Court Opinion

ID: 9488232
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:39:46.856101+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:46.215219
License: Public Domain

LUTTIG, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
It is a mockery of our system of justice, and an affront to lawabiding citizens who are already rightly disillusioned with that system, for a convicted murderer, who, through his own interminable efforts of delay and systemic abuse has secured the almost-indefinite postponement of his sentence, to then claim that the almost-indefinite postponement renders his sentence unconstitutional. This is the crowning argument on behalf of those who have politicized capital punishment even within the judiciary. With this argument, we have indeed entered the theater of the absurd, where politics disguised as “intel-leetualism” occupies center stage, no argument is acknowledged to be frivolous, and common sense and judgment play no role. And while this predictable plot unfolds with our acquiescence, if not our participation, we lament the continuing decline in respect for the courts and for the law.
Petitioner does not contest his guilt. Hé concedes, as he says he must, that his death sentence was constitutionally permissible when imposed. He even concedes that, until a month and a half ago, he himself did not wish to pursue further appeals. He has brought four state habeas petitions and this is his fourth federal habeas petition. His various claims have now been reviewed in at least twenty different federal and state proceedings. He has been accorded every possible opportunity to test the legitimacy of his conviction and sentence. The delay of which he now complains is a direct consequence of his own litigation strategy, coupled (ironically, although not surprisingly) with the customary leniency allowed him by the courts to press his claims as effectively as possible.
This is not — or at least it should not be — a political game. The object is to apply the law, not to defeat it through subterfuge. Petitioner’s claim should be recognized for the frivolous claim that it is, and his delay, in raising it, for the manipulation that it is. See McKenzie v. Day, 57 F.3d 1493 (9th Cir.1995) (en banc), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 1840, 131 L.Ed.2d 846 (1995). As long as the courts indulge such sophistic arguments, then such arguments will be made, and the politicization of capital punishment within the courts will continue.