In Staub v. Proctor Hospital, 562 U.S. 411 (2011), this Court held that an employer is liable under a “cat’s paw” theory when a supervisor acts with discriminatory animus, intends that act to cause an adverse employment action, and that act is a proximate cause of the ultimate decision. The Court rejected categorical defenses based on layered decisionmaking or independent review, explaining that causation is severed only when the adverse action rests on reasons unrelated to the supervisor’s original biased act.

The courts of appeals are now divided over how to apply Staub. Most circuits treat “cat’s paw” liability as a proximate-cause inquiry, holding that intervening review or multiple decisionmakers do not automatically defeat liability. But the Fourth, Eleventh, and Tenth Circuits treat organizational structure—such as independent investigation or multilayered review—as categorically breaking the causal chain. The question presented is as follows:

Whether, under Staub v. Proctor Hospital, an employer is categorically insulated from “cat’s paw” liability whenever higher-level officials conduct independent review or share decisionmaking authority, even if a biased subordinate’s act was a proximate cause of the adverse employment action?

As required by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Mississippi’s capital murder statute limits the types of homicides for which a conviction can be punishable by death. Among those are various forms of felony murder, including “[t]he killing of a human being… .[w]hen done with or without any design to effect death, by any person engaged in the commission of the crime of… arson.”! Petitioner Martez Abram was convicted of capital murder even though the undisputed evidence proved that the two victims died before he set fire to the premises of a Wal-Mart store where Abram and the victims had worked together.

At sentencing, 1n addition to the felony-murder aggravator,? the jury also found as aggravating circumstances that the defendant “knowingly created a great risk of death to many persons,”® and that both killings were “committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest or effecting an escape from custody.” As to the second death, the jury also found the aggravating circumstance that “[t]he capital offense was committed to disrupt or hinder the lawful exercise of any governmental function or the enforcement of laws.”> The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and sentences.

This presents the following questions to this Court:

1 Miss. Code Ann. § 97-3-19(2)(e). 2 Miss. Code Ann. § 99-19-101(5)(d) (“[t]he capital offense was committed while the defendant was engaged, or was an accomplice, in the commission of, or an attempt to commit, or flight after committing or attempting to commit, any… arson… .”). 3 Miss. Code Ann. § 99-19-101(5)(c). 4 Miss. Code Ann. § 99-19-101(5)(e). 5 Miss. Code Ann. § 99-19-101(5)(g). ia

1. Whether, consistent with Hewitt v. United States, 145 S. Ct. 2165 (2025), a vacated conviction is void ab initio and wholly nullified, such that courts may not continue to give prospective legal effect thereto under the Due Process, Privileges and Immunities, Suspension and Supremacy Clauses of the United States Constitution.
2. Whether a state court lacks jurisdiction over the subject matter of a statute after the legislature’s repeal of said statute, repealed prior to alleged offense, contrary to the Separation of Powers Doctrine, Due Process and Supremacy Clauses of the United States Constitution.
3. Whether dismissal of a predicate offense (aggravated robbery), which is an essential element of the alleged greater offense, deprives a trial court of jurisdiction : to impose a conviction and sentence dependent on that offense, and whether reliance , on the dismissed offense violates the Double Jeopardy Clause, Due Process and Cruel and Unusual Punishment Prohibitions of the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.
4. Whether a trial court lacks jurisdiction to “increase the prescribed range of penalties” based on “facts” not found by a jury, including a dismissed offense non- statutory aggravating circumstances in violation of the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

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i. whether a prior state conviction tor simple possession ot 1.5 grams of cocaine - punished with probation only - qualities as a “‘serious drug felony” predicate under 21 U.S.C. $851, in light of the Firsi Step Act’s exclusion of minor offenses from enhancement eligibility and Florida’s statutory reforms deeming such conduct non-felonicus. Cf, United States v. Taylor, 142 S. Ct.

| 2015 (2022)(vacating career-offender status for attempted possession). 2. Whether, under Anprendi v. New Jersev, 530 U-S. 466 (2000), United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99 (2013), Woods v. United States, 590 U.S. 545 (2020), and Frlinger v. United States, 144 S. Gt. 993 (2024). the Fifth and Sixth Amendments nermit sentencing based on judicially found drug purity and quantity (here, 5kg of “ice’’ methamphetamine at 100.5% purity per unreliable lab report) exceeding the jury’s 500-gram mixture verdict, effectively mandating a sentence 4x the advisory range. 3. Whether a Guidelines offense level of 44 - driven by uncharged judicial findings on drug type, purity, role and money laundering never submitted to the jury - yields a substantively unreasonable sentence Undex Booxer, where

| the statutory maximum absent enhancements were 20 years: and if that sentence is constitutiona]ly valid.

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