A racially hostile work environment violates Title VII when discriminatory conduct is “severe or perva- sive’ enough to alter the conditions of employment. Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 21 (1998). An isolated incident may satisfy that standard if it 1s suf- ficiently severe.

The question presented 1s:

Whether employer-mandated training that com- municates derogatory racial stereotypes and directs race-conscious workplace conduct may be sufficiently severe to create a racially hostile work environment absent repetition or additional race-based misconduct.

1. Whether the Suspension Clause and the Due Process Clavse are Violated When a

. federal pa Sonerc’s evidence-based Claim of factual innocence, Grounded in forensic Cvidence Dearing on the otfense’s Mens [ea element , s Cote Gori cally denied any forum foc mecits eview onder erthec 8 2955 o¢ § 2741’s Saving Clause.

2. Whether Sones vi Hendrik, 544 U.S. 465 (2023), Whith Gddressed a Claim based on an intecvening Change tn Sibetorg interpretation Under 1255 (h)i2), fotecloses Gn evidence-based sin of factual innocence Under 21551) , Where /ower Lourts fave Cvdended Jones by analegy fo reath & gveStion the Court afd not deerde, .

This case arises from a one-day drug investigation in which the jury acquitted petitioner Carlos Petitioner of possessing with intent to distribute the very cocaine later used to support his sentence yet convicted him of conspiracy based on the same events. The Fifth Circuit affirmed because it concluded that United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148 (1997), bound it to permit consideration of acquitted conduct, while separately holding that the jury could infer knowledge and foreseeable drug quantity from sealed, opaque speaker boxes, their weight, their value, a car swap, and a false identification during a traffic stop.

The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Fifth and Sixth Amendments permit a federal sentencing court to rely on conduct underlying a charge of which the jury acquitted the defendant when that conduct supplies the factual basis for the punishment imposed, or whether United States v. Watts should be overruled or limited. !

2. Whether, in a § 846 drug-conspiracy prosecution triggering § 841(b)(1 (A)’s ten-year mandatory minimum, a general guilty verdict may be treated as an individualized drug-quantity finding where the verdict form contains no separate quantity finding, the alleged drugs were concealed inside sealed, opaque | Candor requires the Undersigned to point out that the jury instructions in the conspiracy count one requires the jury to make findings that are also contained in count two possession charge.

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Petitioner, the father of multiple female and male children with his longtime spouse and other women, was convicted of conspiring to transport minor females (in- cluding some of his own minor daughters) in interstate commerce for illegal sexual activity. The district court sentenced petitioner to serve 25 years in federal prison. The court also imposed a lifetime term of supervised release to commence upon peti- tioner’s release from prison. One of the conditions of supervised release categorically prohibits petitioner from having any type of direct or indirect “contact” with all vic- tims, as well as all of the victims’ “family” members, without written permission of a supervising probation officer. On its face, that broad condition necessarily prohibits petitioner from having any unapproved contact with his spouse and also all of peti- tioner’s non-victim adult children, who are the siblings or half-siblings of petitioner’s daughters who were victimized.

On appeal to the Ninth Circuit, petitioner challenged the condition of super- vision as an infringement of his fundamental constitutional right to associate with his immediate non-victim family members. Petitioner requested, as a remedy, a re- mand to the district court with instructions simply to modify the condition so as not to prohibit petitioner from having unapproved contact with any immediate family member who is neither a victim of the offense nor a minor.

The Ninth Circuit refused to address the merits of this constitutional challenge after concluding that the issue was not “ripe” for resolution because, by the time that petitioner will be released at the end of his lengthy prison sentence, his familial rela- tionships may differ from the relationships that exist at the time his direct appeal.

The questions presented are:

I. Whether a purely legal challenge to a condition of supervised

release raised on direct appeal by a federal defendant who still must serve a significant term of imprisonment before commenc- ing supervised release is “ripe” for resolution when the condi- tion, on its face, violates a fundamental constitutional right.

II. Whether this Court should overrule its precedent recognizing a “prudential” ripeness doctrine and limit ripeness analysis to Ar- ticle II] considerations.

il

1. Whether Petitioner was deprived of his right, under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, to a trial by a 12-person jury?

This is the question presented in Kian v. Florida, No. 25-6623, 2026 WL 1718018 (U.S. June 15, 2026) (granting petition).

2. Whether, contrary to the Due Process and Jury Clauses, the trial court erred in imposing an enhanced sentence of life imprisonment under statutes that authorized that sentence based on nonjury fact-findings upon proof by a preponderance of the evidence?

i

Minutes after watching her boyfriend murdered beside her, a 16-year-old witness frantically named two brothers, by street name, as having been in the car from which the shots were fired. She did not say who was the shooter and who had been driving. Hours later, in a written statement, she filled in that detail — naming Edwin Franqui as the driver. But, when she took the witness stand years later, she would not confirm that identification, testifying under oath that she did not know who had been driving and refusing every invitation to “remember” otherwise: “No. I know what I seen.” The only evidence that put Franqui behind the wheel was her written statement — read aloud to the jury not by her, but by a uniformed detective, days after she had already left the witness stand for good. On that statement, and her initial, role-less identification at the scene, a jury convicted Franqui of conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and accessory to assault in the first degree, and the trial court sentenced him to 50 years in prison. The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed Franqui’s conviction, reasoning that because the witness’s statement identified only two people in the car, and the jury could credit a separate, similarly recanted statement attributing the shooting to Franqui’s identically-named older brother, the jury could conclude — by process of elimination — that Franqui “must have” been driving. The question presented 1s:

Whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires independent, reliable corroboration before a recanted, out-of-court identification may serve as the primary evidentiary basis for a criminal conviction.

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