The callous injustice of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito
Austin Sarat, opinion contributor
As someone who has followed Richard Glossip’s case closely, I approached last week’s oral argument at the Supreme Court with a sense of anticipation. I expected the justices to show that they understood the gravity of the moment. After all, Glossip is on death row, and he shouldn’t be.
Even the state of Oklahoma agrees. It concedes that Glossip, convicted in 1998 of a murder for hire, was wrongfully convicted of a capital crime. As state Attorney General Gentner Drummond told Reuters on Oct. 7, “If he (Glossip) is executed, I believe that it will be a travesty of justice.”
But when the justices had finished asking their questions and the lawyers were done with their answers, there seemed to be little recognition that Glossip’s fate was hanging in the balance.
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern got it right when he said that the question before the court in the Glossip case is “so bizarre that its very existence should serve as an indictment of capital punishment: Can courts force a state to execute a possibly innocent prisoner when the state itself doesn’t want to?”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-callous-injustice-clarence-thomas-170000387.html