SCOTUS Monday
The U.S Supreme Court issued a regular Monday order’s list today. No new cases were taken up for full briefing and argument. One civil case was summarily reversed.
We were disappointed that the court declined to take up the case of South Carolina murderer Quincy Allen, No. 22-490. CJLF had filed a friend of the court brief supporting the state’s petition. The case seemed to us to be a good vehicle for reconsidering a particularly egregious old precedent in which the court grafted a constitutional limit on to the Eighth Amendment because a majority of the justices thought it was a good idea, not because it has any basis whatever in the text or history of the Constitution.
These “certiorari stage” briefs are always longshots. The court takes only about one percent of the cases it is asked to take. We will try again in another case.
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The Court’s ruling in Allen was infuriating. Lockett v. Ohio is perhaps the single-worst decision by the Court on the death penalty post-Gregg. I applaud Mr. Scheidegger for his efforts to attempt overturning this egregious precedent.