Supreme Court Throws Out Death Sentence Over Judge Who Had Prosecuted Case [View all]
Source: The Wall Street Journal.
Supreme Court Throws Out Death Sentence Over Judge Who Had Prosecuted Case
By 5-3 vote, justices say risk of bias violated defendant’s constitutional rights
By Jess Bravin
jess.bravin@wsj.com
June 9, 2016 11:09 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court threw out a death sentence Thursday because a Pennsylvania judge who voted to uphold the verdict previously had prosecuted the case as the Philadelphia district attorney. ... The 5-3 ruling was the latest to see the Supreme Court step in and act on ethical questions in elected state courts, where judges lack the lifetime tenure intended to insulate the judicial system from political or financial pressures.
Ronald Castille, chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, declined to recuse himself when considering the state’s effort to preserve Terrance Williams’s death sentence, which a lower state court had invalidated because prosecutors withheld evidence helpful to the defendant. ... In his previous elected position as district attorney, Mr. Castille had authorized his prosecutors to seek the death penalty, which he then voted to uphold.
“The due process guarantee that ‘no man can be a judge of his own case’ would have little substance if it did not disqualify a former prosecutor for sitting in judgment of a prosecution in which he or she had made a critical decision,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. ... Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
....
The Supreme Court has in recent years taken more aggressive steps to police the integrity of elected state courts. In 2009, for instance, it held that a West Virginia state supreme court justice should have recused himself from a case involving mining executive Don Blankenship, who had spent $3 million to elect the judge.
Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-throws-out-death-sentence-over-judge-who-had-prosecuted-case-1465484938
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