The court provided no reasoning for its decision not to hear Mr. Noriega’s appeal. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, dissented from the decision not to hear the case, Noriega v. Pastrana, No. 09-35, saying the court had missed an important opportunity to clarify how federal courts should treat claims from prisoners of war.
After the United States invaded Panama in 1989 and drove Mr. Noriega from power, he was convicted of drug crimes in Federal District Court in Miami in 1992. A federal judge declared him a prisoner of war.
Having completed his sentence, Mr. Noriega asked to be sent home to Panama. But the United States agreed to extradite him to France, where he has been convicted in absentia of money-laundering offenses. Mr. Noriega argued that his extradition would violate the Geneva Convention concerning prisoners of war, a claim rejected by the federal appeals court in Atlanta.
In a brief urging the court not to hear the case, the federal government said it was of “limited ongoing significance” because Mr. Noriega is “the only person currently detained by the United States as a prisoner of war.”
Justice Thomas said the case would have allowed the court to provide “much needed guidance” to the other two branches “without the unnecessary delay and other complications that could burden a decision on these questions in Guantánamo or other detainee litigation arising out of the conflict with Al Qaeda.”
The court’s decision to send the crime lab case, Briscoe v. Virginia, No. 07-11191, back to the lower courts meant that it would not cut back on or clarify a major ruling from June anytime soon. That ruling barred prosecutors from presenting crime lab reports without testimony from the analysts who prepared them.
State prosecutors told the court that the decision from June, Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, was imposing a major and unwarranted burden and “is already proving unworkable.”
“Already data and anecdotal evidence are demonstrating an overwhelming negative impact,” a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by 26 attorneys general in November said.
The narrower issue directly presented by the Briscoe case was whether prosecutors wishing to present lab reports were permitted to do something short of calling analysts as witnesses during the prosecution’s case. As the justices explored that question at the argument of the case two weeks ago, it became clear that they had chosen a poor vehicle through which to give general guidance to the lower courts.
“Why is this case here except as an opportunity to upset Melendez-Diaz?” asked Justice Scalia, who wrote the majority decision in that case.
On Monday, his colleagues seemed to agree that the court had acted rashly
in returning to the subject so soon.