Unit 4 Part 4 (May 4, 2016)

In California Case, Justice Breyer Assails Capital Punishment

Justice Stephen G. Breyer spoke out against in a dissenting opinion on the courts choice of a stare decisis on the issue of the death penalty in California. He believes that in an act of judicial activism that the court should have taken the opportunity to revise and or dismissed the notion of a death penalty in the state of California. Breyer writes that it is unfair to the convicted inmates that they must wait decades with the knowledge of imminent death playing in their mind. He states that more California death row inmates have died of natural causes and suicide than the death penalty itself. Breyer brings up the argument of a doctrine of political question in the idea that the death penalty in its current form, or possibly any other form breaks the eighth amendment. He feels as though there enough of a question that it must be debated upon weather the death penalty in cruel and unusual punishment. Breyer has spoken out in dissenting opinion on the topic every chance he has been allotted, first occurring in the year 1999.

            This topic is a very important yet incredibly divers in its opinions. The court should listen to the opinion of Justice Breyer in his plead for the court to hear the cases. This would be a very important case of Judicial Review deciding on the constitutionality of the death penalty as a whole. The court would have the power to not only to change the California death penalty laws, but the laws of the entire country on this controversial topic. Their Judicial review powers would come into play when deciding on the death penalty in terms of the eighth amendment, no cruel or unusual punishment. The case could dismiss the death penalty all to getter or reform it as Justice Breyer wishes. Either way the United States may not know for some time to come on the future of the death penalty because of the court’s rejection of the case.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/us/politics/supreme-court-stephen-breyer-capital-punishment-california.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FU.S.%20Supreme%20Court&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0