Today in Supreme Court History: September 19, 1907

9/19/1907: Justice Lewis Powell's birthday.

Justice Lewis Powell

Comments

[JoeFromtheBronx]

September 19, 2013: Robert Garza’s application for a stay of execution & cert. was denied. He was executed.

Starting tomorrow, six executions are scheduled in five different states in the next two weeks. As Chris Geidner notes in his substack, there are multiple concerns, including an innocence claim supported by multiple public officials from both parties. Six executions in such a short period is notable, especially since these days only about twenty executions occur each year.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/upcoming-executions

==

Thomas Johnson took his judicial oath OTD in 1791.

He is remembered as having the shortest tenure. Johnson took part in the Supreme Court’s first written opinion.

Like other early nonentities, he had a respectable career before coming to the Court. He retired in 1793 and then had a long retirement, dying in 1819.

https://www.oyez.org/justices/thomas_johnson

[SRG2]

I believe that many public official and judges don't care about innocence - they regard the DP as so effective a deterrent, it's ok to kill the occasional innocent. Plus you don't want to go around admitting you've made mistakes. Better to execute them

[Commenter_XY]

Cite the cases where the DP was applied wrongly, beyond a reasonable doubt.

[SRG2]

Off the top of my head, Herrera in Herrera v Collins (the murderer was Herrera's brother IIRC), Cameron Todd Willingham (no murder took place at all), Larry Swearingen (police planted evidence and "expert witness" miscalculated time of death - Swearingen was in custody at the time of the murder). I could look up some more.

FWIW two convicts due to die in the next round of executions are very likely innocent.

But it's a stupid request because I don't need to prove each case, only show that there is doubt in a number of cases and that therefore probability indicates that at least one is innocent even if I can't prove which one.

Scalia, who was particularly dishonest when it came to death penalty cases, being it seems only marginally better than Lord Goddard, would never address that argument, insisting always that you needed to prove a specific case. I think this may stem from a particularly vile form of Christianity that holds that it's kinda ok because, hey, there's always heaven if the guy was innocent, cf. Arnaud Amalric. And as we know from Herrera, Scalia and Rehnquist didn't think that executing an innocent man was unconstitutional if due process had been followed.

[Dan Schiavetta]

United States v. United Liquors Corp., 77 S.Ct. 208 (decided September 19, 1956): Reed denies stay of antitrust judgment prohibiting defendants from “entering into or adhering to any fair trade contract which purports to fix or control the resale price of any alcoholic beverage in the Memphis trading area for five years”, despite argument that they would lose business to other liquor sellers who were not bound by this restriction

[JoeFromtheBronx]

To toss it out there, on 9/18/2020, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.

Mitch McConnell was not quite as concerned about the people deciding first before a replacement was picked this time.

[Dan Schiavetta]

To be fair to Ginsburg, who gets a lot of posthumous grief for hanging on too long, she (like most people) probably expected Hillary Clinton to be elected, and she could have retired then. As it was, with Trump in office, her only choice became to hold on and hold on.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I deeply respect her life's work & don't think it useful to harp on her human decision not to retire earlier. I do think in hindsight it was mistaken -- Clinton's winning was not somehow assured especially earlier when Trump wasn't even the candidate.

It's something to keep in mind, including in arguing for a more steady replacement of justices via a term limit.