Kennedy Spares Death Row Inmates
And now back to a more contentious subject: the death penalty. In three opinions issued today, the Supreme Court reversed the convictions of Texas death row inmates.
Each of the cases involved a problem with the lower appellate courts’ application of prior SCOTUS rulings on special jury instructions in death penalty cases. All three decisions were 5-4, with the usual suspects (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito) in dissent. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Smith v. Texas; Stevens wrote the other two, Abdul-Kamir v. Quarterman and Brewer v. Quarterman, which had been orally argued together.
From SCOTUSblog:
In one of two rulings Wednesday on death penalty procedures in Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas’ highest state court wrongly put up a new legal barrier to a death row inmate’s challenge to jury instructions in his sentencing. The 5-4 decision came in the case of Smith v. Texas (05-11304), a case that had been before the Court once before.. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.The Court reversed the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ ruling that reinstated the death sentence of a Dallas man, LaRoyce Smith; the state court had applied a new harmless error standard under state law. That was a misinterpretation of what federal law required, the Court concluded.
In the consolidated cases of Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman (05-11284) and Brewer v. Quarterman (05-11287), the Court in another 5-4 decision found that the Fifth Circuit Court wrongly applied prior rulings on instructions to assure that capital juries give full consideration to any factor that might suggest a death sentence should not be imposed.
I credit Kennedy not so much because he wrote one of the majority opinions, but because he was surely once again the swing vote in what is becoming a heavy trend of 5-4 opinions. So much for Roberts’ goal of a unified court.
How Appealing has links to the opinions here.
(8) Comments
Comments
God, J. Kennedy has been so wobbly lately. Buck up, man.
I hear that Kennedy did it only because he's a robotic, mindless Papist.
No, I don't mean to suggest that I believe that allegation -- I'm just, you know, passing along what others have said.
I hear that Kennedy did it only because he's a robotic, mindless Papist.
No, I don't mean to suggest that I believe that allegation -- I'm just, you know, passing along what others have said.
Geoff Stone, what is your point? All four devout Catholics on the Court dissented from the three decisions and all four atheists coincidentally opposed the death penalty. As for Kennedy, it is hard to see how someone who wrote an opinion that makes a mockery of everything that Christianity stands for (see Lawrence v. Texas) can be referred to as a "mindless Papist." Kennedy is a liberal, period.
Anonymous, that whoosh you heard was the joke going over your head.
(to explain, Stone was the UofC provost who proclaimed that the 5 justices in the majority of the PBA case came down that way because the Pope told them to)
How, precisely, is writing an opinion upholding the basic human dignity of gay people "mak[ing] a mockery of everything Christianity stands for"?
Kennedy is a liberal, period.
Uh, no. I love how uber-conservatives ( as you no doubt are) label everyone as a liberal if they deviate in the slightest from the social/econ conservative line. Kennedy is a country-club Republican . . . period
Yes, Kennedy is a liberal, no one is surprised, there. However, his opinions are HORRIBLE. You'd think a liberal justice would make more of an effort not to write garbage like his concurrence in Rapanos. He could join the liberal Justices in most of these cases where he is posing as the "swing Justice," at least their opinions don't look like they were conceived by a first year law student.
Does anyone know his clerks? Seriously, whoever is in charge of his drafting should be looking at a different career.