Court Opinion

ID: 9573011
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:46:38.843282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:35:36.058151
License: Public Domain

BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., Circuit Judge,
with whom
MOORE, COLE and CLAY, Circuit Judges, join, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc.
I join Judge Moore’s dissent pointing out the panel’s clearly incorrect application of the mootness doctrine to Biros’s claims. I write separately to address what I perceive to be the unintended consequences of gilding the lily.
I would obviously have preferred that we allow Biros’s claims, which are not moot, to be resolved on their merits. But a majority of this Court disagrees, so we continue on our sprint towards the death bed. I just wish that was where it ended.
Instead of merely allowing the panel’s decision to stand on its own shaky foundation, two of my colleagues reaffirm the mootness ruling and then offer even more justification for the panel’s decision to lift the stay. However, I would rather that the panel’s opinion be the last word on why the stay was lifted because at least that opinion cabins its damage to undermining our mootness precedents.
But my colleagues’ concurrence in the denial of rehearing en banc goes further, most glaringly by prognosticating on the constitutionality of Ohio’s new lethal injection protocol. See supra, Op. of Sutton, J., at 2 (“I disagree and remain comfortable with the panel’s conclusion in the context of Ohio’s change from a facially constitutional execution protocol, see Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35, 128 S.Ct. 1520, 170 L.Ed.2d 420 (2008), to an improved execution protocol.”) (emphasis added) and at 3 (“Through it all, it deserves emphasis, the one-drug protocol that Ohio now voluntarily plans to use is the one that the plaintiffs (unsuccessfully) claimed in Baze was constitutionally required.”). The merits of Ohio’s new protocol are certainly not before us — indeed, that is the fundamental basis for the panel’s decision that Biros’s claims based on the prior protocol are moot — but they inevitably will be, and the concurrence offers a sneak peek on the way that at least two of my colleagues view those merits. On the whole, I would rather that we all went home today having only made a hash of our mootness jurisprudence rather than having made a hash of our mootness jurisprudence and having offered up views on an issue that is not currently, but soon will be, before us.
I therefore respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.