The Supreme Court refused to grant cert in the Alabama case, Woodward v. Alabama, but Justice Sotomayor took the opportunity to issue a dissenting opinion.
"Justice Sotomayor finds fault with Ala. judges who override juries and impose death sentences," is Mark Sherman's Associated Press report, via the Republic. Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning:
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Monday that partisan political elections for the Alabama courts appear to be driving judges' decisions to impose death sentences, overruling juries that have voted to send defendants to prison for life.
Sotomayor made her comments about Alabama in an unusual dissent after she and Justice Stephen Breyer were the only two justices who voted to hear an appeal from a death row inmate who was convicted of killing a Montgomery, Alabama, police officer. It takes the votes of four of the nine justices to hear a case.
Alabama, Delaware and Florida are the only states that allow trial judges to override jury sentencing decisions in capital-punishment cases. And since 2000, Alabama accounts for 26 of the 27 defendants who have been sentenced to death despite a jury's vote for life in prison, Sotomayor said. The other case was in Delaware. In that case, the state Supreme Court changed the trial judge's death sentence to a life prison term.
No Florida court has sought to sentence a defendant to death in the face of a jury vote for life in prison since 1999, Sotomayor said.
The Supreme Court upheld the Alabama override law in 1995 in an opinion joined by Breyer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Eighteen years later, Sotomayor said, "the time has come for us to reconsider that decision."
Not only has the practice become rare outside Alabama since 1995, but the Supreme Court also has limited the discretion of judges to add to a defendant's punishment beyond what juries have decided, she said.
And the 59-year-old New Yorker said she also is troubled by the apparent reason for judges' actions in Alabama, where she said crime is no more heinous and juries no more lenient than elsewhere.
"Alabama judges, who are elected in partisan proceedings, appear to have succumbed to electoral pressures," she wrote. Sotomayor noted that one judge who has overridden jury votes six times also has run campaign ads voicing support for capital punishment.
The Montgomery Advertiser posts, "U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear appeal of man convicted of killing Montgomery police officer," by Brian Lyman.
Woodward, 40, was convicted of shooting Houts, 30, during a routine traffic stop on Sept. 28, 2006. Houts died in Jackson Hospital a few days later.
The jury in the trial voted 8 to 4 to recommend life without parole for Woodward, due to mitigating factors including testimony from family and friends about physical and emotional abuse Woodward suffered as a child. The jury also heard family and friends praise his role as a father to five children.
At a subsequent hearing, however, Montgomery County District Attorney Ellen Brooks noted that Woodward had previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the shooting death of a Prattville woman in 1990. Brooks also questioned Woodward’s role as a father, saying he had never paid state or federal income taxes or child support.
Hobbs imposed the death penalty, citing Woodward’s manslaughter conviction. Brooks and Hobbs did not immediately return messages seeking comment Monday.
In her 17-page dissent, Sotomayor, joined in part by Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, did not comment on the case, nor did she directly address Hobbs’ decision, focusing instead on judicial review in capital cases, where judges have the power to impose a death sentence even if a jury does not recommend it. Sotomayor wrote that she had “deep concerns about whether (judicial review) offends the Sixth and Eighth Amendments,” which respectively guarantee a right to a speedy trial and forbid cruel and unusual punishment.
"Two Supreme Court justices criticize Alabama death-penalty overrides," is by Pete Williams, NBC News justice correspondent.
Two U.S. Supreme Court justices say the time has come to take another look at whether state judges should be able to override a jury's verdict and impose the death penalty — citing 95 cases in Alabama where that's happened.
Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor say "Alabama judges, who are elected in partisan proceedings, appear to have succumbed to electoral pressures" in imposing capital punishment when a jury has recommended life in prison.
Of the 31 states that allow capital punishment, only three permit a judge to override a jury's sentencing decision — Alabama, Delaware and Florida.
The last time it happened in Florida was 1999, and the one time it happened in Delaware, the sentence was overturned on appeal. Meanwhile, state court judges in Alabama have imposed death sentences contrary to a jury's verdict 95 times.
"US top court denies challenge to state's death penalty law," is AFP coverage, via GlobalPost.
Despite dissent from two justices, the US Supreme Court Monday refused to review a state law that allows a judge to impose the death penalty even if the jury rules otherwise.
The country's top court rejected the appeal of Mario Dion Woodward, who was sentenced to death by an Alabama judge after a jury decided, eight votes to four, that he should instead face life in jail without the possibility of parole.
Earlier coverge of Alabama judicial override begins at the link.
In 2011, Alabama's Equal Justice Initiative issued the report , The Death Penalty in Alabama: Judge Override. It's available in Adobe .pdf format.
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