{"id":737,"date":"2009-08-19T17:04:28","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T21:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=737"},"modified":"2009-08-19T17:05:42","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T21:05:42","slug":"scalias-dissent-in-the-troy-davis-death-row-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=737","title":{"rendered":"Scalia’s dissent in the Troy Davis death row case"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"scalia\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes I think people say outrageous things just to get headlines and feed their egos.\u00a0 Here’s the money quote:<\/p>\n

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. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In re Troy Anthony Davis, 2009 U.S. LEXIS 5037, 7 (2009).<\/p>\n

If you take that quote out of context, you might think that the esteemed Associate Justice is saying that it’s OK to execute innocent people.\u00a0 I couldn’t believe that even this guy would say something so crazy.\u00a0 I mean, the words are right there, but there must be something about the context of this statement that makes it make more sense.\u00a0 So I went and read the short opinion, it’s only a couple pages long<\/a>.\u00a0 You know what?\u00a0 he is saying that we can execute innocent people – as crazy as that sounds.<\/p>\n

Now let’s take just a quick step back and understand what we’re talking about.\u00a0 This is a murder conviction from almost twenty years ago.\u00a0 As the execution date nears, condemned Troy Davis is seeing a lot of new evidence come to light, which not only establishes his innocence, but may also indicate who was the actual murderer.\u00a0 Scalia’s point is: so what?\u00a0 If people get screwed by the system, that’s too bad.\u00a0 And if we execute an(other) innocent person, those are the breaks.\u00a0 It’s not a perfect system, and the fact that we may have found enough irregularity in this case to establish ‘actual innocence’ doesn’t matter.\u00a0 Everybody OK with that?<\/p>\n

Paul Campos over at The Daily Beast offers additional illumination about why this is scary<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s not that Scalia delights in the execution of innocent people, although that possibility can not be ruled out.\u00a0 It is the way he parades the law as an inflexible, quasi-mathematical standard from which we can never deviate that is so troublesome.\u00a0 So, if we have a rule that, in a given case, we find out is wrong, it doesn’t matter because the rule is the rule.\u00a0 People do not matter.\u00a0 Reality does not matter.\u00a0 Only the law and its brave defender, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I think people say outrageous things just to get headlines and feed their egos.\u00a0 Here’s the money quote: This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31],"tags":[691,693,692,158,690],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}