In Chiaverini, the court holds that the valid charges do not create a categorical bar on a subsequent malicious prosecution claim. It indicates that it leaves “for another day the follow-on question of how to determine in those circumstances whether the baseless charge caused the requisite seizure.”
We have Diaz v. US. It is by Justice Thomas. It is NOT the last opinion.
It is 6-3, with a Gorsuch dissent joined by Sotomayor and Kagan.
This was a case about whether prosecutors in a drug-trafficking case can call a government witness to provide expert testimony to rebut a defendant’s contention that she did not know that she was carrying drugs. The question comes to the court in the case of a woman who was stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border with 28 kilograms of methamphetamine hidden in her car. She maintained that the car belonged to her boyfriend and that she didn’t know that the drugs were in it.
The court holds that expert testimony that ‘most people” have a particular mental state is not an opinion about the defendant and therefore does not violate federal evidentiary rules. It is a victory for the federal prosecutors, as the court upholds the ruling in the government’s favor by the Ninth Circuit.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-14_d1o2.pdf