While most people focused on Roberts arguing for group prayer, it was another passage in an
MSNBC passage that caught my ire. He seems to be pre-judging death penalty cases, as they all claim they can not and will not do, and will therefore probably deny any appeal to the SCOTUS. Apparently, it is too much work to determine whether or not a punishment that is so final has been implemented judiciously. And this is part of their "culture of life". Due process means nothing to these people. Remember, tort reform. They are trying to deny access to courts as a remedy.
The justices on the Supreme Court, he wrote in 1983, "unnecessarily take too many cases and issue opinions so confusing that they often do not even resolve the question presented."
"If the justices truly think they are overworked, the cure lies close at hand," he wrote at a time when Chief Justice Warren Burger was calling for creation of a new tier of appeals court.
Suggested court shun death penalty cases
He suggested the members of the Supreme Court abdicate the "role of fourth or fifth guesser in death penalty cases" to lighten their workload.
With moratoriums on executions, more cases of innocent people sitting on death row and cases like Atkins, who after a couple of years has improved his IQ though interaction with lawyers, now faces execution even though at the time of his crime his IQ fell below the level determined to have an understanding of their actions.
I know a lot of the public think these appeals are unnecessary or even silly, and the plaintiffs aren't the most sympathetic, but I don't find someone's civil rights or innocence silly, especially when final judgement is passed. If it were up to these people, you get the feeling that as soon as someone is sentenced to death, they should be led out to the town square and hung.
I just do not understand how they can continue to defend a system that is arbitrary, open to prejudice, and where there is even an acceptable "error rate".