I would like to note that this is not the Roberts Court’s first time flipping the bird to the concept of justice. The opinion in the Osborne case was basically, “we don’t care if you’re innocent and can prove it through DNA testing; as long as the trial was ‘fair’ we’ll uphold teh conviction.”
<
p>With Hood, they’ve decided to drop the charade entirely.
The Supreme Court didn’t actually “rule” in this case – they refused to hear the appeal from the lower court’s decision, apparently without recorded dissent.
<
p>I’m not saying it’s right; but there is a difference, in that the Court’s action today has no precedential effect.
I’d note that the punishment phase of the trial has already been successfully appealed in the Texas court system (on other grounds), so it’s not like the Supreme Court’s denial made the difference between life and death.
<
p>Like David says, it’s not that this means that the Court’s refusal to hear the case was right. But again it shows how the Court’s actions are often more nuanced than people make it out to be.
patricklongsays
All he’s getting out of that appeal is resentencing, which could very easily lead to another death sentence.
<
p>Also, it’s completely irrelevant whether it makes the difference between life and death if it makes the difference between freedom and life imprisonment. It’s still a huge miscarriage of justice either way.
hoyapaulsays
Though if he does receive another death sentence after re-sentencing, then he’ll have another opportunity to appeal to the Court. Indeed, the fact that the sentencing part is already on appeal in state court might have played a role in the Court’s denial of cert now, though I don’t know.
<
p>I do think, by the way, that it is far from “completely irrelevant” whether we’re talking about life and death vs. life imprisonment. In cases literally involving the difference between life and death — considerations of last-minute stays of execution, for example — I think the judges and Justices have a particular duty to consider the merits of the case. Obviously while life imprisonment is reversible, death is not.
patricklongsays
Only up to a point. A year in prison is a year of your life you can’t get back. The need for immediate consideration of the case is certainly greater when death is imminent, but refusal to hear the case, which is a de facto affirmation of the judgment below, still takes years out of a prisoner’s life that can’t be replaced.
mssays
These “Justices” are insane!
<
p>They are going to let a conviction stand when the judge and the prosecutor are having a torrid affair (romantic love and/or sex)?!
<
p>We know that judges and prosecutors can get cozy, but this is blatantly unfair to the defendant.
<
p>Some of these judges don’t care about the rights of the innocent at all. It’s all about getting convictions at any cost. “Hang ’em high” at any cost.
<
p>They WANT a total police state. They don’t even care about DNA that shows that the defendant is innocent. They just want to “cart them off.”
<
p>Liberals have done a lousy job at putting the right judges on the Supreme Court. They never “game the refs” and fill the public imagination with fears of what right wing judges are REALLY like. Instead, they put up “safe, moderate” consensus types. Meanwhile, the right puts up FIREBRAND CHAMPIONS for their side on the court, and so the rulings go toward the right.
“The denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case, as the bar has been told many times.” United States v. Carver, 260 U.S. 482, 490 (1923).
<
p>While the Supreme Court had discretion to grant the petition, look carefully at Rule 12 of the Court’s Rules. (I should add that I have no S.Ct. experience and am probably treading on thin ice here, what with David involved in this discussion!) The Rule indicates that a petition for a writ of certiorari may be granted when a federal appeals court “has so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings, or sanctioned such a departure by a lower court, as to call for an exercise of this Court’s supervisory power.” But there is no mention of this supervisory jurisdiction in the provisions of the Rule dealing with decisions of state courts. Of course, the list of reasons for granting a petition given in Rule 12 is “neither controlling nor fully measuring the Court’s discretion.” Still, since the petitioner sought review of a decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, this is not a surprising outcome to me, given the text of the rule. I don’t know enough about the procedural posture of the case to know whether a federal habeas corpus petition is possible, but if it is, maybe Hood will have better luck.
<
p>TedF
patricklongsays
The Court can still review a state court’s decisions as long as there’s a federal question involved. There’s a constitutional question here, so nothing prevented them from granting cert except their own lack of concern for justice.
I don’t disagree–the Court had jurisdiction. But according to Rule 10, the Court is likely to exercise it only if the state court “has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with the decision of another state court of last resort of of a United States court of appeals,” of if it “has decided an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by this Court, or has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with relevant decisions of this Court.” Notably, “A petition for a writ of certiorari is rarely granted when the asserted error consists of erroneous factual findings or the misapplication of a properly stated rule of law.”
<
p>Was there a circuit split here, or did the Texas court make a new ruling of federal law that conflicts with relevant Supreme Court decisions? Or did the Texas court merely misapply the law? I don’t know, not having read the briefs, but that seems to me to be the real question–not whether the trial was fair.
<
p>TedF
hoyapaulsays
There’s a constitutional question here, so nothing prevented them from granting cert except their own lack of concern for justice.
<
p>That’s quite unfair. It’s possible that you’re an expert on all the details of this case, in which case I’d be interested to hear more. If not, however, I don’t think it’s particularly fair to paint all of the Justices with the “they don’t care about justice!!!” brush when there are potentially several reasons why they rejected this case.
<
p>The fact that not a single one of the Justices wrote a dissent from denial of cert, as they easily could do if denial was a egregious as you suggest, is an indication that there’s something else going on here. We’ll see what happens after re-sentencing.
I would like to note that this is not the Roberts Court’s first time flipping the bird to the concept of justice. The opinion in the Osborne case was basically, “we don’t care if you’re innocent and can prove it through DNA testing; as long as the trial was ‘fair’ we’ll uphold teh conviction.”
<
p>With Hood, they’ve decided to drop the charade entirely.
The Supreme Court didn’t actually “rule” in this case – they refused to hear the appeal from the lower court’s decision, apparently without recorded dissent.
<
p>I’m not saying it’s right; but there is a difference, in that the Court’s action today has no precedential effect.
The laughs never stop here at BMG.
I’d note that the punishment phase of the trial has already been successfully appealed in the Texas court system (on other grounds), so it’s not like the Supreme Court’s denial made the difference between life and death.
<
p>Like David says, it’s not that this means that the Court’s refusal to hear the case was right. But again it shows how the Court’s actions are often more nuanced than people make it out to be.
All he’s getting out of that appeal is resentencing, which could very easily lead to another death sentence.
<
p>Also, it’s completely irrelevant whether it makes the difference between life and death if it makes the difference between freedom and life imprisonment. It’s still a huge miscarriage of justice either way.
Though if he does receive another death sentence after re-sentencing, then he’ll have another opportunity to appeal to the Court. Indeed, the fact that the sentencing part is already on appeal in state court might have played a role in the Court’s denial of cert now, though I don’t know.
<
p>I do think, by the way, that it is far from “completely irrelevant” whether we’re talking about life and death vs. life imprisonment. In cases literally involving the difference between life and death — considerations of last-minute stays of execution, for example — I think the judges and Justices have a particular duty to consider the merits of the case. Obviously while life imprisonment is reversible, death is not.
Only up to a point. A year in prison is a year of your life you can’t get back. The need for immediate consideration of the case is certainly greater when death is imminent, but refusal to hear the case, which is a de facto affirmation of the judgment below, still takes years out of a prisoner’s life that can’t be replaced.
These “Justices” are insane!
<
p>They are going to let a conviction stand when the judge and the prosecutor are having a torrid affair (romantic love and/or sex)?!
<
p>We know that judges and prosecutors can get cozy, but this is blatantly unfair to the defendant.
<
p>Some of these judges don’t care about the rights of the innocent at all. It’s all about getting convictions at any cost. “Hang ’em high” at any cost.
<
p>They WANT a total police state. They don’t even care about DNA that shows that the defendant is innocent. They just want to “cart them off.”
<
p>Liberals have done a lousy job at putting the right judges on the Supreme Court. They never “game the refs” and fill the public imagination with fears of what right wing judges are REALLY like. Instead, they put up “safe, moderate” consensus types. Meanwhile, the right puts up FIREBRAND CHAMPIONS for their side on the court, and so the rulings go toward the right.
“The denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case, as the bar has been told many times.” United States v. Carver, 260 U.S. 482, 490 (1923).
<
p>While the Supreme Court had discretion to grant the petition, look carefully at Rule 12 of the Court’s Rules. (I should add that I have no S.Ct. experience and am probably treading on thin ice here, what with David involved in this discussion!) The Rule indicates that a petition for a writ of certiorari may be granted when a federal appeals court “has so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings, or sanctioned such a departure by a lower court, as to call for an exercise of this Court’s supervisory power.” But there is no mention of this supervisory jurisdiction in the provisions of the Rule dealing with decisions of state courts. Of course, the list of reasons for granting a petition given in Rule 12 is “neither controlling nor fully measuring the Court’s discretion.” Still, since the petitioner sought review of a decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas, this is not a surprising outcome to me, given the text of the rule. I don’t know enough about the procedural posture of the case to know whether a federal habeas corpus petition is possible, but if it is, maybe Hood will have better luck.
<
p>TedF
The Court can still review a state court’s decisions as long as there’s a federal question involved. There’s a constitutional question here, so nothing prevented them from granting cert except their own lack of concern for justice.
I don’t disagree–the Court had jurisdiction. But according to Rule 10, the Court is likely to exercise it only if the state court “has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with the decision of another state court of last resort of of a United States court of appeals,” of if it “has decided an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by this Court, or has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with relevant decisions of this Court.” Notably, “A petition for a writ of certiorari is rarely granted when the asserted error consists of erroneous factual findings or the misapplication of a properly stated rule of law.”
<
p>Was there a circuit split here, or did the Texas court make a new ruling of federal law that conflicts with relevant Supreme Court decisions? Or did the Texas court merely misapply the law? I don’t know, not having read the briefs, but that seems to me to be the real question–not whether the trial was fair.
<
p>TedF
<
p>That’s quite unfair. It’s possible that you’re an expert on all the details of this case, in which case I’d be interested to hear more. If not, however, I don’t think it’s particularly fair to paint all of the Justices with the “they don’t care about justice!!!” brush when there are potentially several reasons why they rejected this case.
<
p>The fact that not a single one of the Justices wrote a dissent from denial of cert, as they easily could do if denial was a egregious as you suggest, is an indication that there’s something else going on here. We’ll see what happens after re-sentencing.