Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Quotacious

"This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia








A point of order and mark of intelligence in defending the easily defendible and reinforcing the common-sensical is to accomplish such things without sounding like a completely heartless prick.

Stating that there is nothing unconstitutional about a death penalty "oopsie" is a good example of being a completely-correct-yet-heartless prick. The avatar of justice may be blindfolded, but there is no evidence that she has no heart.

Actually, the Troy Davis decision (from which the above quote is taken) begs an interesting debate about whether The Supreme Court is obligated to take the justice system off its self-imposed auto pilot (i.e., take off that blindfold) when it comes to matters not of the constitutionality of law, but of the fairness of the process and result. Is it within the Supreme Court's purview to overturn an otherwise-correctly-prosecuted court case and decision that complies in all ways with the U.S. Constitution and the laws under it?

The Supreme Court decided (against Scalia's dissent) that it should make such a correction: That it is indeed the Supreme Court's responsibility to not only examine the law exclusively, but to adjudicate the results of that law even when it is correctly applied. I don't disagree with either side of the decision here: One one hand, even the most honest and earnest miscarriages of justice should always be corrected... even by the Surpreme Court if all else fails, and on the other hand, as Scalia so bluntly said, that really is not the Supreme Court's job. (Also, as Scalia pointed out elsewhere in his dissent, this Supreme Court decision overturned a 1996 lower court decision against Davis that was based on a law that is constitutional... creating what amounts to an inadvertent and unintended post hoc Supreme Court opinion on that particular law.)

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