Scalia: Actual Innocence Does Not Prevent Execution

The Troy Davis Case

Quote :

The Supreme Court, over two Justices’ dissents, on Monday ordered a federal judge in Georgia to consider and rule on the claim of innocence in the murder case against Troy Anthony Davis (In re Davis, 08-1443) The Court told the District Court to “receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis'] innocence.”

That's the good news. Here's the bad.

Quote :

Scalia [in dissent] wrote: “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

That's right folks - even if you can prove that you are totally innocent, Justice Scalia believes that you don't have a Constitutional right to prevent your execution so long as your original trial was fair.

As one commenter put it - "the Constitution doesn't say that water is wet either, because it should be really obvious".

That is just...fucked up.

I don't remember who said it, but I'm reminded of this:

Quote :

Scalia is a political neanderthal. If he had his way, no ruling that helped strengthen the rights of the people would stand.

Well, a lot of the Regan era justices are retiring. Let's hope he's next. (Although I doubt it.)

This just shows one less man to control the patriarchy. Even though the man was innocent this time, he has the inability to relate to anybody. He lives an empty life by supressing the rights of womyn.

I'm a little curious about the quotation marks around "actually." What the hell is that supposed to signify? "Who cares if the guy is 'actually' innocent? He could still be guilty of something, so maybe he deserves to die anyway!"

...the hell?

I won't claim to understand the US legal system, but surely if someone is innocent they shouldn't be executed?

Right?

No non-lawyer in the US would claim to understand the US legal system, either. If someone does, it's because they watch a lot of Law & Order, god help us.

This is unbelieveable. What sane person would actually believe that a man proven innocent by a retrial should be executed?

Why doesn't Scalia just say that he doesn't believe the verdict and be done with it? Because obviously he believes that the 'fair trial' means that the man is definitely guilty.

I think he's forgetting this means the person who IS guilty of the crime is still out there and probably laughing at the legal system.

Something can be done about this? Right? Right, guys?

Sasuke's Wife wrote:

Something can be done about this? Right? Right, guys?

Thankfully, Scalia is in the minority in this decision so it has no effect on the case in question.

Lady Anne wrote:

That is just...fucked up.

It's beyond fucked up.

It's Fucked Up 2.

[/dbz]

...It's times like these that I'm ashamed to share some parts of my political orientation with people like this.

Get off (partially) my side! You're making it look homicidal!

How did he get to be a Supreme Court judge again? Because obviously, the law and human rights means fuck all to him.

Lapin wrote:

How did he get to be a Supreme Court judge again? Because obviously, the law and human rights means fuck all to him.

Scalia is part of a school of legal thought - a rather big one, sad to say - that follows an absolute rock-solid, carved-into-stone literal interpretation of the Constitution. Black-and-white literal meaning is all that will do for them. If it's not explicitly in the Constitution, as far as he's concerned, it's not part of the Constitution.

This means the right to privacy, extension of equal protection to groups based on sexual orientation or gender in general, or prohibitions on school-sponsored prayer are out, in his thinking, as are concerns over actual innocence when considering whether a defendant got a fair trial. It ain't in the Constitution, so it ain't a factor.

On the other hand, Scalia is a fierce advocate of unrestricted free speech and free press in many cases, which often puts him at odds with the typical conservative agenda, but because that is clearly in the Constitution, he believes in it no-holds-barred.

This is a bit simplified, but that's basically where his thought comes from. Personally, as a lawyer, I think that school of thought is bullshit - one of the founding fathers (I think it was Jefferson) pointed out that the Constitution is a living document - it makes absolutely no sense to think that the drafters could have foreseen issues of the nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first centuries, and beyond. Our nation changes, so must our interpretation of the CONCEPTS embodied in our law of the land. But the etched-in-stone school exists, and Scalia is its number-one proponent in the nation.

I shall now remove my Nerdy!Lawyer hat and slink back under my lawyer rock.

I would think that Scalia's viewpoint on this is trumped by the Bill of Rights. Putting an innocent person to death is certainly cruel and unusual punishment.

Spotts1701 wrote:

That's right folks - even if you can prove that you are totally innocent, Justice Scalia believes that you don't have a Constitutional right to prevent your execution so long as your original trial was fair.

That's one fucked up person right there.

Quadratus wrote:

Something can be done about this? Right? Right, guys?

Unfortunately, the only way to remove a Supreme Court member is to impeach him/her. As far as I know, no Supreme Court member has ever been removed from the bench. Stupidity and bigotry, unfortunately, are not impeachable offenses.
Scalia has been accused in the past of a few impeachable offenses, but he was never tried IIRC.

quamp wrote:

Quadratus wrote:

Something can be done about this? Right? Right, guys?

Unfortunately, the only way to remove a Supreme Court member is to impeach him/her. As far as I know, no Supreme Court member has ever been removed from the bench. Stupidity and bigotry, unfortunately, are not impeachable offenses.
Scalia has been accused in the past of a few impeachable offenses, but he was never tried IIRC.

If only they could find him getting a blow job from an intern. That's an impeachable offense in this country, after all.

Trioculus wrote:

quamp wrote:

Quadratus wrote:

Something can be done about this? Right? Right, guys?

Unfortunately, the only way to remove a Supreme Court member is to impeach him/her. As far as I know, no Supreme Court member has ever been removed from the bench. Stupidity and bigotry, unfortunately, are not impeachable offenses.
Scalia has been accused in the past of a few impeachable offenses, but he was never tried IIRC.

If only they could find him getting a blow job from an intern. That's an impeachable offense in this country, after all.

Not to defend Scalia's idiocy, but are you saying it shouldn't be?

Chaltab wrote:

Trioculus wrote:

quamp wrote:

Quadratus wrote:

Something can be done about this? Right? Right, guys?

Unfortunately, the only way to remove a Supreme Court member is to impeach him/her. As far as I know, no Supreme Court member has ever been removed from the bench. Stupidity and bigotry, unfortunately, are not impeachable offenses.
Scalia has been accused in the past of a few impeachable offenses, but he was never tried IIRC.

If only they could find him getting a blow job from an intern. That's an impeachable offense in this country, after all.

Not to defend Scalia's idiocy, but are you saying it shouldn't be?

Nobody has ever been impeached for getting a blowjob. They have been impeached for perjury.

And to that end I will just say that the sheer amount of deposition fishing that went on to produce said perjury would not be allowed in virtually any legal court in America.

On the subject at hand, Scalia's right... in a tilt your head and squint sort of way. To his strict Constructionist POV, there is no right to void execution in the Constitution, therefore such an innocent man has no automatic right.

Of course, being right from one particularly narrow POV doesn't make said opinion utterly fucked on every other level...

Freezer wrote:

And to that end I will just say that the sheer amount of deposition fishing that went on to produce said perjury would not be allowed in virtually any legal court in America.

IIRC, it was done under the Independent Prosecutor law. . . which was set up as a gallows to hang Nixon from.

Oops?

I've read elsewhere that the main problem Scalia is trying to address here is to stop a scenario like this from occurring:

An innocent man is given a fair trial and convicted, and evidence later surfaces proving his innocence. The case is negated and the innocent man freed.

Using this as a precedent, defense lawyers make any case (especially death penalty ones) a nightmare of legal proceedings and appeals, jamming the court system to a standstill.

Honestly though, the point should be moot: ideally a governor or the President would pardon a person with sufficient evidence of innocence.

There are some governors (on the left and the right) who might be so ideologically driven that they would refuse to pardon someone.

So it's still a good thing that Scalia is in the minority on this decision.

I'm generally against reading too much into the constitution, but there's a point where common sense trumps strict constructionalism.