Tag: Death Penalty

The Tao of Stevens, II.

“‘I don’t think of myself as a liberal at all,’ he told me during a recent interview in his chambers, laughing and shaking his head. ‘I think as part of my general politics, I’m pretty darn conservative.” A holdover link from last weekend (and a follow-up of sorts to this 2006 post): Jeffrey Rosen profiles Justice John Paul Stevens in the NYT Magazine. “In criminal-law and death-penalty cases, Stevens has voted against the government and in favor of the individual more frequently than any other sitting justice. He files more dissents and separate opinions than any of his colleagues. He is the court’s most outspoken defender of the need for judicial oversight of executive power. And in recent years, he has written majority opinions in two of the most important cases ruling against the Bush administration’s treatment of suspected enemy combatants in the war on terror.“

In the Hands of Alberto.

Would you want this man making a life-and-death decision for you? For some reason, embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — who hasn’t been coming across as a model of competence lately — is apparently about to receive expanded powers to fast-track state death penalty cases. “Kathryn Kase, a Houston lawyer who serves on the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ death penalty committee, said the Justice Department’s proposed regulations are ‘severely lacking’ because they do not provide enough oversight to ensure that defendants are receiving adequate legal counsel. ‘In our judgment they allow states to…claim they have a capital representation case that is functional, when in fact it might not be functional at all,’ Kase said. ‘It may not prevent people from being wrongfully sentenced to death.‘” The older I get, the worse the death penalty seems as public policy. Even the cruel and unusual aspect notwithstanding, it’s arbitrary, it doesn’t work as a deterrent, it’s often racist. Add Gonzales’ presumed oversight to the list of negatives.

Passing the Buckley.

Boo hiss. The Supreme Court decides 6-3 to strike down a Vermont campaign finance law, which was conceived in part as a challenge to Buckley v. Valeo. “The result appears to doom any future efforts to impose spending limits on state or federal campaigns, legal analysts said.” And, in related news, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick and Walter Derringer discuss recent Supreme Court decisions, with special attention to the recent capital punishment case, Kansas vs Marsh.

Goring Alberto.

“As lawyer for the governor in the Texas Statehouse from 1994 to 1997, Gonzales was responsible for advising Bush about whether he should delay the death sentences of capital murderers…As my colleague Phillip Carter has written, Gonzales’ work on this life-or-death task ‘would have barely earned a passing grade in law school.'” Slate‘s Emily Bazelon argues that rabid right-wingers are correct on one account: Alberto Gonzales would make a lousy Supreme Court justice.

The Executioner’s Song.

“Fighting over the ‘evolving standards of decency’ underlying the Eighth Amendment’s ban on ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ the 5-to-4 opinions reflect an all-out war between the proponents of a living (or at least medium-rare) Constitution and those who want to see it dead (or perhaps well-done, with a nice pinot).” Slate‘s inimitable Dahlia Lithwick explains the Kennedy-Scalia sniping undergirding the Supreme Court’s very welcome 5-4 decision to ban juvenile executions. To keep things in perspective, the only other nations besides us that have put juveniles to death since 2000 are China, Iran, Pakistan, and the Congo…not exactly what you’d call the Axis of Freedom.

Dubya’s Man at Justice.

“Alberto Gonzales has paved the way of his own advancement with memos that are intellectually slovenly, that impute definitive powers to the executive, and whose attempts at shirking the basic moral precepts of international humanitarian law are not very skillful. If he is confirmed as attorney general, our nation will be shamed, shunned and endangered.” As the Gonzales hearings begin on Capitol Hill, Salon does an able job of exposing his egregious yes-man tendencies in both the torture memos and, previously, in managing Governor Dubya’s execution sprees. Update: Yet, the Dems roll over.

Tiers and Taxes.

William Saletan goes ga-ga for John Kerry (which would hold more water with me if he hadn’t slavered over Gore back in the day), while Dean snipes at Graham, calling him a “lower-tier candidate.” True enough, but Dean has to be careful – he’s already garnered something of a reputation as Mean Dr. Dean, and coming out for the death penalty won’t help. Rounding out the top tier (I can say it, even if Dean can’t), John Edwards calls for middle-class tax cuts, to be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy. A smart move, in keeping with the populist track Edwards has staked out, even if I think a payroll tax cut makes much more sense.

More! More!

Like a junkie looking for another fix, Ashcroft takes time away from putting down gay pride events to beg Congress for increased powers in fighting terrorism. If the death penalty doesn’t even work as a deterrent in “normal” crime, why would it stop terrorists?