ves·tig·i·al (vĕ-stĭj′ē-əl)
Relating to a body part that has become small and lost its use because of evolutionary change. Whales, for example, have small bones located in the muscles of their body walls that are vestigial bones of hips and hind limbs.
vestigial - definition of vestigial by The Free Dictionary
The Supreme Court’s Death Trap
Contributing Op-Ed Writer
April 1, 2015
You wouldn’t know it from the death penalty proceeding about to take place in the Boston Marathon case, or from Utah’s reauthorization of the firing squad, or the spate of botched lethal injections, but capital punishment in the United States is becoming vestigial.
The number of death sentences imposed last year, 72, was the lowest in 40 years. The number of executions, 35, was the lowest since 1994, less than half the modern peak of 98, reached in 1999. Seven states, the fewest in 25 years, carried out executions.
California has the country’s biggest death row, with more than 700 inmates. Many more of them die of natural causes — two since mid-March — than by execution. Last July, a federal district judge, Cormac J. Carney, concluding that California’s death penalty had become “dysfunctional,” “random” and devoid of “penological purpose,” declared it unconstitutional; the state is appealing.
But if there’s one place that seems to stand apart from the tide of disenchantment with capital punishment, it’s the Supreme Court. That’s not to say that the court hasn’t issued decisions that have limited the application of the death penalty: Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 ruled out executing defendants with intellectual disability; Roper v. Simmons in 2005 prohibited executing those who murdered before the age of 18; and Kennedy v. Louisiana in 2008 held that states could not make the rape of a child a death-eligible offense.
Those were all closely fought cases, the last two decided by votes of 5 to 4. And in other, less visible cases, the court appears to be floundering, ever more tightly enmeshed in what Justice Harry A. Blackmun called the machinery of death. Recent episodes have been both mystifying to the public and embarrassing to the court.
Adam Liptak, the Supreme Court correspondent for The Times, has highlighted the disturbing way the court handled a challenge to Missouri’s lethal-injection protocol back in January: first, over four dissenting votes, permitting the state to execute Charles F. Warner, one of four inmates who had filed appeals, only to agree a week later to hear the appeals of three identically situated inmates. The court then granted stays of execution to the three and will hear their case, Glossip v. Gross, on April 29.
That bungled judicial performance reflected the fact that while it takes only four justices to agree to hear a case, granting a stay of execution (or a stay of any lower court’s decision) takes five. The distance between four and five can be a lethal chasm.
Eric M. Freedman, a Hofstra University law professor and longtime student of the death penalty, has proposed making four votes sufficient for a stay of execution while any appeal is pending. It’s a sensible idea that could save the court from itself. But a majority appears untroubled by the current practice. On Feb. 10, the court turned down a stay of execution for another Missouri inmate, Walter T. Storey, over the same four dissenting votes: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Missouri executed Mr. Storey the next day.
A Texas death-row inmate, Lester Leroy Bower Jr., managed to win a stay of execution in February to enable the justices to decide whether to hear his challenge to the state courts’ handling of his mitigating evidence. Last week, the Supreme Court turned down his appeal, thus dissolving the stay, over the dissenting votes of Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor; Justice Breyer, not given to overstatement, wrote that “the error here is glaring.” Since at least two others must have voted for the stay, where were they? Perhaps after carefully considering the merits of Mr. Bower’s appeal, they found it insufficient. Fair enough. But shouldn’t they have felt moved to tell us something — anything?
An argument on Monday was simply dispiriting. A Louisiana inmate, Kevan Brumfield, with an I.Q. of 75, was sentenced to death before the Atkins decision barred the execution of mentally disabled people. At trial, his lawyer had presented some evidence of his disability, but not in the detail a court would expect in the post-Atkins world. The question for the justices in Brumfield v. Cain was whether he should have received a new hearing. The obvious answer would seem to be: Of course, why on earth not? But the justices seemed more concerned about whether Mr. Brumfield and his lawyer were trying to game the system.
In 2008, two years before he retired, Justice John Paul Stevens renounced the death penalty. His nuanced opinion in Baze v. Rees rewards rereading. No current justice has taken up the call. I’m not so naïve as to predict that a majority of the Supreme Court will declare the death penalty unconstitutional anytime soon. But the voice of even one member of the court could set a clarifying marker to which others would have to respond. And it just might over time point the way to freeing the court — and the rest of us — from the machinery of death.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/opinion/the-supreme-courts-death-trap.html?referrer=&_r=0
Relating to a body part that has become small and lost its use because of evolutionary change. Whales, for example, have small bones located in the muscles of their body walls that are vestigial bones of hips and hind limbs.
vestigial - definition of vestigial by The Free Dictionary
The Supreme Court’s Death Trap
Contributing Op-Ed Writer
April 1, 2015
You wouldn’t know it from the death penalty proceeding about to take place in the Boston Marathon case, or from Utah’s reauthorization of the firing squad, or the spate of botched lethal injections, but capital punishment in the United States is becoming vestigial.
The number of death sentences imposed last year, 72, was the lowest in 40 years. The number of executions, 35, was the lowest since 1994, less than half the modern peak of 98, reached in 1999. Seven states, the fewest in 25 years, carried out executions.
California has the country’s biggest death row, with more than 700 inmates. Many more of them die of natural causes — two since mid-March — than by execution. Last July, a federal district judge, Cormac J. Carney, concluding that California’s death penalty had become “dysfunctional,” “random” and devoid of “penological purpose,” declared it unconstitutional; the state is appealing.
But if there’s one place that seems to stand apart from the tide of disenchantment with capital punishment, it’s the Supreme Court. That’s not to say that the court hasn’t issued decisions that have limited the application of the death penalty: Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 ruled out executing defendants with intellectual disability; Roper v. Simmons in 2005 prohibited executing those who murdered before the age of 18; and Kennedy v. Louisiana in 2008 held that states could not make the rape of a child a death-eligible offense.
Those were all closely fought cases, the last two decided by votes of 5 to 4. And in other, less visible cases, the court appears to be floundering, ever more tightly enmeshed in what Justice Harry A. Blackmun called the machinery of death. Recent episodes have been both mystifying to the public and embarrassing to the court.
Adam Liptak, the Supreme Court correspondent for The Times, has highlighted the disturbing way the court handled a challenge to Missouri’s lethal-injection protocol back in January: first, over four dissenting votes, permitting the state to execute Charles F. Warner, one of four inmates who had filed appeals, only to agree a week later to hear the appeals of three identically situated inmates. The court then granted stays of execution to the three and will hear their case, Glossip v. Gross, on April 29.
That bungled judicial performance reflected the fact that while it takes only four justices to agree to hear a case, granting a stay of execution (or a stay of any lower court’s decision) takes five. The distance between four and five can be a lethal chasm.
Eric M. Freedman, a Hofstra University law professor and longtime student of the death penalty, has proposed making four votes sufficient for a stay of execution while any appeal is pending. It’s a sensible idea that could save the court from itself. But a majority appears untroubled by the current practice. On Feb. 10, the court turned down a stay of execution for another Missouri inmate, Walter T. Storey, over the same four dissenting votes: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Missouri executed Mr. Storey the next day.
A Texas death-row inmate, Lester Leroy Bower Jr., managed to win a stay of execution in February to enable the justices to decide whether to hear his challenge to the state courts’ handling of his mitigating evidence. Last week, the Supreme Court turned down his appeal, thus dissolving the stay, over the dissenting votes of Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor; Justice Breyer, not given to overstatement, wrote that “the error here is glaring.” Since at least two others must have voted for the stay, where were they? Perhaps after carefully considering the merits of Mr. Bower’s appeal, they found it insufficient. Fair enough. But shouldn’t they have felt moved to tell us something — anything?
An argument on Monday was simply dispiriting. A Louisiana inmate, Kevan Brumfield, with an I.Q. of 75, was sentenced to death before the Atkins decision barred the execution of mentally disabled people. At trial, his lawyer had presented some evidence of his disability, but not in the detail a court would expect in the post-Atkins world. The question for the justices in Brumfield v. Cain was whether he should have received a new hearing. The obvious answer would seem to be: Of course, why on earth not? But the justices seemed more concerned about whether Mr. Brumfield and his lawyer were trying to game the system.
In 2008, two years before he retired, Justice John Paul Stevens renounced the death penalty. His nuanced opinion in Baze v. Rees rewards rereading. No current justice has taken up the call. I’m not so naïve as to predict that a majority of the Supreme Court will declare the death penalty unconstitutional anytime soon. But the voice of even one member of the court could set a clarifying marker to which others would have to respond. And it just might over time point the way to freeing the court — and the rest of us — from the machinery of death.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/opinion/the-supreme-courts-death-trap.html?referrer=&_r=0
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