Retards Killing the Intellectually Disabled

A bit of history.

The year was 1989.  Johnny Paul Penry was, as even polite folks said in those days, mentally retarded.  He was also on death row in Texas.  That combination of things, his lawyers said, should be impossible.  The berobed ones in Washington agreed to answer whether they were.  Sandra Day O'Connor put the question simply in her opinion for the Court.

We must also decide whether the Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits Penry's execution because he is mentally retarded.

The answer (by a 5-4 vote) was a clear no.  Oh, it's something juries ought to be allowed to consider (Texas more-or-less prohibited even that at the time) when deciding what to do, but hey, killing the retards is cool.

In sum, mental retardation is a factor that may well lessen a defendant's culpability for a capital offense. But we cannot conclude today that the Eighth Amendment precludes the execution of any mentally retarded person of Penry's ability convicted of a capital offense simply by virtue of his or her mental retardation alone. So long as sentencers can consider and give effect to mitigating evidence of mental retardation in imposing sentence, an individualized determination whether "death is the appropriate punishment" can be made in each particular case.

Fast forward to 2002.  Daryl Renard Atkins was on death row in Virginia.  Like Johnny Paul Penry, he was intellectually disabled.  The Supremes decided to have another go at it.  John Paul Stevens, who'd dissented in Penry began his opinion (for a different 5-4 majority) this way.

Those mentally retarded persons who meet the law's requirements for criminal responsibility should be tried and punished when they commit crimes. Because of their disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment, and control of their impulses, however, they do not act with the level of moral culpability that characterizes the most serious adult criminal conduct. Moreover, their impairments can jeopardize the reliability and fairness of capital proceedings against mentally retarded defendants. Presumably for these reasons, in the 13 years since we decided Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302 (1989), the American public, legislators, scholars, and judges have deliberated over the question whether the death penalty should ever be imposed on a mentally retarded criminal. The consensus reflected in those deliberations informs our answer to the question presented by this case: whether such executions are "cruel and unusual punishments" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

And so it was that Penry was overruled and execution of the intellectually disabled was recognized as unconstitutional.  

The catch was that the Court decided to let the each of the states that killed people decide for itself how to figure out who was sufficiently, er, slow.  Oh, sure, there were actual standards, clinical definitions by people who studied this shit out there, and the Court said they should count, but if you were, say, Florida, you didn't care about that.  You just made an arbitrary cut-off of 70 and said if someone had a number higher than that, 

Off with his head.

The Supremes took on Florida's rule last year in the case of Freddie Lee Hall.  By the familiar 5-4 vote, they said, in an opinion by Kennedy, Florida blew it.  That there were actual standards, clinical definitions by people who studied this shit.  Florida couldn't just make it up.  Alito, dissenting, said that sure they could.  

Hey, we're talking about whether to kill the retards, not whether to treat them.  Who cares what experts say?  We have elected legislators and judges who are far more able to decide who has an intellectual deficit than people who study the matter.  I mean, retards can always recognize another retard, right?*

Ah, but Georgia.  The Peach Tree State.  Where the guy on the row must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he's a retard (as they probably still think it's proper to say down there).

Warren Lee Hill was in prison when he killed Joseph Handspike, another inmate.  They've been trying to kill Hill ever since.  Thing is, as Alan Blinder writes in the Times,

Although Mr. Hill’s appeals sometimes involved questions about Georgia’s lethal injection protocols, his last legal campaign dealt with a contention of an intellectual disability. Mr. Hill, with an I.Q. of 70, had “the emotional and cognitive functioning of an 11-year-old boy,” Mr. Kammer [one of his lawyers] said.“Warren Lee Hill is intellectually disabled,” Mr. Hill’s lawyers told the Supreme Court in a filing. “The lower Georgia courts have said this twice. All of respondent’s experts have acknowledged this fact.” 

Get that.  Hill's experts say he's intellectually disabled, and so do the experts Georgia dug up.  I mean, the state can't find an actual whore psychologist who'll say Hill isn't intellectually disabled (as they probably don't bother to say down there). 

And then there are the courts.  The ones that took the evidence and twice said he's intellectually disabled.  And were overruled by higher courts because they're fucking retards (as we say up here of the Georgia high court).

And last night, after Georgia parole board or whatever they call it said to kill and the governor signed off on it and the 9 in DC said, it was OK (actually, only 7 of the 9 - Breyer and Sotomayor voted to call a halt at least to consider), they did.  Last night.

By the way, around the time the good people of Georgia were committing an execution in violation of the 8th Amendment, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals announced that it had no problem with that state's killing Robert Ladd tomorrow night despite the fact that he's intellectually disabled. 

Because, really, nobody gives a damn.

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*Disclosure: That's not an actual quote.    

Of Course If We Took the Constitution Seriously, We'd Never Execute Anyone. Then Where Would We Be?

GEORGIA ON MY MIND

I wrote about Warren Lee Hill a couple of weeks ago.  He's on death row in Georgia and the powers that be in the Peach Tree State are intent on killing him.  Of course, it'll be unconstitutional for them to do that, but so far nobody much seems to find that troubling.

Warren Lee Hill

See, he's mentally retarded.  All seven experts, including those hired by the state, who've examined him agree.  But Georgia doesn't find that sufficiently compelling evidence.  See, originally the state's experts disagreed, and in Georgia retardation only counts if it's proved beyond a reasonable doubt.  Which, they say, it wasn't.  So just because the expects who once said Hill wasn't retarded have reconsidered in light of new understandings of retardation and now say he is - well, if we let actual understanding get in the way we'd never kill anyone. Besides, there are all these procedural things that make it pretty much impossible for Hill to get relief.

But the Supreme Court, they can fix it.  Surely the won't let an obviously unconstitutional execution go forward.  They, after all, are the last word on what the Constitution does and doesn't allow.  And they're the ones, remember, who said that the constitution doesn't allow the execution of people who are mentally retarded.

Monday the Supreme Court refused to intervene.  

Hill's case is still mired in the courts with other legal issues, but they're likely to be resolved against him.  Then, with the blessing of the Supreme Court, Georgia can violate the Constitution and kill him.

SO GOES THE NATION

Much more legislation is proposed than is enacted.  That's not just true in Washington where it seems that nothing of substance can be done.  It's true in the state legislatures, too.  So it was that back in August when Representative John Becker, with not a single co-sponsor, introduced House Bill 244 for consideration by the Ohio General Assembly I determined to ignore it and suggested to those who expressed their concerns to me that he was just grandstanding.

Oh, Becker did what legislators do when they introduce a bill in order to get a headline.  He issued a press release.   Here's the whole thing.

Becker Introduces Bill To Broaden Death Penalty For Sex Crimes

COLUMBUS - State Representative John Becker (R-Union Township) today announced that he has introduced House Bill 244, legislation that provides prosecutors with the option of pursuing the death penalty for certain sex-related crimes.

“In light of the Ariel Castro kidnapping case of three young women in Cleveland, I wanted to give prosecutors the option to pursue the death penalty for repeat sexual offenders,” Rep. Becker said. “For various reasons, I anticipate that the death penalty would be pursued in only the most heinous crimes.”

The crimes in the legislation include aggravated rape, aggravated rape of a child, aggravated sexual battery, aggravated sexual battery of a child, and aggravated unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.

“If House Bill 244 becomes law, prosecutors would be able to use the death penalty threat as a tool for plea bargain negotiations,” Rep. Becker said. “Nobody in this country has ever been executed for a sex crime, but that could change.”

The legislation will soon be referred to a House standing committee for further consideration.

It would be clearly unconstitutional.  In 2008, the Supreme Court said in Kennedy v. Louisiana that the death penalty for an offense that didn't involve a homicide was unconstitutional.  And it's stupid.  Becker's announced purposes, after all, are to both ensure that some folks are killed and to use the threat of execution to get plea bargains.   Really, he can't have it both ways.  Either he wants to see these guys executed or he wants to scare them into pleading guilty.  

Representative John Becker

Becker was inspired by the Ariel Castro case which made him realize that something had to be done to execute (or scare in pleading) people like Castro.  You remember Castro.  They threatened to bring capital charges and he entered a guilty plea.  Guess they didn't need this bill, which is a good thing, because it actually wouldn't apply to people who do what he did.

Anyhow, after a brief flurry in response to the press release, the thing disappeared from everyone's radar.  No one paid it any attention at all.  Until this week when there've been another bunch of stories in the press.  Becker's been running around saying that he thinks this can be used to convince the Supremes to overrule Kennedy.*  Because Ariel Castro.  To whom the thing wouldn't apply.  

And who, it should perhaps be noted, executed himself without Becker's assistance.  

On the other hand, the Supremes are perfectly happy to let Georgia conduct an unconstitutional execution.

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*Over at A Public Defender, Gideon wrote:

In Kennedy, Kennedy wrote that the 5 states that had authorized such a penalty did not constitute a “national consensus” and that it violated the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Rep. Becker wishes to create that “national consensus”, stating that the bill is modeled after the law in half a dozen states. Which is 6. 6 states out of 50. And which is decidedly not the law. See, Kennedy, supra.

Procedure Uber Alles - Part II (Corrected)

When the Supreme Court decided Roger Coleman's case (Coleman v. Thompson), Justice O'Connor's opinion for the majority began with what are now familiar, if still chilling, words to capital litigators.

This is a case about federalism. It concerns the respect that federal courts owe the States and the States' procedural rules when reviewing the claims of state prisoners in federal habeas corpus.

Coleman's lawyer blew a deadline in the Virginia Supreme Court, and as a result, O'Connor (joined by Rehnquist, White, Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter) determined that Coleman had forfeited his right to have federal courts review his federal constitutional claims.  Coleman was executed a year later.*

Less well known than O'Connor's opening, less well known than they should be,  are the opening paragraphs of Harry Blackmun's dissenting opinion (joined by Marshall and Stevens).

Federalism; comity; state sovereignty; preservation of state resources; certainty: the majority methodically inventories these multifarious state interests before concluding that the plain-statement rule of Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032 (1983), does not apply to a summary order. One searches the majority's opinion in vain, however, for any mention of petitioner Coleman's right to a criminal proceeding free from constitutional defect or his interest in finding a forum for his constitutional challenge to his conviction and sentence of death. Nor does the majority even allude to the "important need for uniformity in federal law," id., at 1040, which justified this Court's adoption of the plain-statement rule in the first place. Rather, displaying obvious exasperation with the breadth of substantive federal habeas doctrine and the expansive protection afforded by the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of fundamental fairness in state criminal proceedings, the Court today continues its crusade to erect petty procedural barriers in the path of any state prisoner seeking review of his federal constitutional claims. Because I believe that the Court is creating a Byzantine morass of arbitrary, unnecessary, and unjustifiable impediments to the vindication of federal rights, I dissent.

I

The Court cavalierly claims that "[t]his is a case about federalism," ante, at 726, and proceeds without explanation to assume that the purposes of federalism are advanced whenever a federal court refrains from reviewing an ambiguous state court judgment. Federalism, however, has no inherent normative value: it does not, as the majority appears to assume, blindly protect the interests of States from any incursion by the federal courts. Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power. "Federalism is a device for realizing the concepts of decency and fairness which are among the fundamental principles of liberty and justice lying at the base of all our civil and political institutions." Brennan, Federal Habeas Corpus and State Prisoners: An Exercise in Federalism, 7 Utah L.Rev. 423, 442 (1961). See also The Federalist No. 51, p. 324 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (J. Madison) ("Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society"). In this context, it cannot lightly be assumed that the interests of federalism are fostered by a rule that impedes federal review of federal constitutional claims.

Coleman, as the dissenters understood it would, became a touchstone for efforts by the courts and Congress to place form over substance, finality over fairness.  It's gotten worse (much worse) over the years.  I talked about it a bit last week in the context of William Garner's execution and the decision of the purportedly ultra-liberal, criminal-friendly Ninth Circuit in Lee v. Lampert.  And I've discussed it before in the context of claims of factual innocence.

And now there's the Fifth Circuit.

Ok, it's the Fifth Circuit.  (And it's a couple of months old, but I just saw it in today's Dallas Morning News.)  Here's how Jason Trahan begins his story.

Bruce Carneil Webster helped kidnap, rape, torture and bury alive Arlington teen Lisa Rene.

You can see that's he's not a sympathetic figure.  You get it that, especially if when he "helped" do those things, he was actually doing them himself, he committed the kind of crime that they invented the death penalty for.  And it's important to recognize that, because like Coleman's this isn't a story of some good guy getting railroaded by a system.  This is a story of the system itself, working exactly the way Congress and the courts intend it to.

This is a story of what looks to be an illegal, unconstitutional murder.  Soon to be committed by the federal government.  With the specific authorization of the federal courts.

Because, you see, Webster has mental retardation.  (The newly correct language is to say that he is a person with "intellectual and developmental disabilities," but that's not the language everyone uses, and it doesn't quite capture the point as well, though perhaps it will one of these days.)  And that means that it violates the Eighth Amendment for him to be executed (Atkins v. Virginia).

Except, this is the second time Webster's asked the federal courts to weigh in on his death sentence.  That's one too many.  He doesn't fit one of the exceptions to AEDPA's rule that federal courts can only evaluate whether a conviction and sentence violates the Constitution once.

Because if they could review a death sentence just because it violates the Constitution - why then the republic would crumble.  

Or not.  But so Congress seems to think.  (You might think Sarah Palin and her Tea Party pals would jump all over this given the importance they place on the Constitution.  You might think that.  You'd be wrong.)

Anyway, Webster tried again, but the Fifth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Jerry Smith, told him to forget about it and just get on with the business of getting killed.  It falls to Judge Wiener (who acknowledges that Smith has the law right and reached, therefore, the proper result), to say this is an outrage.

I write separately to emphasize the absurdity of its Kafkaesque result: Because Webster seeks to demonstrate only that he is constitutionally ineligible for the death penalty — and not that he is factually innocent of the crime — we must sanction his execution.

Actually, as Wiener says, Webster isn't just trying to make a case.  He's got it made.  Wiener explained.

If the evidence that Webster attempts to introduce here were ever presented to a judge or jury for consideration on the merits, it is virtually guaranteed that he would be found to be mentally retarded. In 1993 — more than a year before his indictment for the offense of conviction — Webster applied for Social Security benefits. To determine his eligibility for those benefits, three separate government physicians performed medical and psychological examinations on him. Notably, all three physicians independently concluded that Webster is mentally retarded.

So we're not talking possibility here.  Webster's not trying to game the system.  The law, whatever you think of Atkins is clear that it would violate the Constitution for him to be executed.  But the Fifth Circuit, recognizing that, says it has no power to stop the killing.

That system isn't just "Kafkaesque."  It's morally bankrupt.  If it's a system, it's an evil one.  Wiener lays it out plainly, but he can't see a way out.

The Supreme Court explained in Atkins v. Virginia that because mentally retarded persons suffer from “disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment, and control of their impulses, they do not act with the level of moral culpability that characterizes the most serious adult criminal conduct.” Thus, “in the light of our evolving standards of decency,” the Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits as excessive the execution of mentally retarded defendants. Although I concur in the majority’s opinion as a correct statement of the law, I continue to harbor a deep and unsettling conviction that, albeit under Congress’s instruction which ties our judicial hands so illogically, we today have no choice
but to condone just such an unconstitutional punishment.

In fact, of course, they have a choice.  They can fix the problem with the stroke of a pen:  The law requires a violation of the Constitution.  That makes it an unconstitutional law.  The Court can, and should, declare the law unconstitutional.  Refuse to follow it.

To do that, though, Wiener and the others would have to have the integrity - intellectual, moral, social, political, legal - to do what is intellectually, morally, socially, politically, and legally right.

But you know, it's hard to do that.  Because there's every reason to think that Congress intended just this.  The point of AEDPA was to prevent the federal courts from enforcing the Constitution in death penalty cases.  Far more important, Congress said, for the states to kill than for them to obey the Constitution.

This isn't the first time something of this sort has happened.  But it's stark and it's clear.  And, as I said, it's the system working exactly the way Congress and the courts intend it to.

Process.  Procedure.  Form over substance.  Kill them and be done with it.

The Supremes will be offered a chance to fix this particular mess.

I'm not holding my breath.

But I'll be watching.

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*Coleman, of course, is not a sympathetic character.  He died insisting on his innocence of the rape-murder for which he was on death row.  He made a pretty good showing of innocence - enough to convince some not-all-that-easy-to-convince folks into spending years litigating against Virginia in an effort to test the DNA.  (The only credible explanation for Virginia's years of refusal is that the authorities believed testing would prove that they'd killed an innocent man.)  Eventually, it was tested.  Coleman was guilty, and promptly went from being a poster-child for death penalty error to being a poster-child for abolitionist naivete.

Crazy Enough?

It's been settled at least since the Court decided Ford v. Wainwright in 1986. The Constitution does not permit the execution of those

who are unaware of the punishment they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it.

Next up, the Beltway Sniper, John Allen Muhammad.

Some background here. Nobody much disputes that the sufficiently insane should not be executed. That was the practice in England and in the colonies. As the Chief Justice acknowledged in his dissent in Ford, English common law did not permit the execution of the insane and every state prohibits it. The questions in Ford were whether Florida's procedures provided sufficient mechanism for determining whether Ford was insane and, equally as important, just how crazy do you have to be before the Constitution thinks you're too nuts to fry.

Because the Supreme Court is what it is and was what it was, it's not surprising that while everyone agreed the sufficiently crazy shouldn't be executed, only five members of the court (Marshall, Brennan, Stevens, Blackmun, and Powell) thought the Constitution, specifically the Eighth Amendment, had any relevance to the subject. The other four (Rehnquist, Scalia, O'Connor, and White) saw it as a matter entirely of state law.

The underlying idea is that we don't kill crazy people because such killings have little value as retribution, have no deterrent effect, and are just offensive to human values. There's no point. But where do we step in. Even the five who thought the Constitution was relevant couldn't agree on who, exactly, was so crazy that the Constitution prohibited the execution. The line I offered above, that the prohibition on execution the insane reaches only to those who don't know that they're being killed and don't know, at least in the most general of ways, why, is from the concurring opinion of Justice Powell. It's become the rule.

John Muhammad, scheduled to be killed by the Commonwealth of Virginia on November 10, says he's too crazy to kill. On Thursday his lawyers asked the Governor to commute his sentence. Here, lifted from the firm website (and with thanks to Terry Lenamon for finding it), is their argument.

Execution is not justified in this case because of John Muhammad's severe mental illness as illustrated by brain damage, brain dysfuction, neurological deficits as well as his psychotic and delusional behavior. John Muhammad's mental illness was certainly exacerbated by the Gulf War Syndrome that he suffered from after his deployment and military service as a Sergeant in the first Iraq war.

Assuming they're right about what all is wrong with Muhammad, and there's no reason I can see to doubt that they are, they've still got a mighty tough row to hoe.

First, there's Governor Kaine who, while he says he opposes the death penalty, has also proved himself more than willing to execute. (He's signed off on five executions in the last seventeen months.) And even before Muhammad's request to commute the death sentence, Kaine said, on his monthly radio show,

I would know of no reason why clemency would be granted in this case.

So there's the problem that Kaine's apparently already made up his mind. He can't run for Governor again (Virginia limits Governors to a single term), but he's young and sees a political future for himself. It's hard to see any political capital in his stepping in on this one.

And there's the question of standards. Muhammad's lawyers say that on November 3 they're going to ask the Supreme Court to grant relief. But all they have is that Muhammad suffers from serious mental illness. Unless he's got the right problems, unless he doesn't understand he's going to be killed for doing something bad, he doesn't qualify for relief under Ford. And even if he does, getting five Justices to say, "This is the case we want to weigh in on" is likely to be a nearly impossible task.

There you have it. If you're crazy enough, we can't kill you. Unless you happen to be crazy in exactly the right way. And oh, yeah, unless it's politically expedient.

I don't see much hope for Muhammad.

IT'S OVER. AND IT'S LIFE

In 1998, in Virginia, Daryl Atkins was convicted of killing Eric Nesbitt and sentenced to death.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled on his appeal, reversed the death sentence and sent him back for a new hearing and sentencing. Again he was sentenced to be executed. This time it was the U.S. Supreme Court that reversed the death sentence. It's unconstitutional to execute people with mental retardation, the Court said in Atkins v. Virginia, and sent his case back to the Virginia Supreme Court which remanded it for a jury trial on whether Atkins had retardation or should be sentenced to death.

The jury said he did not have retardation and sentenced Atkins to death. Back he went to the Virginia Supreme Court which, because the Commonwealth's expert wasn't competent to testify about retardation, and because the trial judge improperly told the jury that Atkins had previously been sentenced to death, reversed the death sentence and remanded for a new hearing.

But now there was new evidence. It turns out that in 1998, preparing for the trial, the prosecutor was not happy with the testimony Atkins' co-defendant was going to give. So she turned off the tape recorder and spent 16 minutes explaining to him how he would have to change his story to make Atkins eligible under Virginia law for death. After coaching the witness, the prosecutor then put on the perjured testimony. And hid the exclupatory evidence.

In light of the prosecutor's knowing use of perjury and hiding of exculpatory evidence, Atkins asked the trial judge to impose a life sentence and to exclude the prosecutor from any further involvement in the case. After two days of testimony, the judge imposed the life sentence. The Commonwealth asked the Virginia Supreme Court to undo that. Today, the Virginia Supreme Court refused.

So it's been eleven years. Three death sentences. And now life.

They still haven't determined whether Atkins is, under Virginia Law, a person with mental retardation. Right now, I don't think anyone much cares.

So I'm lifting my virtual glass in a toast to great and diligent lawyering, to a court that was offended by a dishonest prosecutor, and to the Supreme Court of Virginia for saying enough is enough. And to Daryl Atkins. And to life.

RETARDATION V. RETARDATION - SCOTUS SPEAKS

There are two things about Michael Bies you need to know.

• He's been found to have mild to borderline mental retardation.
• He's on death row in Ohio.

There are two things about the law you need to know.

• The Constitution used to allow the execution of people who have mental retardation.
• The Constitution no longer allows the execution of people who have mental retardation.

Michael Bies sits on death row in Ohio. He was found guilty by a jury of the aggravated murder, attempted rape, and kidnapping of Aaron Raines in 1992. He was sentenced to death because the jury found, and the judge agreed, that the various statutory death specifications of which he was also found guilty outweighed beyond a reasonable doubt mitigating factors he proved.

One of those mitigating factors proved by Bies was that he has borderline to mild mental retardation. Both the court of appeals and then the Ohio Supreme Court in its opinion agreed that Bies had proved that he had mental retardation and that it was entitled to some weight in mitigation. Both also agreed that the death specifications outweighed mitigation beyon a reasonable doubt and therefore affirmed his death sentence.

In 2002, the United States Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, holding that execution of a person with mental retardation violated the Eighth Amendment. Since Ohio courts had already determined that Bies had borderline to mild mental retardation, you'd think that might have resolved the matter. He was found to have retardation, he can't be killed.

The state didn't agree. It wanted him to prove, again, that he qualified for the exclusion. Bies figured that he'd already done that and went into federal court and asked that his death sentence be set aside. The district court and then the Sixth Circuit twice (here and here) agreed with him. Yesterday, in Bobby v. Bies, the Supreme Court said the Sixth Circuit was wrong.

In a unanimous opinion by Justice Ginsburg, the Court said the Sixth Circuit got it wrong. According to the Court, Bies has to prove again that he's got retardation because he proved it for a different reason before. Before, you see, he proved it because he thought it should weigh against a death sentence. Now, he has to prove it because it will prevent an execution.

Oh, there's another reason, too. He has to prove it again because it wasn't enough, by itself, the first time, to win the case. Let me explain. If Bies had been sentenced to life - for whatever reason - then it would be conclusively determined for all sentencing purposes between he and the State of Ohio, that he had mental retardation. Becuase he was sentenced to die despite proving that he had mental retardation, the proof from before doesn't count.

If you think either of those explanations makes sense, then you may be qualified for a seat on the Supreme Court. But since you didn't get nominated, your qualifications don't count. Or something.

Maybe we should look at this another way. Maybe the Court was just slapping down the Sixth Circuit. If that's so, then Bies may be nothing more than simple error correction - the Sixth got it wrong (and so they all think) and they decided to fix it. Indeed, that seems to be the prevailing view. But then, why this of all the stupidly decided and obviously wrongheaded capital cases out there? What made it so egregious that the Court had to step in?

Inquiring minds want to know.