.

One need not read far into the history books to remember an era when the commands of courts were followed or not based entirely on whether the parties liked the answer. And the ensuing loss of blood and faith occurred for few other reasons than the fact that government officials and the electorate served thereby put themselves above the law.

I'm not suggesting that the rise or fall of some prissy lunch stopover will determine whether Euclid Drive soon will lie under the drumbeat of rioters. But the outright indignance on display by the city council is no less unsettling. As any first-year law student can attest, "[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." And any government body that defies those announcements plainly violates the Constitution.

That's never permissible, and least of all when a fancy lunch is at stake. 

I've previously blogged about the case, but to refresh your memory, Williams was convicted of murder in September 2007 in the death of his girlfriend in Oxford. Williams argued at trial that his girlfriend had committed suicide, but the trial court refused to admit evidence of the decedent's depression or to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offense of assisted suicide. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction in December 2009 by a vote of 6-3 and denied rehearing in April.

Assuming its self-imposed deadline is kept, the Supreme Court will announce a decision in the case sometime before late January 2011.

The Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. State, No. 2008-CT-00484-SCT, in an opinion written by Justice Carlson, that a defendant convicted of murder was entitled to a jury instruction on accidental shootings after he testified that the decedent had been killed during a struggle for a gun that just moments earlier had been pressed against the back of his head. In September 2009, the Court of Appeals held that Brown was not entitled to such an instruction because he received a jury instruction on the theory of self-defense. The Supreme Court rejected that conclusion today and held that the two theories are separate, and although they were somewhat contradictory, the defendant was entitled if he offered any evidence to support it.

The Court's decision in Frederick v. Quorum Health Resources, Inc., No. 2007-CT-00465-SCT, reversed a 6-1 ruling from the Court of Appeals, which held in December 2009 that the statute of limitations for a claim of continuing nursing home abuse began to run on the date when the abuse began. In other words, so long as a nursing home undertook a course of negligence that took more than a year to kill Grandma, they could get away with it without fear of repercussion.

The Supreme Court reversed that ruling today -- and rightly so, in my view. A review of the Court of Appeals decision reveals that they viewed the underlying facts in a fundamentally different way; where the Supreme Court saw a continuing act of neglect, the Court of Appeals had seen just one act. That's a tough sell, though, for a pattern of conduct that involved daily actions.

And even though I'm not aware of any castle doctrine-based reversals so far, Tuesday's Court of Appeals decision in Banton v. State, No. 2009-KA-00905-COA, is noteworthy for the degree of attention paid to the doctrine. In Banton, a man was shot and killed after being invited to the shooter's home and later refusing to leave. Ultimately, the Court rejected the appellant's argument because he hadn't produced any evidence that the victim either forcibly entered the property or intended to commit violence thereon.

Still, the Court leaves the door open pretty wide for the castle doctrine (as, I suppose, it must). The Court affirmed Banton's conviction only after finding evidence of neither a forcible, unlawful entry nor an intent to commit an assault or any other crime on the property (aside from, perhaps, trespassing, which is a misdemeanor and therefore does not trigger the castle doctrine). Any evidence thereof, presumably, would at least have entitled Banton to a jury instruction, if not a judgment of acquittal.

I would've liked the Court to have given some attention to whether the castle doctrine is triggered by unlawful entry upon property or merely the dwelling (I can't tell whether Section 97-3-15(1)(e)'s reference to "the immediate premises thereof" applies only to places of employment or to all of the delineated in the subsection, although I'm leaning toward the latter), but in truth, the facts of the case didn't really allow the judges to proceed that far into the inquiry.

Ha!

First, and most notably, Emily Wagster-Pettus of the Associated Press analyzes the continuing absence of women in elected state politics. Most noteworthy for this blog's purposes is her mention of the Mississippi Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, which are home to just one and two women, respectively.

Next, condemned convict Joseph Burns apparently plans to seek clemency from Gov. Haley Barbour after the Mississippi Supreme Court denied his request to seek a mental evaluation. Given that Burns is only a murderer, rather than a murderer who worked at the Governor's Mansion, I doubt that Barbour will be receptive.

And finally, if you want to do a little homework, then read up on last year's Delker v. State decision from the Court of Appeals. The case, which focused on a police officer's authority to stop traffic violators outside the officer's jurisdiction, appears before the Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon for oral arguments.

Also, I've renamed this blog's occasional roundup of news items, which henceforth shall be called "Dicta." May the rest of my week be equally self-satisfying.

Here's an excerpt: