Friday, parties in the case of Ali v. Achim, which was granted cert in September, notified the U.S. Supreme Court that its services won’t be needed after all – the case has been settled and will be voluntarily dismissed. [See the Lawyers USA summary of the case here].

This means the Court will have to wait for another day and controversy to arise before it can answer the question presented: whether a federal court can determine that an offense that is not an aggravated felony is still a “particularly serious crime” that bars a defendant’s eligibility for withholding of removal?

The defendant was a Somali refugee whose “no contest” plea to a battery charge resulted in the loss of his asylum.

SCOTUSBlog’s got the motion for voluntary dismissal here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 10:49 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.