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"Supreme Court's Davis Ruling Raises New Death-Penalty Questions"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the headline of this very effectice piece on the Supreme Court's Davis decision from Time.   The start and end of the piece capture a lot of the dynamic and challenging issues and questions that flow from the Supreme Court's work yesterday: Under normal circumstances, it takes a case of national importance to rile the Supreme Court during its summer recess.  But in the words of an old axiom of capital punishment, "death is different."  And so, on a sleepy mid-August Monday, Aug. 17, the court ? over a strong dissent ? dusted off an antique tool, unused for nearly half a century, to force a new hearing into the slow-rolling fate of a Georgia death-row prisoner named Troy Davis.  In the process, the court has opened up new questions about the death penalty: most crucially, how far the courts must go to ensure that an innocent man ? as a wide array of politicians, former prosecutors and judges contend Davis is ? is not executed...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on August 18, 2009 (boomark / email).