Court Opinion

ID: 9430216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:13.472634+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:23.690128
License: Public Domain

*938Justice Marshall,
with whom Justice Brennan joins,
dissenting.
Today the Court vacates a stay pending certiorari granted by the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, although we have not even received the petition for certiorari. In so doing, the Court ignores repeated reminders by Justices of the Court that our power to vacate a stay entered by a lower court should be reserved only for exceptional circumstances, see, e. g., Kemp v. Smith, 463 U. S. 1321 (1983) (Powell, J., in chambers); O’Connor v. Board of Education, 449 U. S. 1301 (1980) (Stevens, J., in chambers), and that the lower court’s decision is “deserving of great weight,” Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. British American Commodity Options Corp., 434 U. S. 1316, 1319 (1977) (Marshall, J., in chambers).
Although the State’s brief application fails even to suggest that it has met this heavy burden, the Court has moved “with an impetuousness and arrogance that is truly astonishing,” Wainwright v. Adams, 466 U. S. 964, 966 (1984) (Marshall, J., dissenting from the grant of application to vacate stay of execution). The apparent basis for the State’s application is a concern that the Court of Appeals understood our recent decisions in Pinkerton v. McCotter, ante, p. 925, and Darden v. Wainwright, ante, p. 928, to mandate the grant of a stay in this case. However, this Court has provided detailed guidance to the courts of appeals as to stays in capital cases, see Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U. S. 880, 887-896 (1983). There is no reason for us to assume, on the meager record before us, that the Court of Appeals was unaware of, or misapplied, those standards — let alone that it committed the gross abuse of discretion necessary to support a grant of this application, see Wainwright v. Adams, supra, at 965. I am therefore at a loss to understand the Court’s unwillingness to let matters run their ordinary course.
I dissent.