Amicus Brief Call for Signatories – Martinez v. United States

From crimprof Ken Levy of LSU…

Call for Signatories: SCOTUS Amicus Brief in Martinez v. United States (Impossibility and Conspiracy)

I am circulating a draft amicus brief on behalf of criminal-law professors in Juan Martinez v. United States (No. 26-68), which is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court on a petition for certiorari.

Our brief addresses the circuit split over application of the doctrine of legal impossibility to criminal conspiracy. We critique the reasoning underlying the district court’s preclusion of Mr. Martinez’s impossibility defense, which was later left undisturbed by the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in United States v. Martinez, 2026 WL 184361 (11th Cir. Jan. 23, 2026). The two courts treated the defendant’s subjective ignorance of a governing contract as defeating an objective, contract-based impossibility inquiry.

Our argument pushes back against this subjectivist approach. After distinguishing between hybrid legal impossibility on the one hand and both hybrid factual impossibility and mistake of fact on the other, we argue that culpability requires objective, not just subjective, illegality. In short, the law, not the defendant’s mistaken belief, dictates criminality.

You may read the draft brief here.

If you agree with the argument and would like to join the brief, please email me at klevy@lsu.edu with your preferred signature block details (name, title, and institutional affiliation) by Tuesday, August 11. We will be filing on August 13.

Thanks.

Ken Levy
Holt B. Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law
LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center