As of today, the
tie goes to death. Courtesy of the high court's conservative majority, when juries in Kansas find that life in prison or the death penalty are equally supported by the evidence, they can strap 'em down, light 'em up, hang 'em high!
At Slate, one law professor
explains that the "court held that a state can tell a capital sentencing jury that if factors favoring life and favoring death are in equipoise, the jury must decide for the death penalty".
When the evidence is in equipoise. That means just what it sounds like: "a state of intellectual or emotional balance". He goes on to relate that the
"four dissenting justices call the Kansas 'tie goes to Death' law 'morally absurd.'"Other reports also
indicate that the deliberations were contentious.
The Kansas law could be used to execute people even when evidence justifying death is doubtful, four justices complained, calling the law "obtuse by any moral or social measure."
Justice Antonin Scalia fired back that the four liberal justices were contributing to international "sanctimonious criticism of America's death penalty.".....
He also said that there has been "sanctimonious criticism of America's death penalty" from people in other countries and that Monday's dissent "will be trumpeted abroad as vindication of these criticisms."
If only Tony had spent the day in church flipping off reporters. With Scalia so exercised, Clarence T must have been panting to oblige-
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing the 5-4 decision, said that states have wide discretion in imposing the death penalty. He said that liberal dissenters seemed to suggest that "abolition of the death penalty is the only answer to the moral dilemma" of an imperfect criminal justice system. "This court, however, does not sit as a moral authority," he wrote.
He's a real comedian. Thanks, to all three of the remaining felonious five. And thanks to Alito and Roberts, for just one more way to show the whole stinkin' world that we'll be just as barbaric as we please.
Thanks, too, to the Gang of
Fourteen Fifteen.
Satan
http://www.garden.force9.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/Other/Unjustice.gifJohn S. McCain III, Arizona
Lindsey O. Graham, South Carolina
John Warner, Virginia
Olympia Snowe, Maine
Susan M. Collins, Maine
R. Michael DeWine, Ohio
Lincoln Chafee, Rhode Island
Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut
Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia
E. Benjamin Nelson, Nebraska
Mary Landrieu, Louisiana
Daniel Inouye, Hawaii
Mark Pryor, Arkansas
Ken Salazar, Colorado
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