I agree that Alito is a conservative judge. I would be rather shocked if he ends up as another Souter instead. But, there are certainly conservatives who oppose execution and I don't know if Alito is one of them. His lower court record is clearly mixed. Now, even if he does personally oppose capital punishment I don't know if he would vote to, say, strike it down. He doesn't seem at all like an 'activist' type judge. But that doesn't mean he will not vote to review its application very strictly, as Kennedy often does.
does anyone here remember what kind of record Souter had on the bench nefore he got on the SCOTUS? Not relevant to this discussion as much as I'm just curious.
My opinion fwiw is that Alito wanted to get the case on the merits to decide once and for all whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual, to which he can vote w/ the conservatives and say no it's not (it differs from the abortion issure b/c the defendant had due process and was determiined guilty so we're not talking about innocent life. A moment to rant here, it AMAZES me that liberals can be against death penalty and for abortion....like there's nothing wrong with murdering a defenseless unborn child.) Thanks, I'm done now.
Give the guy a break....all this conjecture is giving the dems something to talk about.