Court Opinion

ID: 9430463
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:47.160357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.544050
License: Public Domain

Justice Marshall,
with whom Justice Brennan joins,
dissenting.
Four Justices of this Court have voted to defer consideration of the petition for certiorari accompanying this application for a stay pending our decision in Lockhart v. McCree, No. 84-1865. Applicant has raised a claim that would be directly affected by the decision in McCree. Although no prospective juror in this case was actually stricken because of expressed scruples against the death penalty, applicant alleges that the jurors’ exposure to voir dire on their willingness to inflict the death penalty rendered them more likely to convict him. This is identical to a claim at issue in McCree. It is also identical to claims raised in James v. Wainwright, ante, p. 1074, and Adams v. Wainwright, ante, p. 1062, both of which were stayed by this Court, the former only hours ago. James, like applicant, relied solely on the jurors’ exposure to death qualification; he nowhere claimed that the exclusion of jurors via peremptory strikes brought his case within the scope of McCree. See Pet. for Cert, in No. 85-6545, pp. 6-13. Although this Court has deferred consideration of numerous other petitions for certiorari pending our decision in McCree, and has issued stays of execution where necessary to permit this deferral, the Court inexplicably refuses to treat the case before us as we have treated these others.
*1076More alarming is the Court’s disregard of its own procedures in this case. Because at least three Justices have voted to defer consideration of the petition pending McCree, the Court has not, nor under its own procedures can it, dispose of the petition for certiorari. Thus, applicant is in the unusual and manifestly unfair position of facing execution before this Court has considered his petition. This Court has shown a bizarre willingness to ignore standard procedures as it pleases in order to bring about speedy executions. I can only lament this Court’s own special contribution to the arbitrariness and freakishness that continues to characterize the implementation of the death penalty.