mykevermin
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[quote name='AP']Alito Sides With Mo. Inmate on Death-Row
WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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.
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.
Scalia and Thomas have consistently sided with states in death penalty cases and have been especially critical of long delays in carrying out executions.
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.
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.[/quote]
Now, it's far too early to make any judgment call, and I'd argue it's still too early to make statements like "Scalia and Thomas have consistently sided with states in death penalty cases and have been especially critical of long delays in carrying out executions," because Roberts hasn't been around long enough to imply the predictability of this relationship as the article implies.
It's only interesting in the sense that, on his first day on the job, he sided with the very people who Democrats promised us he would neverevereverevereverever side with. If the democrats were wrong, that's fine with me, because that would also undercut Bush's motives for nominating him. Of course, what I mean is that it's damnfoolish to think that the Democrats are purely cynical in their blocking of Alito, yet the Republicans were noble, and not partisan, in nominating Altio.
They specifically avoided another "O'Connor," and the evidence is in the power that Bush's constituency used in shutting down Harriet Miers before she even had hearings. That the extreme wing of the Republican party has more influence in American politics than the weak-ass democrats did early this week is bothersome, but hey, they're the ones who managed to get their dipshits in office (while out dipshits vary between stolid opposition to neo-conservative movements towards deconstructing the enlightenment and just plain kissing everyone's ass, looking like fools as they try to be all things for all people).
Ranting...well, here's just a smidge of contrary evidence to the democrats' assertion of Alito's loyalties. I welcome it, and I welcome it in abundance. Pretty please with a cherry on top, now that we can't undo your nomination, the very best I can hope for is to be dead wrong on this guy.
[quote name='AP']Alito Sides With Mo. Inmate on Death-Row
WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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.
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.
Scalia and Thomas have consistently sided with states in death penalty cases and have been especially critical of long delays in carrying out executions.
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.
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.[/quote]
Now, it's far too early to make any judgment call, and I'd argue it's still too early to make statements like "Scalia and Thomas have consistently sided with states in death penalty cases and have been especially critical of long delays in carrying out executions," because Roberts hasn't been around long enough to imply the predictability of this relationship as the article implies.
It's only interesting in the sense that, on his first day on the job, he sided with the very people who Democrats promised us he would neverevereverevereverever side with. If the democrats were wrong, that's fine with me, because that would also undercut Bush's motives for nominating him. Of course, what I mean is that it's damnfoolish to think that the Democrats are purely cynical in their blocking of Alito, yet the Republicans were noble, and not partisan, in nominating Altio.
They specifically avoided another "O'Connor," and the evidence is in the power that Bush's constituency used in shutting down Harriet Miers before she even had hearings. That the extreme wing of the Republican party has more influence in American politics than the weak-ass democrats did early this week is bothersome, but hey, they're the ones who managed to get their dipshits in office (while out dipshits vary between stolid opposition to neo-conservative movements towards deconstructing the enlightenment and just plain kissing everyone's ass, looking like fools as they try to be all things for all people).
Ranting...well, here's just a smidge of contrary evidence to the democrats' assertion of Alito's loyalties. I welcome it, and I welcome it in abundance. Pretty please with a cherry on top, now that we can't undo your nomination, the very best I can hope for is to be dead wrong on this guy.
