Court Opinion

ID: 9429402
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:26:39.880725+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:19.375661
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
In joining the per curiam opinion of the Court, I emphasize that this case has been in the courts for 10 years and is here for the fourth time. This alone demonstrates the speciousness of the suggestion that there has been a “rush to judgment.” The argument so often advanced by the dissenters that capital punishment is cruel and unusual is dwarfed by the cruelty of 10 years on death row inflicted upon this guilty defendant by lawyers seeking to turn the administration of justice into the sporting contest that Roscoe Pound denounced three-quarters of a century ago.