Why You Treat Me Like a Dog?: Life and death and Samuel Alito

Monday, November 28, 2005

It seems that new information about just how conservative Judge Alito really is keeps coming out of the woodwork. We heard of his views against legal abortion in the last couple of weeks, and yesterday the L.A. Times published this op-ed piece by a UC Berkeley law school professor.

Basically, Alito is so supportive of the death penalty that he has repeatedly demonstrated a blatant willingness to disregard the due process laws guaranteed by the very Constitution he is charged to defend. Particularly appalling is the specious logic he uses in one case described where a black defendant was not tried by a "jury of his peers," but by a jury where African-American jurors were specifically and systematically excluded. This occurred in a county that had shown an earlier pattern of excluding black jurors. In his dissent he insensitively and wrongly makes an analogy to a left-handed candidate in an election as equivalent to the exclusion of black jurors:

"Although only about 10% of the population is left-handed, left-handers have won five of the last six presidential elections…. But does it follow that the voters cast their ballots based on whether a candidate was right- or left-handed?" A majority of the full court disagreed with Alito, criticizing his logic for "minimiz[ing] the history of discrimination against prospective black jurors and black defendants."

While his racial insensitivity is certainly disturbing (does he really think that being left-handed is the equivalent to having black skin in America?), the op-ed piece cites other examples where Alito is clearly overzealous in his support of a death sentence. He is willing to overlook faulty jury instructions, racial discrimination, and neglected evidence of mental retardation in a defendant. The current Supreme Court has found his positions "objectively unreasonable," and yet he is President Bush's nominee to replace Justice O'Connor's important swing vote. The agenda is clear.

I am often puzzled by conservatives who are so enamored with the "culture of life" when it comes to abortion and so readily leave this culture by the wayside when it comes to the state killing people. Without getting into the arguments against the death penalty, a morality that supports life above all else (including in situations where a woman stands to be harmed by an unplanned pregnancy) and yet rushes potentially innocent convicts to the gallows lacks internal consistency and is therefore suspect as an ethical basis for law. Alito continues to show his true colors, and the very building where the Supreme Court conducts its business shudders at the possibility of his nomination being confirmed.

- posted by wanderer @ 9:15 PM

Comments:

You never really know what a justice is going to be like until they end up on the bench. A lifetime appointment lends a certain freedom to decision making.

# posted by

Jack Steiner : 12/01/2005 9:53 PM

That's definitely true - as has been seen with many previous justices. The paper trail for Alito is just too voluminous though for him to change his stripes that much...

Thanks for stopping by! Come again.

# posted by

wanderer : 12/05/2005 10:26 PM

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