The Supreme Court’s conservatives don’t want federal judges to consider death row inmates’ innocence claims. Still want to argue they’re pro-life? Read story here.
Clarence Thomas finally got to do what he’s been itching for years to do: Write a majority opinion saying “tough luck” to innocents sentenced to death in sloppy state trials. He overruled a couple of precedents in the process.
To him and the other five conservative justices, states’ rights matter more than guilt or innocence, therefore federal judges can’t interfere with questionable verdicts in state death penalty cases.
Issues of ineffective counsel and post-conviction remedies are dicey. Most people on death rows probably deserve to be there. Many claims of innocence claims are just jailhouse talk, but not all of them are. Numerous death row exonerations attest to that.
We should be 100% sure of guilt before executing anyone. The problem is that defendants often are represented by overworked and poorly qualified public defenders. This particular case involves a horrible, stomach-churning death of a very young child; and if the defendant is guilty, he deserves to die. But the investigation, and his legal defense, were sloppy and there’s reason to believe he may be innocent (see story here). The case should be reopened.
But the Supreme Court’s conservatives, flexing their states’ rights muscles again — the same states’ rights mentality behind their plans to scrap Roe v. Wade — has decided that federal courts can’t meddle in state court miscarriages of justice. This guts the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of due process, and gives states permission to execute people who may be innocent, by disempowering federal judges from enforcing that guarantee. Clarence Thomas, a longtime opponent of innocence claims in federal courts, authored the opinion.
Why did they do it? Because their priority isn’t guilt or innocence, or due process, but the Federalist Society’s concept of how judicial power should be distributed between federal and state governments (less federal, more state). That’s a shitty reason to allow states to execute people convicted in problematic trials who may be innocent, and another indication this gerrymandered Supreme Court is out of control.