I read somewhere else the decision was UNANIMOUS.
This sucks.
You've gone off half-cocked, pal.
Maybe Scalia hasn't had his father/son talk with Alito yet?
Give the guy a break! I don't fault Alito for wanting to make sure that absolutely everything is examined with a fine tooth comb and done properly in a death penalty case. He is a though, detailed oriented jurist. This does not make him a flaming liberal.
This is the second time his counsel has run this case up to the USSC, the first time around, it was rejected because the counsel argued on the basis of the entire judicial process being tilted against blacks.
"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."
One of these will be used to settle the question before the SC eventually.
(groan) What is it with these "rock-solid" conservative judges?? Kennedy, Kerry, Biden and Leahy must be celebrating and feeling foolish over their attempts at smearing Alito. Sandra Day O'Conner didn't retire, she just put on a pair of pants and cut her hair.
This is NOT an auspicious beginning to Alito's career on the Supreme Court. In the future, we should demand a 90 day probation period for future federal judge appointees and a term limit of 10 years, renewable up to 3 times.
The most important line from the article
"Alito, handling his first case, sided with inmate Michael Taylor, who had won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening."
I think voting to uphold the appeals court's stay on his first day on the job is being cautious not liberal. He needs to get his clerks and himself up to speed. Additionally, he is invoking stare decis which in this case the court has within the last week blocked executions on similar grounds pending disposition.
Hopefully, the delay in these cases will allow the conservatives to speed up future executions and put the smack down on these challenges.
there are 2 deah row in florida that have been stayed by SCOTUS in the last week or so. Why would you let one in another state die if it's for a very similar reason (leathal injection cruel and unusual here).
Personally i don't think it's cruel and unusual, and i doubt the scotus does in the end.....
Just the MSM knowing that they can get some satisfying knee-jerk reactions from the conservative "purists" who expect everything that the President does not to measure up to their expectations.
Why not reinstitute stoning for Adultery or crucifixion for blasphemy? Maybe we can see those as cruel and unusual, but not these last forms just yet.
How about when we can create life (and I'm not talking babies), and only then, can we destroy it.
Maybe, just maybe, Alito is being "truly" conservative. Maybe, just maybe, he is interpreting "rightly" the constitution. Maybe, just maybe, his desire to read into the constitution the right of the government to become as cruel as the criminal, to repay eye for eye, is not as "liberal" as many of us so called conservatives want to believe.
Maybe, just maybe, his notion of the sanctity of life extends beyond the womb, a notion of mercy that even the Pharisees and Sadducees might today wish they offered (for their sins were more or less; and they now have an eternity to contemplate).
For those railing Alito, I wonder if you’re feeling the same as the abortionist today, feeling let down by his appointment, because part of your right to “desanctify” life and lift yourself up to “play” god has been taken away.
Or is it just because he is not the puppet you thought he would be?
I pray for wisdom, not another exchange of “save the fetus” and kill everything else that disagrees with me. That kind of hypocrisy has given birth to euthanasia and every other form of playing god.
But I fear that the "conservative" party will be torn apart over sanctity of life for the living (albeit criminal), like the "liberal" party has been for those yet born.
For like the issue of abortion that started out as a seemingly "good" cause of saving the life of the mother, it quickly turned into a thirst for blood and way of life which today can only be quenched by partial-birth infanticide, Capital Punishment has degenerated into a thirst for retribution that overlooks unbiased law, mercy, truth, and the weightier matters of the law.
These guys aren't bots, they have minds. They are also fallable.
Keep your powder dry pal. Alito is everything we hoped he would be, and the fact is, in a death penalty appeal of ANY kind, you want the SCOTUS (if they choose to hear the case) to listen to any and every argument so that when they DO drop the hammer on the perp, there is no question whatsoever that justice was served.
We don't want a rubber stamp to Roberts, Scalia and Thomas anymore than we would want a liberal rubber stamp to the likes of Ginsberg, Souter or Stevens.
Alito is a careful, thinking, intelligent jurist and if I were facing the death penalty, and got news that my case would be heard by Justice Alito, I might still get executed but I would concede that I got a fair hearing. Alito is infinitely fair, and I trust his judgment.
I pray that he is not another Souter! I had fears all along that he was a closet liberal.
Uh oh! Justice Alito, have you met Justice Souter?
Have a little faith. This was the strongest pick Bush could have made. Sometimes legal filings are too complex to be understood by one story.