Given the presence of Glossip v. Gross before the Court, here's a real good article about the death penalty that also trolls Scalia a bit. It makes me more convinced that perhaps the proper way for the Court to strike down capital punishment as unconstitutional is not via the Eighth Amendment, but because due process is deprived if the subject is unable to challenge the conviction due to the problem of being, well, dead.
Antonin Scalia wrote:Justice Blackmun begins his statement by describing with poignancy the death of a convicted murderer by lethal injection. He chooses, as the case in which to make that statement, one of the less brutal of the murders that regularly come before us, the murder of a man ripped by a bullet suddenly and unexpectedly, with no opportunity to prepare himself and his affairs, and left to bleed to death on the floor of a tavern.
The death-by-injection which Justice Blackmun describes looks pretty desirable next to that. It looks even better next to some of the other cases currently before us, which Justice Blackmun did not select as the vehicle for his announcement that the death penalty is always unconstitutional, for example, the case of the 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat.
How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!
Scalia was referring to the case of Henry Lee McCollum, a North Carolina man who was convicted of the brutal rape and murder of Sabrina Buie, age 11, and his half brother Leon Brown, who was convicted as an accessory.
McCollum and Brown confessed under interrogation and were found guilty by a jury. McCollum was sent to death row; Brown received a life sentence.
If ever there was a case that warranted the death penalty, Scalia argued, this was it.
The only problem is that they didn't do it. In September, a judge ordered them released.
Thirty years after their convictions in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in rural North Carolina, based on confessions that they quickly repudiated and said were coerced, two mentally disabled half brothers were declared innocent and ordered released Tuesday by a judge here.
The case against the men, always weak, fell apart after DNA evidence implicated another man whose possible involvement had been somehow overlooked by the authorities even though he lived only a block from where the victim’s body was found, and he had admitted to committing a similar rape and murder around the same time....
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid by the state of North Carolina to revive its law requiring women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound of the fetus performed and described to them by a doctor.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid by the state of North Carolina to revive its law requiring women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound of the fetus performed and described to them by a doctor.
A whole lotta opinions came down just now, but not a lot of huge ones. The most notable is that it ruled Texas can ban Confederate flags from license plates without violating the First Amendment. Thomas joined the Court's left wing on that one.
I would have thought the ACA decision would be the next to last one released, right before the same sex marriage case. It certainly has a bigger direct role in more people's lives than same sex marriage.
Other than those two I know there's a ruling on lethal injection waiting. What are the other remaining decisions concerning this term?
Biff Pocoroba wrote:I would have thought the ACA decision would be the next to last one released, right before the same sex marriage case. It certainly has a bigger direct role in more people's lives than same sex marriage.
Yeah, I thought SSM would come today instead of the ACA case.
Biff Pocoroba wrote:Other than those two I know there's a ruling on lethal injection waiting. What are the other remaining decisions concerning this term?
If I had more time I would take an angry-looking picture of Scalia and slap a "U MAD BRO?" on it. That's par for the course when he dissents in big cases.
King v. Burwell is getting all the attention today, but the other case (disparate impact in fair housing claims) is also big. Thomas had a pretty terrible dissent in that case:
Held: The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.
KENNEDY, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined. ROBERTS, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SCALIA and THOMAS, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS, J., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SCALIA, J., joined. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SCALIA and THOMAS, JJ., joined.
Yep, all four dissenters wrote an opinion. I really hope Scalia dissents from the bench again.
