Death Panel Found!
We’ll leave the esoteric procedural issues to our betters, but on Monday the Supreme Court stayed the execution of what may well be an innocent man.
With two dissents.
Yes, them. Who else?
It’s an ugly case, as these things tend to be. Troy Anthony Davis was convicted in 1991 of murdering a Savannah, Georgia, police officer, who tried to help a homeless man being pistol-whipped in a parking lot. Since the trial, seven witnesses have recanted their testimony, while others have named the main prosecution witness as the killer.
Monday’s decision sends the case to a federal court to hear the new testimony, and determine whether it “clearly establishes” Davis’s innocence.
Which is where Scalia, J., and his rubber-stamping sidekick Clarence come in.
Strict constructionist that he is, Scalia declares that executing an innocent man isn’t unconstitutional:
This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent.
Yes, only an activist judge would dare stretch the meaning of “cruel and unusual punishment” beyond its precise interpretation. We’d bow before Scalia’s superior intellect, if Thomas wasn’t already down there.
Hearing on innocence claim ordered [SCOTUSblog, via Think Progress]
U.S. Supreme Court orders new hearing for Troy Davis [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
In Re Davis [Scalia dissent, PDF]
“Actually” innocent? Anything like “actually” dead?
We’ll be cursed with this Court for a long time, won’t we?
Ever get the impression that Scalia was Torqumada in a past life?
Ronald Reagan – still fucking up people’s lives through all the idiots he put on the federal bench.
Since Scalia bases his 8th Amendment cruel and unusual punishment jurisprudence on what was kosher in 1789, he’d be okay with using drawing-and-quartering as a means of execution. Oh, and you can drown uppity women for being witches.
His quote the first time he said this, some years ago, was even better, more ballsy in its “in-your-face” aggressive assholiness: “There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice … for finding in the Constitution a right to demand consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction.”
Notice Scalia’s contempt, his sneering, in one sentence he sneers at the lower courts, at the habeous writ itself, and at the claims of innocence. “[A]ble to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent,” you see it all in this line, those stupid, liberal lower courts, so gullible as to even consider that a petitioner could be innocent, this ridiculous “right” to habeous review,” these false claims of innocence.
Scalia is a sociopathic sophist. He knows he is wrong, that he is able to put together logical arguments that appear correct, but are not, and he has no problem with this because its not about truth, to him, its about aggressive domination, he is an intellectual bully and its not about being right, its about winning and aggrandizing the self and humiliating any who disagree. If he were a stupid man he would be a wife-beater, a serial killer, or at minimum, someone who regularly kicks the cat when noone is around, but he has an easy facility with complicated logical constructions, and has learned the ways to pervert logic to fool the less intelligent, so he does his bullying, commits his aggression, that way.
Asshole of assholes, he is.
@Promnight: And I can’t wait to watch the feisty Puerto Rican wise Latina lady take him on.
@SanFranLefty: Yes, this will be fun.
@SanFranLefty: I want to see her reach down his throat, rip out his heart and eat it in front of him and then play ‘Look!’ with it for the court.
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