The Supreme Court is no longer a place you can go to stop the execution of an innocent person, or of someone whose sentencing was influenced by racial bias.
Since 2019, when Trump put his first two appointees on the court, the new conservative court majority hasn’t accepted a single death penalty case, save one: An inmate who demanded his pastor be present in the death chamber (the court granted his request).
Instead, the Supreme Court is pushing lower courts to carry out executions quickly, turning a blind eye to faults in trials or sentencing processes.
“It’s incredible what has become of the court,” a Columbia University law professor says.
“The supreme court is saying that the federal courts are no longer going to serve as a constitutional backstop in death penalty cases,” the director of the Death Penalty Information Center says, adding that “over the past three years the court [has] repeatedly ignored case precedent and long-standing judicial practices ‘to reach what appear to be politically based outcomes in death penalty cases.'”
The Guardian wrote here, “The majority’s intransigence is reflected in its refusal to hear cases that raise fundamental constitutional problems, including issues of racial discrimination and intellectual disability.”
Retired Justice Stephen Breyer “characterized the attitude of his conservative fellow justices as ‘hurry up, hurry up’, and … pointed out that the court had overturned a stay of execution … even before it had heard oral arguments in the case.” Justice Sotomayer recently complained, “Over the past six months, this court has repeatedly sidestepped its usual deliberative processes” in death penalty cases
What are the politics? Pretty simple, really. It consists of a power shift from federal to states. The conservative justices are pursuing a states’ rights ideological agenda, not only in death penalty cases, but across the board. The last time states’ rights was a big deal, it was being used to preserve segregation and block federal intervention against racial discrimination.
Photo below: Washington State’s lethal injection room is no longer used because the state supreme court declare the death penalty unconstitutional
