Death Penalty News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amy Coney Barrett paid homage to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her White House speech Saturday as a shatterer of glass ceilings. She said she would be mindful of the woman whose place she would take on the Supreme Court. She even commented that her children think their father is the better cook, much as Ginsburg used to talk about her husband's prowess in the kitchen. But the replacement of the liberal icon Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, by Barrett, who would be the fifth, would represent the most dramatic ideological change on the Supreme Court in nearly 30 years and cement conservative dominance of the court for years to come. Barrett, a judge on the federal appeals court based in Chicago, made clear in her Rose Garden address that she looks to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she once worked, and not Ginsburg, on matters of law. “His judicial philosophy is mine, too. Judges must apply the law as written. Judges are not po...

Florida’s new conservative Supreme Court takes on its former self and the U.S. Supreme Court in death row cases There has been a real lack of “judicial restraint” lately in Florida. You may have heard this term, usually by those who decry “activist judges” for “legislating from the bench.” Unelected judges must be restrained from usurping the roles of elected representatives in the other two branches. That’s how the argument goes. But it’s usually the banner waved by its most egregious violators. Here’s an example close to home. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case styled Atkins v. Virginia , made a landmark ruling that the Eighth Amendment’s ban against cruel and unusual punishment prohibits states from executing mentally disabled inmates. The 6-3 decision, with the majority opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, gave the states the authority to come up with a determination of mental disability. RELATED |  The Florida Supreme Court’s...

The court is now an outlier in reversing established law and the nation’s social norms What’s the obsession at the Florida Supreme Court with becoming an outlier on the death penalty, with reversing established law and shaking public confidence in the state’s judicial system? A recent decision by the court, which overturned protections for death row inmates with intellectual disabilities, is only the latest sign of judicial activism out of control, out of sync with the times and out of keeping with the tradition of restraint and following court precedent. In a case this month, the court ruled 4-1 against Harry Franklin Phillips, who for years has sought to set aside his death sentence for the murder of Bjorn Thomas Svenson, a parole supervisor, in Miami in August 1982. Phillips has argued he cannot be executed because he is intellectually disabled, which the U.S. Supreme Court, in 2002, outlawed as “cruel and unusual punishment.” Phillips wanted his claim reconsidered in li...

US President Donald Trump has nominated Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, setting the stage for a bruising confirmation battle. In a primetime announcement at the White House, Mr Trump praised his pick as a "brilliant jurist". The nominee, a District of Columbia appeals court judge, is a former adviser to ex-President George W Bush. The decision has far-reaching implications for America on everything from abortion to guns to immigration. This is Mr Trump's second appointment to the highest court in the land, potentially allowing him to shape the US for a generation after he leaves office. The president said: "Judge Kavanaugh has impeccable credentials, unsurpassed qualifications and a proven commitment to equal justice under the law." Mr Trump added: "He is a brilliant jurist with a clear and effective writing style, universally regarded as one of the finest and sharpest legal minds of our time." With reality televis...

Sister Helen Prejean (Photo: Franck Dennis) Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph, ministers to prisoners on death row. She is the author of "Dead Man Walking." The views expressed are her own. I'm praying for Justice Antonin Scalia, that his passage into eternity was peaceful. I respect his sincerity, even though on the subject of the death penalty, he was my nemesis. As I was writing "The Death of Innocents," I happened to run into him in an airport, and I said teasingly that I was "taking him on" in my book. And he, personable as he was, jabbed his finger in the air and said, "And I'll be right back at ya!" In "Innocents," I wrote about 2 men I believe were innocent: Joseph O'Dell and Dobie Gillis Williams, whose executions Scalia summarily authorized without an apparent qualm, acknowledging that his role on the Supreme Court made him part of the "machinery of death." Scalia's exp...