I applaud Kavanaugh. This is not soft-on-crime sentimentality. It is proportionality, due process, and common sense. The actual shooter took a plea and got 20 years. Pitchford sat under a death sentence for decades after a jury-selection process the Supreme Court now says was constitutionally broken. At some point, the system has extracted every lawful pound of flesh it can justify. A retrial now means stale evidence, dead memories, vanished witnesses, old transcripts, and a state trying to recreate a case from another lifetime. If Mississippi wants to try again, fine. But the death case is over. Enough. Let law be law, not vengeance.
Gorsuch's final comment is puzzling, and I'm curious about why you interpret it as him being in lock step with the most conservative Justices on capital punishment. As you write, Gorsuch's comment was false. He lied about what his colleague wrote in the majority. A reader will likely get to Gorsuch's opinion after Kavanaugh's and realize that Gorsuch is lying. Why would he do this? Did he/his clerks write the opinion before seeing the final majority? Or is he just giving Republicans a quote they can use to criticize the majority? Such either abject laziness or dishonest cynicism should have no place in Supreme Court writings. (To be clear, we know Justices don't mind lying when it suits their purposes, e.g. Bremerton, and of course to make defendants' actions sound worse, but lying in the dissent seems so odd.)
I applaud Kavanaugh. This is not soft-on-crime sentimentality. It is proportionality, due process, and common sense. The actual shooter took a plea and got 20 years. Pitchford sat under a death sentence for decades after a jury-selection process the Supreme Court now says was constitutionally broken. At some point, the system has extracted every lawful pound of flesh it can justify. A retrial now means stale evidence, dead memories, vanished witnesses, old transcripts, and a state trying to recreate a case from another lifetime. If Mississippi wants to try again, fine. But the death case is over. Enough. Let law be law, not vengeance.
Gorsuch's final comment is puzzling, and I'm curious about why you interpret it as him being in lock step with the most conservative Justices on capital punishment. As you write, Gorsuch's comment was false. He lied about what his colleague wrote in the majority. A reader will likely get to Gorsuch's opinion after Kavanaugh's and realize that Gorsuch is lying. Why would he do this? Did he/his clerks write the opinion before seeing the final majority? Or is he just giving Republicans a quote they can use to criticize the majority? Such either abject laziness or dishonest cynicism should have no place in Supreme Court writings. (To be clear, we know Justices don't mind lying when it suits their purposes, e.g. Bremerton, and of course to make defendants' actions sound worse, but lying in the dissent seems so odd.)
Perhaps Gorsuch is polishing up his campaign for next Chief Justice …
Might this foreshadow majority in Alabama redistricting?
Amazing. I'm glad they got it right.
How very odd! Chief Justice Roberts makes much of how America has overcome racism … and yet this Court, to its (disingenuous) amazement, finds racism.