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Judges? Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising

By Steve Hall

That's the title of John Schwartz' front page report in today's New York Times.  LINK  Here's an extended excerpt:It took just 80 words for a federal appeals court to deny Kevin Cooper?s most recent plea to avoid execution. But attached to that order was a forceful 101-page dissent by a judge, all but pleading to spare Mr. Cooper?s life. ?The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man,? it began. The judge who wrote the dissent, William A. Fletcher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, argued that the police and prosecutors had withheld and tampered with evidence in the case for decades; Judge Fletcher even accused the district court of having sabotaged the case...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on August 14, 2009 (boomark / email).