Court Opinion

ID: 9572471
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:41:54.921995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:33:09.918544
License: Public Domain

SACK, Circuit Judge,
dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc.
Members of the Supreme Court have commented with some frequency that “death is different.” See, e.g., Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 411, 106 S.Ct. 2595, 91 L.Ed.2d 335 (1986) (opinion of Marshall, Brennan, Blackmun, Stevens). That is doubtless so.
Although I am hardly ready to dismiss out of hand the views Judge Calabresi sets forth in his dissent from denial of rehearing en banc, I suspect that were we to grant rehearing, I would ultimately come to agree with the views expressed in the panel opinion. And in general terms and at first blush, it seems to me that the behavior of the trial judge was indeed “nothing short of exemplary.” United States v. Fell, 571 F.3d 264 (2d Cir.2009) (Calabresi, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc).
Nonetheless, because “death is different” and this is our first decision in many decades addressing the imposition of the *296death penalty on appeal,* I think that this is the rare case in which it makes institutional sense for us to render it as “the Court” and not as a panel thereof. Especially in light of the likelihood that other such cases will come before us in the reasonably near future, I think that an exchange of views among the members of the Court on these issues in this discrete context&wkey;with the benefit of briefing, argument, and deliberation — would be of considerable value to the Court and, through it, to the public.
I therefore have voted in favor of en banc review.

 But cf. Ross v. Rell, 398 F.3d 203, 205 (2d Cir.2005) (per curiam) (vacating district court's temporary restraining order on Connecticut’s imposition of death penalty, but staying order for two days to allow for further review), temporary stay vacated by No. 04A663, 543 U.S. 1134 (Jan. 28, 2005); Ross ex rel. Smyth v. Lantz, 396 F.3d 512, 514 (2d Cir. Jan.25, 2005) (per curiam) (denying motion to vacate stay of execution with respect to Connecticut's imposition of death penalty and dismissing appeal for determination of whether person who brought the relevant habeas petition had standing to do so); but see Lantz v. Ross, No. 04A656, 543 U.S. 1134 (Jan. 27, 2005) (vacating stay of execution).