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Van Poyck, the poster child for the batshit insane death penalty doings in Florida is one step closer to a June 12 execution, armed with attorneys that don’t know or have time for his case. Last time we checked in, lawyers had filed an emergency appeal with the Florida Supreme Court on Friday, May 17, arguing that they had neither the time, nor the knowledge, nor the expertise to represent Van Poyck in this expedited timeframe. The Florida Supreme Court was expected to rule late Friday.
It didn’t. It waited all weekend to rule late Monday. In what the Palm Beach Post calls “a deeply divided” ruling, the Court said – 4-3 naturally – that the execution would remain on track, although the deadlines for various filings were extended by a day here or there. The majority wrote a two page opinion stating:
“We deny the request for a stay of Mr. Van Poyck’s execution,” Justices Ricky Polston, R. Fred Lewis, Charles Canady and Jorge Labarga wrote in a terse two-page ruling. “Noticeably absent from these recent (court) filings is any substantive reason for granting a stay.”
I’ll give you a substantive reason: the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. But in their bloodlust and desire for finality, due process and the right to counsel are mere obstacles on what must be an ever shortening path.
This obsession with finality and speedy finality has always troubled me. Especially in cases where the sentence is irreversible, like death. It is often said by those with the taste of blood in their mouth that delay is a tactic used by the defense and every day the client spends alive is a victory. I found that argument most curious: for one, I’d rather be on the side that regards the extension of another individual’s life for even a day as a good thing and second, I’d rather be on the side that ensures that we proceed cautiously, carefully and certainly.
In an apparent effort to accommodate the three attorneys, the high court extended the deadlines of when they must file various appeals.
Instead of this Wednesday, Burton has until May 29 to rule on whatever motions are filed. Possible oral arguments before the Florida Supreme Court are scheduled for June 6 instead of June 5. That would leave a week to launch appeals in federal court in hopes of stopping what would be the first execution for a Palm Beach County murder in 21 years.
The justices, however, said they didn’t want to hear from any outsiders. They rejected requests from the 1,700-member Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Sandy D’Alemberte to weigh in. On Friday, both the association and D’Alemberte, a former state lawmaker and past president and law school dean of Florida State University, said they wanted to explain problems with the death penalty process that has led to confusion in Van Poyck’s case.
What does it say when an institution (or perhaps institutions if you add Congress) that is designed to serve the people - all people – acts with such hubris and disdain for the voices of those very people? Have our laws become the playground of the present whims of 5 or 7 or 9?
What’s even more puzzling is that the defense attorneys, two of whom have never handled a death penalty appeal before and one who doesn’t know this client from a hole in the wall, asked for merely a 30 day extension. 30 days to ensure that Constitutional representation was provided. And apparently that’s too much. I guess once you have a taste for killing, it’s hard to let go. Isn’t that what they say about defendants? The only difference is that one murder is state sponsored and the other isn’t.
I’m reviving a series I briefly dabbled in, back in 2008, called ‘This Month‘, which serves to preview the cases assigned for oral argument in the CT Supreme Court in the upcoming month. I may also include cases of special interest in SCOTUS, depending on whether I’m in the mood. I’ve also added a permanent link to this post in the sidebar, alongside the above picture, so you can find it at any time. The link will be updated every month to the most current ‘this month’ post.
The reason for reviving this is this upcoming April term, in which the court is scheduled to hear at least four cases that can have significant and profound impacts on the state of individual rights in Connecticut: State v. Kelly; State v. Brown, Brown v. Commissioner and State v. Santiago, impacting, in turn, the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments.
Monday, April 15 @ 10:00am: State v. Richard Annulli. [Briefs available here.] The defendant was charged with several sex related crimes. During the trial, he wanted to cross-examine the complaining witness to show that she was lying by questioning her about another separate instance in which she allegedly lied to the police in order to get someone else arrested. The trial judge, after hearing what that evidence would be, disagreed with the defendant’s characterization that she “lied” and thus did not permit the defendant to question her about that. The Appellate Court affirmed the conviction and the Supreme Court will review whether his Sixth Amendment right to confront one’s accuser was violated by the trial court. There is also a claim that the evidence was insufficient, but that’s going nowhere.
Tuesday, April 16 @ 10:00am: State v. Jeremy Kelly. The link to the left is to a separate post for this case. I don’t often engage in hyperbole but it is my opinion that this is one of the most important cases the CT Supreme Court will have to deal with for a while (except that other case coming up on April 23). This case involves the ability of the police to seize or detain groups of people when they have a reasonable suspicion to stop only one person out of that group. The implications of permitting such an “automatic companion” rule are staggering, especially for policing in minority neighborhoods, given the dubious “stop and frisk” tactics that are already employed there.
Wednesday, April 17 @ 10:00am: State v. Brown. [Briefs available here.] One of the fundamental concepts of the privilege against self-incrimination is that you have the right to remain silent. The police, pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona, generally advise a suspect of his rights. So, if a person chooses to invoke his rights and remain silent, that fact cannot be used to show that he is guilty. See Doyle v. Ohio. The question in Brown is whether post-arrest silence can be used against the defendant if the defendant first puts on evidence that he was co-operative with police and answered their questions. Has he, in essence, “opened the door” to harmful questioning? Once he does that, can the prosecutor show that when asked by the police how much he (in this case) had to drink, the defendant remained silent? The Appellate Court said yes and the Supreme Court will decide if that important protection of Due Process has an exception of these circumstances.
Interestingly enough, on the very same day, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Salinas v. Texas, in which the issue to be decided is whether the pre-arrest silence of a suspect can be used to show his guilt. [Greenfield has more here.]
Wednesday, April 17 @ 11:00am: State v. Stephen J.R. [Briefs available here.] The defendant, who was accused of sexually abusing the minor victim on four occasions, was charged with eight counts of sexual assault in the first degree and eight counts of risk of injury. At trial, the victim testified that the defendant abused her on “three or four” occasions and that she was forced to engage in two sexual acts each time. The defendant subsequently was convicted of all sixteen charges. He argues that the victim’s testimony was too vague to support the guilty verdicts on all sixteen charges, as she described generally what happened each time the abuse occurred but did not differentiate between the incidents. In addition, the defendant contends that the trial court, after conducting an in camera review of the records of the department of children and families pertaining to the victim and her family, improperly failed to fully disclose all of the relevant records. Finally, the defendant asserts that the prosecutor, during closing argument, improperly appealed to the emotions of the jury and thereby denied him a fair trial.
Thursday, April 18 @ 10:00am: O’Neil Brown v. Commissioner. [Briefs available here.] A case that will decide the applicability of Padilla v. Kentucky here in Connecticut. Padilla said that it was a lawyer’s responsibility to advise a defendant about any immigration consequences of a guilty plea. While Padilla was an important case for defendants going forward, the question here is whether it applies retroactively to people whose convictions are final and who may be awaiting deportation. While SCOTUS has said no, Chaidez v. US [PDF], they have also said that states are free to provide retroactivity under state law, Danforth v. Minnesota. Further, last year the Connecticut Supreme Court also said too bad you’re shit out of luck to a guy who sought to vacate his 1999 conviction because he was facing deportation in 2010 and no one told him that he could be deported. He relied on CGS 54-1j, but the Court said no, that only provides relief within the first three years. So O’Neil Brown is critical for defendants who may have pled guilty without any knowledge of the negative deportation consequences of that plea.
Monday, April 22 @ 10:00am: State v. Pires. The issue in this case is whether the defendant properly invoked his right to represent himself and whether that right was violated. The Appellate Court said no and the Supreme Court will review that decision.
Monday, April 22 @ 11:00am: State v. Mitchell Henderson. In 1993, the defendant was found guilty of several crimes and due to his extensive criminal record, was also found to be a persistent serious felony offender and a persistent dangerous felony offender, both of which triggered a greater punishment than normal. As a result of this, his sentence was lengthened or “enhanced”. In 2007, our Supreme Court decided that any such “enhancements” must be based on facts that are found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than by a judge. So Henderson argued that his enhanced sentence is illegal because the facts weren’t found by a jury. The Appellate Court said no, the 2007 rule doesn’t apply backwards. The Supreme Court will now review.
Tuesday, April 23 @ 10:00am: State v. Eduardo Santiago. [Briefs available here.] This is the other big one this month, which will decide whether the prospective repeal of the death penalty is Constitutional or whether the entire death penalty needs to be scrapped or whether the repeal needs to be repealed. Keep in mind that the hearings on the racial and geographic disparity in the application of the death penalty are still pending.
Wednesday, April 24 @ 10:00am: State v. Milner. Here’s another fascinating case (and the last one of) this term. Milner was placed on probation in 2005. Sometime later, he was charged with a new crime and as a result of that, also charged with violating his probation. He apparently had a hearing on the violation of probation (VOP) first and a judge decided to revoke his probation and sentence him to jail. He appealed that judge’s decision. While that appeal was pending, he pled guilty to one of the new charges that formed the basis for the violation of his probation. He didn’t appeal that conviction (he couldn’t, really, because you typically can’t appeal from a guilty plea), but he did challenge its legality by filing a habeas corpus petition. The Appellate Court held that it wasn’t the same, his conviction was final and so his pending appeal (from the VOP) was moot. The Supreme Court will decide if that’s the case.
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If you have the briefs in any of these cases, please email them to me. If you’re going to see oral argument in any of these cases, please leave a comment with your observations.
Clarence Earl Gideon, of Florida by way of many state’s penitentiary systems, was a thief. He was a rather poor one too. Gideon, whose name I have adopted and which I shroud myself in on a daily basis, was also a dreamer. And like most dreamers, he was also a fool. A thief, a dreamer and a fool, and in the end, he and his legacy have done us all in.
50 years ago today, Clarence Earl Gideon the man, the thief, was vindicated. Writing for an unanimous Supreme Court, Justice Black opined that
reason and reflection require us to recognize that in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him. This seems to us to be an obvious truth.
Obvious in principle, obvious in necessity but hardly obvious in execution. Clarence himself bought into the lofty ideal idealized in his namesake decision, going so far as to put some grandiose on his tombstone:
And yet, somehow, here we are. There is no joyous celebration of the 50th anniversary. There are no pats on the back or accolades, let alone a sense of satisfaction of a job well done.
There is only a moment of attention that has drawn the pleas for help out into the open, as the world, for this instant and only this instant, has muted every other noise to pay perfunctory obeisance at the altar of indigent defense, because it is the right thing to do. So in these few fleeting moments, take note of the near-universal message of “dear God please help us we are drowning”.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to … have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
While the meaning of the phrase “shall enjoy the right” may have been up for debate prior to Gideon v. Wainwright, that decision left little room for its continuation. What the Constitution (and by extension Gideon) did not provide is the will to enforce that right.
That will comes entirely from the people. And the people for about 49 years now, haven’t given a shit.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. The people – you – care very deeply about the criminal justice system. The people – you – have very strong senses of right and wrong. The people – you – have very strong opinions about what should be a crime and how swiftly, quickly and severely that crime should be punished. This hasn’t changed. Just remember Justice Black:
Governments, both state and federal, quite properly spend vast sums of money to establish machinery to try defendants accused of crime. Lawyers to prosecute are everywhere deemed essential to protect the public’s interest in an orderly society.
Law & Order, DAs, cops, FBI agents, rogue cops, the triumph of good over evil are staples of our modern imagination. They are woven into the fabric of our existence and color the lens through which we view the world.
Every person arrested is guilty and those that are not are rare exceptions that don’t alter the perception of the system. We don’t care if the people who get arrested get good defenses; we assume they’re guilty. What we really need to do is pay the people who catch criminals. And prosecute them. And guard them. The guys who defend them? Scumbags. Criminals themselves. Government fatcats.
It’s not so much a funding problem (it is that too) as it is an attitude problem. The funding drought is merely a symptom of the greater issue with indigent defense: no one gives a shit.
The right of one charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours. From the very beginning, our state and national constitutions and laws have laid great emphasis on procedural and substantive safeguards designed to assure fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law. This noble ideal cannot be realized if the poor man charged with crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist him.
How many reading this today would agree that it continues to be true? Maybe it did when Justice Black wrote it in 1963. But I don’t know. I wasn’t conscious then.
Do these principles still matter in a Honey Boo Boo world? Are we still obsessed with being the best in the world at everything? The most noble? Is that even on the radar?
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Imagine, if you will, a world without a public defender. What would this world look like? Do you know that in Connecticut [PDF], we handle over 80% of the criminal cases every year? That means approximately 81, 500 cases last year were handled by public defenders.
Yes, that’s 81, 500. In one year. I think the public defender system in Connecticut employed 214 attorneys in the last fiscal year. Any time you get arrested and face jail time, we represent you. Doesn’t matter if it’s because you shoved your girlfriend in a fit of rage or because you broke into a house and murdered the occupants because they interrupted you while you tried to steal their PS4.
Eighty-one thousand. In one year. And that’s in Connecticut, one of the smallest states.
We’re like your neighborhood mechanic who works on your car for free, whether it’s an oil change or a transmission.
But there are 81, 500 cars and only 214 mechanics. We need more mechanics.
—–
The avalanche of cases and politics come together to present a formidable obstacle to alleviating some of the problems that afflict the system in some states. Politicians do not like asking voters for money for indigent defense.
“Arguing for more money to defend criminals is not the easiest way to win a close election,” said former Vice President Walter Mondale. As Minnesota’s attorney general in the early 1960s, Mondale recruited 21 other states to join in a brief urging the court to rule as it did and rejected a plea from Florida to support limits on states’ responsibilities to poor defendants.
Why is that so? Who is to blame? It is the height of cheek for politicians to say that seeking funding for criminals is an untenable platform when they themselves have made it so. ‘Tough on crime’ was a political policy, not an intrinsic way of life. Politicians have made careers on ruining lives of those arrested and now lament the lack of popular will to fix the broken system.
Or is it our fault for letting them? How many times have you said: “why don’t they just find them guilty already and sentence them?” How many times have you disrespected the Constitution?
And what will happen when it is you, facing a judge, standing next to a public defender with 25 files in his hand? Or your son? Or your grandfather?
—–
Funding indigent defense isn’t funding criminals. Funding indigent defense isn’t paying incompetent lawyers to do nothing. It’s funding something far more important. It’s funding the protection of the Constitution.
Do you know what happens every day in the criminal justice system? The law is followed, changed or challenged. And that happens in the brightly lit, heavily populated courtrooms on which no light is shined. Public defenders (and other defense attorneys) are playing a long, complicated chess game with the government. At stake: your individual freedoms.
Tomorrow, when you wake up and wonder why there needs to be a debate about whether the President has the authority to order drone strikes to kill American citizens on American soil without due process, it’s because every incremental battle leading up to that preposterous proposition has been lost. Tomorrow when you get pulled over and the cop looks through your cell phone or pulls you out of your car and frisks you or lies to you and gets you to admit that you committed a crime that you didn’t, realize that those battles have been fought and lost.
These battles aren’t won or lost in cases of innocent people. Name every single case that you might know. They were all guilty. Ernesto Miranda? Guilty. Clarence Gideon? A criminal. Michael Crawford? Stabbed a dude. Ferdinand Oquendo? Killed a dude.
And it may be that those battles were well fought and would’ve been lost anyway. But you’d have known about them, if you paid attention. And maybe you’d have cared and demand differently of your legislators and lawmakers and governors who appoint judges who make these decisions.
Because, whether you realize it or not, you have entrusted your rights to me. I am their guardian. My black-or-Hispanic-lives-in-a-shitty-neighborhood-has-a-criminal-record-was-probably-robbing-a-bank-client’s Fourth Amendment rights are the same yours. Or rather, your rights are the same as his. If you want the government to truncate his rights because you judge him as “the other”, then realize that you’re giving the government full license to truncate your rights too. Don’t worry, I’ll fight just as hard when you’re standing next to me, but it might be too late then.
So decide today, America. What is more important to you: liberty, freedom and justice or just the idea of it?
We can all name certain rights that we have: the right to counsel, the privilege against self-incrimination, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to say whatever the hell you want, the right to have the arms of a bear, etc. But do we think that these are all the rights we have? Especially in the criminal context, there are various other rights that each person has that we may not necessarily be aware of. The right to a trial by jury, for example, is well known, but it is actually the right to a public trial by jury. [TL;DR at end of the post.]
Well sure, that seems obvious enough: you can’t have a trial in a closed courtroom, or in a judge’s chamber somewhere. According to Presley v. Georgia [PDF], the Constitution guarantees it. But did you know that a courtroom, while seemingly open, might be “closed” to the public? And did you know that, even if you didn’t know that, your lawyer may make the decision to say that’s okay without telling you?
That’s what the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court concluded in Commonwealth v. Lavoie last month. In Lavoie, they were conducting public voir dire, which last two days. Apparently because there were so many prospective jurors, the court sheriffs asked family members of the defendant to leave the courtroom and told them they couldn’t be present because there was no room for them. The lawyer didn’t notice; the judge didn’t notice. The defendant did know it and he was annoyed, but didn’t say anything, because, you know, he’s a defendant in a criminal trial and he’s not exactly in charge of much.
So he got convicted and some years later filed a motion for new trial arguing that his Constitutional right to a public trial was violated. The State naturally objected, claiming almost preposterously that he had implicitly waived the right because he didn’t say anything to anyone and neither did his lawyer. Lavoie responded, rather logically:
there was no explicit waiver by the defendant or his attorney, and … defense counsel could not waive his client’s rights without ever discussing the issue of his right to a public trial with him. The defendant further states that a waiver of this right could not have occurred where he did not know he had such a right or understand that his counsel made a decision concerning that right.
In other words: how the hell do I waive something I don’t know I had the right to? Quite simply, says the Court, because your lawyer made a tactical decision to do so. And there, kids, is how the courts get away with almost anything: by couching everything in terms of a decision of tactics, the courts shift the power of enforcement from the defendant to his lawyer. Even when his lawyer doesn’t remember consciously making that tactical decision. Like, oh, I don’t know, Lavoie’s lawyer:
Defense counsel stated that it was not his usual practice to object when court officers cleared the court for jury selection because he was aware that space was often insufficient, and he did not want to interfere with “court officers who he perceived engaged in a difficult job” or to have family members sitting near potential jurors. Defense counsel also expressed his belief that family members could present a distraction and, specific to this case, stated his concern that the defendant’s mother “was an emotional individual [who would] be a distraction.”
Although defense counsel had no specific recollection of court officers excluding the defendant’s family during jury selection and did not discuss this issue with the defendant, “he had consciously decided prior to this trial not to object to the removal of family members or supporters during the jury selection process in courtroom 12B.”
The emphasis is all mine just to highlight the bullshit. I’ll bet you a box of Krispy Kreme donuts this attorney, when seeing a copy of the motion raising this claim, thought: “oh crap, I never even thought of that!” And if you’ve practiced criminal law for longer than a second, you’ve already run into some CYA lawyer who’s told you to claim it was a tactical decision, no matter what. Courts are all too happy to oblige, because really, he was guilty, right? And that’s all that matters?
[Because really that's what the value of your rights are. Are you guilty enough? That's the justification for repeated violations of Constitutional rights: harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. "Well yes, this confession was obtained illegally, but he was really guilty, so it doesn't matter" and on and on.
The legal gymnastics really are a sight to behold: 1. The defendant has a lawyer, so the lawyer's word is as good as the defendant's. 2. Except when the lawyer speaking doesn't mean anything [State v. Johnson, PDF] if the defendant doesn’t speak. 3. Even if either and or both speak, it’s not sufficient because they didn’t explain their objection properly. 4. Even if they objected, they didn’t list all the possible grounds for objection so it’s waived. 5. If they said the rights words, they didn’t object a second time and that was essential. 6. If they objected a second time and properly preserved the issue, it doesn’t matter because he’s guilty anyway.
And yet we puzzle why this happens over and over again and why judges and prosecutors and cops don’t learn: because there’s no punishment for doing it wrong. It’s like having a cat that constantly eats your birds but you don’t do anything because, well, you don’t give it enough food, so it’s justified.
So our rights will always be infringed upon because there’s no corresponding punishment for violating them: and you and I and the rest of us “non-criminals” are just as implicit in this erosion as the judicial system. We cry and moan about “guilty” people getting off on “technicalities”. The Constitution isn’t a technicality. It shouldn’t matter how guilty you think someone is; a violation of fundamental rights should have appropriate remedies. Because guess who decides if someone is guilty enough for the error to be harmless? Judges and courts and the legal system. It’s a system that feeds itself. And we will become fodder.]
The right to an open court in criminal proceedings is “an effective restraint on possible abuse of judicial power,” In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 270 (1948), which functions for “the benefit of the accused; that the public may see he is fairly dealt with and not unjustly condemned.” Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 46 (1984). Yet, it is okay for a lawyer to implicitly do away with this right on behalf of his client without ever consulting or mentioning it to him?
It seems that the courtroom of justice has long been closed.
TL;DR because apparently everyone is stupid now and has no attention spans: your lawyer can waive rights on your behalf that you never knew you had because justice.
So you’re reading the Constitution. And the Constitution says many things implicitly and a few things explicitly. And one of those things is that the accused shall have the right to confront witnesses against him face-to-face (Pennsylvania v. Ritchie). What the Supreme Court has never explained is just whose face that has to be.
Yes, that’s an odd statement, so let me explain: the Ninth Circuit ruled today [PDF] that it was okay for a confidential informant to testify in a trial wearing a ridiculous wig and mustache (I’m only assuming the wig was ridiculous; all wigs are ridiculous unless worn for medical purposes) to protect his identity because he was involved undercover with the dangerous Sinaloa Cartel.
Why, exactly, is it important for someone to be able to look at the person testifying against them square in the eye? Why is it even more important for the jury to be able to do that? Justice Scalia, writing in Coy v. Iowa, explains: Continue reading →
What started out as a fairly fact specific hyper-technical statutory interpretation of the meaning of a phrase in an extremely narrow statute has ballooned into a general hue and cry about “rape culture” and a disregard for women’s rights.
I wrote last week about the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Richard Fourtin [PDF], which is only the former and has no shades of the latter. But that hasn’t stopped advocacy groups and pageview hungry tabloids like ThinkProgress and the HuffingtonPost from burying their heads in the sand about the boring reality of the opinion and instead pressing on with their fabricated quotes and blatant misrepresentation. Which is why it comes as no surprise that the Hartford Courant – never one to miss an opportunity to drum up page views and advertising revenue through the use of incendiary and sensationalist “opinion” pieces – published this “opinion” piece.
On the one hand, I’m incensed that allegedly reputable news organizations would publish pieces with a blatant disregard for truth and a fundamental – and frankly, frightening – misunderstanding of and disregard for our criminal justice system.
On the other, what better opportunity could there be to perhaps try and educate people and correct these pervasive misconceptions. So I’m going to give this another shot in the hope that maybe one person will walk away with a more accurate understanding of our core fundamental protections and rights.
The opinion piece is fortuitously titled in the form of a question – “He’s Not Guilty Because Disabled Woman Didn’t Fight Back?” – allowing me to respond appropriately: “No”. In order to make this post coherent, I’m going to reproduce her opinion and respond point-by-point.
First, Cindy Luo (the author of the opinion piece) opines:
The Appellate Court claimed, in justifying its decision, that because the defendant could “communicate by gesturing and vocalizing … and that witnesses testified that she could indicate her displeasure by means of gestures, physical aggression — including biting, kicking and scratching — and by making screeching and groaning sounds,” then “no reasonable jury could have concluded that she was physically helpless at the time of the assault.”
She means ‘complainant’ when she says ‘defendant’, but other than that it’s accurate. Moving on:
Fourtin was sentenced in 2008 to six years in prison for attempted second-degree sexual assault and fourth-degree sexual assault involving the woman, who was then 25 and who has cerebral palsy, mental retardation and hydrocephalus, and cannot talk or walk. The Appellate Court reversed the convictions in 2009 and ordered the lower court to acquit Fourtin because the prosecution didn’t prove the woman was “physically helpless.”
Still correct. Next:
However, physical helplessness is not a requirement for rape.
And this is where it begins to fall apart. Because, you see, Ms. Luo, it is a requirement for “rape” under the subsection he was charged with. In case you were unable to find the pertinent subsection and read it, I’ll reproduce it for you here:
Today, all nine Justices of the Supreme Court met to decide whether to continue to permit juries in capital cases that are inherently biased toward imposing a sentence of death, or to finally revisit a much-maligned and problematic practice of “death qualification” of juries.
In 1968, the Supreme Court announced a seemingly bright-line test for determining when the State could unilaterally prevent jurors from serving on a capital case (exercising a peremptory challenge): when those jurors stated that they were unequivocally opposed to the death penalty and could not impose a sentence of death in any circumstance. In Witherspoon v. Illinois, the Supreme Court held that the State could legally excuse jurors:
who made unmistakably clear (1) that they would automatically vote against the imposition of capital punishment without regard to any evidence that might be developed at the trial of the case before them, or (2) that their attitude toward the death penalty would prevent them from making an impartial decision as to the defendant’s guilt.
Witherspoon, reaffirmed in Wainwright v. Witt, still rules the day. Death qualified juries are the norm and community members are regularly excluded based on their moral opposition to the death penalty. Continue reading →
