US Supreme Court throws out precedent in negligent ruling about death penalty cases
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that since 1973, at least 189 people who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated. That includes 11 in Ohio. For its part, the National Registry of Exonerations counts nearly 3,200 people wrongly convicted of crimes since 1989.
The criminal justice system makes mistakes — sometimes big ones.
Thus, the system needs mechanisms to help minimize errors. That explains the procedural care in death penalty cases. It points to the role of a public defender, upholding the right to effective counsel for those who cannot afford an attorney to represent them, though the offices of public defenders are notoriously underfunded, at the state and federal levels.
All of this frames a negligent ruling by the Supreme Court, the 6-3 conservative majority diminishing the right to effective counsel, leaving two men on death row, one plainly innocent, the other intellectually disabled. This ruling arrived in May, before the immodest majority abandoned or weakened precedent on other fronts, for instance, reproductive rights and the separation of church and state.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-supreme-court-throws-precedent-100104479.html
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