Death penalty cases can be automatically appealed to the Supreme Court, but a mere civil litigant has to ask the supreme court — convince it, really — to review its case. The odds are terrible; only about 1 in 25 petitions for review succeeds. Those odds may be going up a little after this year. For the 2014-2015 term, death penalty cases made up nearly 18% of the court’s workload (13 death penalty decisions out of 73 majority opinions). What if all those death penalty cases went away? Would the court be able to take on more cases? It’s quite possible, according to an article by Ben Feuer and Ann-Rose Mathieson in he 2015 edition…
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Death Penalty Odyssey Likely to Fuel Debate
NOTE: This is a re-post of an earlier post that I unwittingly published with the exact same blog title as the below-referenced Decision of the Day post. In a post entitled A “Wholly Discomforting” End To Twenty-Two Years of Death Penalty Appeals, Robert Loblaw at Decision of the Day notes yesterday’s 159-page decision in Cooper v. Brown, case no. 05-99004 (9th Cir. Dec. 4, 2007) and comments on how it is likely to fuel debate on the death penalty. I think I remember hearing about this case on the news the last time Cooper’s execution was stayed, but I sure don’t remember the “discomforting” facts DoD excerpts from the concurring…
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Death Penalty Appeals to Shift from Supreme Court to Court of Appeal?
Monday’s announcement that the Supreme Court is seeking a constitutional amendment to have death penalty appeals heard in the Courts of Appeal (press release here) has predictably triggered blog coverage. Legal Pad calls the announcement a “bombshell,” poses several questions regarding the potential impact of such an amendment, and seeks answers from their readers. Crime & Consequences questions whether the proposed summary affirmance procedure for the Supreme Court to affirm Court of Appeal dispositions is functionally any different from discretionary review. The first comment on the post questions the propriety of justices “publicly lobbying to modify their jurisdiction” because practitioners who appear before them will be hesitant to publicly oppose…
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Ninth Upholds Death Penalty Despite Jury’s Reference to Bible during Penalty Phase Deliberations
Stevie Lamar Fields was convicted in California state court of heinous crimes, including murder, which he committed in the course of a three-week spree that he started just two weeks after completing a prison stretch for manslaughter. During the penalty phase of his trial, the jury foreman consulted a Bible, a dictionary, and other reference texts, made notes of points for and against the death penalty, then shared those notes with the jury. The foreman’s notes in favor of the death penalty included Biblical passages. Fields was sentenced to death. The District Court denied habeas relief on the conviction but granted it as to the death penalty. The Ninth Circuit’s…