Task: songer_direct1

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Your task is to determine the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision, coded as "liberal" or "conservative". Consider liberal to be  for the defendant. Consider the directionality to be "mixed" if the directionality of the decision was intermediate to the extremes defined above or if the decision was mixed (e.g., the conviction of defendant in a criminal trial was affirmed on one count but reversed on a second count or if the conviction was afirmed but the sentence was reduced). Consider "not ascertained" if the directionality could not be determined or if the outcome could not be classified according to any conventional outcome standards.

PER CURIAM:
In our opinion the District Court did not err in refusing to allow the accused the number of peremptory challenges permitted in a capital case, the one error they assign on this appeal. While the charge was kidnapping, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1201 which permits punishment by death, the appellants were granted only the challenges prescribed for a non-capital felony prosecution because the indictment stated that the victim was “unharmed at the time of his liberation”.
Greater precision could have been achieved by the criminal pleader by use of the statutory language, “liberated unharmed”, to avoid limiting the existence of injury to the date of liberation. Cf. Robinson v. United States, 324 U.S. 282, 65 S.Ct. 666, 89 L.Ed. 944 (1945); Smith v. United States, 360 U.S. 1, 79 S.Ct. 991, 3 L.Ed.2d 1041 (1959), including the separate opinion of Justice Clark at p. 13, 79 S.Ct. at p. 998. But we find the present allegation sufficed to guarantee the defendants immunity from the death penalty.
In addition, the Government’s bill of particulars and the oral explanation of the Court on voir dire examination unequivocally and irrevocably informed the jurors that capital punishment was neither sought nor possible in their verdict. The judgment of the District Court will be affirmed.
Affirmed.
. Fed.R.Crim.P. 24(b).

Question: What is the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision?
A. conservative
B. liberal
C. mixed
D. not ascertained
Answer:

Answer: A