Diaz leaves bench with call to end death penalty

JACKSON, Miss. -- Outgoing Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr.'s impassioned call for an end to the death penalty has drawn both criticism and praise.

In what was likely his departing dissent as his tenure on Mississippi's highest court ends, Diaz says society finally must recognize that "even as murderers commit the most cruel and unusual crime, so too do executioners render cruel and unusual punishment."

Jimmy Robertson, a Jackson attorney who served on the state Supreme Court from 1983 to 1992, said Diaz laid out a number of points, including that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder, that were "pretty close to being irrefutable to anybody that's objective on the question."

However, Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif., said Diaz's opinion is "a litany of the familiar arguments against the death penalty, all of which have been refuted many times over."

"Impassioned pleas are nothing new. The anti-death penalty side has always had more passion than reason," Scheidegger said.

Robertson said opinions like Diaz's often come out when a judge is leaving a court. An example, he said, is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmon who grappled with the death penalty question for 20 years before denouncing it as he left the court.

"That's not to discredit the courage it took (for Diaz) to say it or the credibility of what he said," Robertson said.

Diaz declined an interview request, saying it "is not appropriate for a judge to comment on a specific case other than through our official opinions."

Diaz, 49, leaves the court in January after nine years. He was defeated in the November election by Chancery Judge Randy "Bubba" Pierce of Leakesville. Diaz is a former legislator and a former member of the state Court of Appeals.

Diaz, a presiding justice, returned to the court in May 2006 nearly three years after being acquitted of federal bribery in 2005 and tax evasion charges in 2006. Diaz was suspended with pay in December 2003 not long after he was indicted along with two former lower-court judges and a prominent Mississippi Gulf Coast attorney.

His return to the court was marked by an upswing in dissenting opinions, criticized in some legal circles but prompted by what Diaz said during his re-election campaign was a change in attitude fueled by his experience as a defendant in federal court.

"I don't look at cases the way I used to," Diaz said at a campaign forum. "It was an experience that not many others have.

Source: sunherald.com, December 20, 2008

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