Posted on 02/01/2006 8:13:20 PM PST by definitelynotaliberal
WASHINGTON - New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito split with the court's conservatives Wednesday night, refusing to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal injection.
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Alito, handling his first case, sided with inmate Michael Taylor, who had won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported lifting the stay, but Alito joined the remaining five members in turning down Missouri's last-minute request to allow a midnight execution.
Earlier in the day, Alito was sworn in for a second time in a White House ceremony, where he was lauded by President Bush as a man of "steady demeanor, careful judgment and complete integrity."
He was also was given his assignment for handling emergency appeals: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. As a result, Missouri filed with Alito its request for the high court to void a stay and allow Taylor's execution.
The court's split vote Wednesday night ended a frenzied day of filings. Missouri twice asked the justices to intervene and permit the execution, while Taylor's lawyers filed two more appeals seeking delays.
Reporters and witnesses had gathered at the state prison awaiting word from the high court on whether to go ahead with the execution.
An appeals court will now review Taylor's claim that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, a claim also used by two Florida death-row inmates that won stays from the Supreme Court over the past week. The court has agreed to use one of the cases to clarify how inmates may bring last-minute challenges to the way they will be put to death.
Alito replaced Sandra Day O'Connor, who had often been the swing vote in capital punishment cases. He was expected to side with prosecutors more often than O'Connor, although as an appeals court judge, his record in death penalty cases was mixed.
Scalia and Thomas have consistently sided with states in death penalty cases and have been especially critical of long delays in carrying out executions.
Taylor was convicted of killing 15-year-old Ann Harrison, who was waiting for a school bus when he and an accomplice kidnapped her in 1989. Taylor pleaded guilty and said he was high on crack cocaine at the time.
Taylor's legal team had pursued two challenges — claiming that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment and that his constitutional rights were violated by a system tilted against black defendants.
The court, acting without Alito, rejected Taylor's appeal that argued that Missouri's death penalty system is racist. Taylor is black and his victim was white. He filed the appeal on Tuesday, the day that Alito was confirmed by the Senate.
Has the MSM been reporting it wrong all day. It's been reported that the vote was 9-0. Who's correct?
So were you.
Yes, they were wrong. I just did a Google news search and they're all saying that Alito voted along with Ginsburg and Stevens instead of Scalia and Thomas.
USA Today is still running the 6-3 story with Alito siding against conservatives, so I don't know what is going on.
ST. LOUIS — The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday granted a stay of execution for Michael Anthony Taylor and agreed to hear arguments in his case.
Just hours before Taylor was to be executed, the appeals court voted 9-1 Wednesday to grant his petition for a rehearing by the full court.
A few hours later the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overrule the appeals court and lift the stay.
Earlier Wednesday, the Supreme Court had rejected Taylor’s appeal that argued that Missouri’s death penalty system is racist. Taylor is black and his victim was white.
“The death penalty as practiced in the state of Missouri discriminates against African-Americans such as (Taylor), such that it is a badge of slavery,” the justices were told in a filing by Taylor’s lawyer, John William Simon.
Before Wednesday’s vote by the full 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, a three-judge panel of that court had denied Taylor’s request for a stay of execution, although one of the three judges dissented.
The 8th Circuit’s decision to hear the case gives Taylor at least a temporary reprieve.
Phone messages seeking comment from prosecutors in the state’s case were not returned Wednesday.
Taylor, 39, of Kansas City, and his co-defendant, Roderick Nunley, 40, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, forcible rape, armed criminal action and kidnapping for the March 1989 killing of 15-year-old Ann Harrison.
Taylor and Nunley have said they had been using drugs and wanted to steal Harrison’s purse when they got the girl into their stolen vehicle. Taylor raped Harrison in Nunley’s mother’s basement. Fearing she would identify them, the two men killed the teenager.
Both were sentenced to death in 1991. After their sentences were overturned, they were again sentenced to death in 1994.
The Missouri Supreme Court is expected to set an execution date soon for Nunley.
Wplained in the article posted here.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1569812/posts
You almost have to see it to believe it.
Get real.
See Post 6. If he did vote with the majority, Post 6 makes a lot of sense.
BTW, thanks for clearing it up.
Just look at Mr. "Bush is the Antichrist" and all of his sycophants.
How so?
You are absolutely correct. This discussion should end here.
The question seems not to be a review of the scum's conviction, but wheter death by lethal injection is, "Cruel and unusual punishment."
Alito has definitely thought this issue out before.
I hope his decision on this matter is not portending another death penalty bleeding heart---let alone anoter Souter or Kennedy.
I hope you are right or we'll be wiping egg off our faces for the next 25 years.......
Yes, I was there. A complete waste of time. They aren't interested in discussing anything with anybody who doesn't have the same myopic view they do.
They've been saying the same things to the same 100 people for the last seven years.
As I read the article, the Supremes rejected one appeal claiming that the death penalty was racist. This is an appeal claiming that the method of execution construes cruel and unusual punishment. The court of appeals granted a stay to allow him to pursue his appeal; the Supremes declined to overturn the court of appeals.
Considering the fact that the Supremes have already accepted a case dealing with the same issue, it is not that unusual that they might allow the appeal to proceed in the appeals court while they hear the Florida case.
I don't see this as dispositive of any particular view on the death penalty or any other issue on Alito's part.
Not at all. He just want to hear more arguments regarding this issue of lethal injection and that is very important.
... Taylor's legal team had pursued two challenges — claiming that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment and that his constitutional rights were violated by a system tilted against black defendants.
Getting the needle as unusual punishment? So have other death row inmates make this claim in the past?
Constitutional rights violated? I don't think so here. The crack-head pleaded guilty.
This was a second decision apparently.
I don't know what all is going on with this case, but I would not be concerned about Alito on this really. I read it as Alito just not feeling comfortable with saying go ahead and kill a guy whose case he had not read.
When the case reaches the SCOTUS (just in an appeals court presently), I am sure he will agree with the conservatives and hopefully Kennedy that lethal injection is NOT cruel and unusual punishment.
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