This time, we’re concluding our six-part post on the tenure of Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar with a look at the subjects of his majority and dissenting opinions in criminal, quasi-criminal, juvenile justice and mental health cases.

Not surprisingly, the most frequent topic of Justice Cuéllar’s majority opinions in criminal cases was death penalty law.  He wrote 13 opinions in all – 3 in 2016, 5 in 2018, 2 each in 2019 and 2021 and one in 2020.  He wrote eight opinions about sentencing law – two each in 2015 and 2017 and one in 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2020.  Justice Cuéllar wrote seven opinions on criminal constitutional law – 4 in 2017 and one each in 2018, 2020 and 2021.  He wrote three majority opinions regarding political crimes, three in 2015 and one in 2016.  He wrote three majorities on criminal procedure – one each in 2016, 2018 and 2021.  He wrote two opinions about property crimes (both in 2016), two about violent crimes (2018 and 2019) and two about juvenile offenses (2019 and 2021).  He wrote one majority opinion about habeas corpus law and one about sexual offenses.

Justice Cuéllar wrote only nine dissents in criminal cases.  Two-thirds of those were in death penalty cases – two each in 2017 and 2019 and one each in 2015 and 2018.  He wrote one dissent each in criminal procedure (2017), sentencing law (2017) and constitutional law (2018).

Join us back here later this week as we turn our attention to a new topic.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Harold Litwiler (no changes).