Neil Gorsuch and the States Power to Kill

[Cattledog]

It’s not entirely fair to judge a Supreme Court justice based on his first vote. Urgent matters arise unexpectedly, and the court must sometimes act quickly.

Still, it’s worth paying special attention to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s vote late Thursday night to deny a stay of execution for Ledell Lee, an Arkansas man who was sentenced to death in 1995 for murdering a woman named Debra Reese with a tire thumper.

After Justice Gorsuch, along with the four other conservative justices, denied his final appeal without explanation, Mr. Lee, who maintained his innocence until the end, was executed by lethal injection.

He was pronounced dead at 11:56 p.m. Central Daylight Time, minutes before his death warrant expired. Arkansas had not executed anyone since 2005.

In short, the first significant decision by Justice Gorsuch, who was sworn in to office less than two weeks ago, was the most consequential any justice can make — to approve a man’s killing by the state.

More at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/neil-gorsuch-and-the-states-power-to-kill.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur

[LOL Lib]

1. Fuck Gorsuck.

Fuck all republicans!

[malaise]

6. +1,000 n/t

[dalton99a]

2. No surprise. Same asshole who put corporate interests over a man freezing to death

[moriah]

3. And the majority declined to write an opinion.

That's what gets me. You're going to let a man with an actual innocence claim pending get executed as your first vote.... and agree so much that you don't think there's even a reason to explain it to the American people.

[moriah]

4. The Innocence Project's statement about Ledell Lee

https://www.innocenceproject.org/innocence-project-responds-execution-ledell-lee/

Ledell Lee proclaimed his innocence from the day of his arrest until the night of his execution twenty-four years later. During that time, hundreds of innocent people have been freed from our nation’s prisons and death rows by DNA evidence. It is hard to understand how the same government that uses DNA to prosecute crimes every day could execute Mr. Lee without allowing him a simple DNA test.

Arkansas’s decision to rush through the execution of Mr. Lee just because its supply of lethal drugs are expiring at the end of the month denied him the opportunity to conduct DNA testing that could have proven his innocence. While reasonable people can disagree on whether death is an appropriate form of punishment, no one should be executed when there is a possibility that person is innocent.

There's more about the evidence pointing to his innocence there.

[pansypoo53219]

5. scalia precedent. innocence does not trump convictions.