The Supreme Court ordered a lower federal court to review the case of Troy Davis.
I'm not a lawyer, but the following excerpt from Justice Scalia's disscenting opinion is THE reason why I am against the death penalty and why I don't understand that the death penalty can be considered Constitutional.
The Georgia Supreme Court rejected petitioner’s “ac-tual-innocence” claim on the merits, denying his extraor-dinary motion for a new trial. Davis can obtain relief onlyif that determination was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, “clearly established Federal law, as deter-mined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” It most assuredly was not. This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted de-fendant 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 ques-tion unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitu-tionally cognizable.
As I understand it, if a person has had a fair trial, and the person is convicted and sentenced to death, even if evidence is uncovered that the person is innocent of the crime for which he is convicted, there is no legal federal recourse if the state declines to stop the execution.
Scalia indicates here that because there is no such recourse available, if there is one "created" now, it would apply to all lessor cases.
that is alleged to have produced a wrong-ful conviction. If the District Court here can ignore§2254(d)(1) on the theory that otherwise Davis’s actual-innocence claim would (unconstitutionally) go unad-dressed, the same possibility would exist for any claim going beyond “clearly established Federal law.”
The existence of that possibility is incompatible with the many cases in which we have reversed lower courts fortheir failure to apply §2254(d)(1), with no consideration of constitutional entitlement.
Again, I'm not a lawyer but I would think the extreme and non-recoverable finality of the death penalty warrants a special status of its own. I do agree with the following, however:
If this Court thinks it possible that capital convictions obtained in full compliance withlaw can never be final, but are always subject to being set aside by federal courts for the reason of “actual innocence,” it should set this case on our own docket so that we can (ifnecessary) resolve that question.
But then, what happens if they decide it's okay to kill an innocent man?
Scalia's view is obscene.
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