SILENT THOMAS

Our own "Silent Charlie" has nothing on Justice Clarence Thomas. As the NY Times pointed out Sunday, it's been FIVE YEARS since Thomas asked a question in oral argument, and that question was reportedly "Are you done? I need to use the head."

From the article: "In the past 40 years, no other justice has gone an entire term, much less five, without speaking at least once during arguments, according to Timothy R. Johnson, a professor of political science at the University Of Minnesota."

ET TU CLARENCE?

UPDATE: There's a new blog in town called Kosher Meatball law blog.

And of course, running the preeminent "go-to" legal blog in Miami as we do, the noodles at the meatball blog are trying to curry favour with us by re-printing some of our recent blog rumblings. While we much would have preferred them coming to us, hat in hand (electronically) and asking permission to run a blog in what is clearly our town, in the interest of benign neglect, we decided to give them a plug. Pull up a chair, put on a bib, and manga. (The meatballs go great with some nice mozzarella sprinkled on top. Give it a try.)

Justice Clarence Thomas is an individualist. He does not believe in affirmative action. As a strict constructionist conservative, Justice Thomas believes in the primacy of the individual. The United States was created as a government of the people and government's role is limited at best. Justice Clarence Thomas believes that merit and talent should be the only factors in which an individual is promoted. Ethnicity, race, or anything other than the particular qualities of the individual should not apply. His opinions make all of the above perfectly clear.

At the Utah State Bar convention, Justice Thomas had this to say:

Thomas said his biggest concern is the Ivy League composition of the court and its lack of regional representation. The current court has five justices from the New York/New Jersey area, two from California, one from Georgia and one from Indiana.

“Does that sound like this country?” he asked.

Hmm....sounds like Justice Thomas wants to see the geographical location of a particular individual weighed against the makeup of the court as a consideration for nomination.

To put it more bluntly, it seems as if Justice Thomas would want to see a less talented Judge from lets say Oregon nominated to the Supreme Court over a more talented individual who graduated from Yale, if the court at the time was comprised of "eastern intellectuals."

Not necessarily the thoughts of an individualist. More like the thoughts of a collectivist statist whose particular ox has been gored. For shame Justice Thomas.

TRIAL UPDATES:

State v. Sutton is going to the jury. Final arguments were heard Tuesday. This is a compelling case where the trigger man testified that the son of Coral Gables attorney John Sutton hired him to kill his parents. John Sutton survived the attack, but he was permanently disfigured. His wife was murdered. Carin Kahgan and Kathleen Hoague for the prosecution and Bruce Fleisher for the defense. This is going to be a tough one, and we're not looking for a verdict on Wednesday. Perhaps Thursday, and a little birdie whispered to us that the prosecution is worried.

US v. Blagojevich: This one is less worrisome for the prosecution, as the tapes against the former Governor have been damming. Crude and vulgar comments mixed in with petty personal concerns have the loudmouth Chicago Pol (whose first name is actually Milorad) on the ropes. His brother who is charged in five of the 25 counts took the stand and was eviscerated on cross by the prosecution. The taped evidence against his brother is much less compelling than against the former governor. That's why our Chi-town spies are telling us that despite months of bragging about his upcoming testimony the defense team headed by the spectacular team of Sam Adam, Jr., and his father Sam Adam Sr., are working hard to keep their loquacious client off the stand. One problem- the defense made a spectacular error in promising the jury in opening statement that their client would testify.

Runpole's seventh rule of defense: Never ever ever tell the jury your client will testify. Never. Ever. You can never be sure how a trial will turn out, and if you are certain your client will testify there is no reason to let the prosecution know that. Keep them in the dark as long as possible. The only exception to this rule is.....NONE. Never ever ever ever tell the jury in opening statement that your client will testify.

THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:

(Rump, with respect to the Essen family, I post these matters. If you want to hold them off until tomorrow, I certainly understand).

Justice Thomas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court & The Death Penalty .......

In case you missed it, today marked a new low by Justice Thomas in his rein as an Associate Justice on our highest court. Here is what happened in case you were not awake at 1:34 am.

Tennessee executed Cecil Johnson at 1:34 a.m. today. Johnson had spent nearly 29 years on death row for three murders committed during a robbery of a Nashville convenience store. He was convicted in 1981.

The Supreme Court refused early this morning to hear the last-minute appeal of Johnson. The opinions written by Stevens & Thomas have been described now as a "Death Clash at the High Court". The issue was whether execution after lengthy delay is cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. A high court majority rejected Johnson's application for a stay of execution and his petition for review in which he raised the Eighth Amendment challenge.

Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justice Stephen Breyer, dissented, saying Johnson’s situation was “as compelling a case” as he had encountered raising the constitutional concerns that Stevens himself raised in a 1995 dissent from another denial of certiorari: Lackey v. Texas. Besides the constitutional issue, Stevens said Johnson’s case raised two important procedural questions: whether, as in Johnson’s case, the Eighth Amendment challenge can be made as a civil rights claim under Section 1983, and, if it cannot, whether a second habeas petition raising the claim is a successive petition subject to a procedural bar. Treating the claim as a habeas petition—which the lower court here did—only contributes to additional delay, he said.

Stevens said he remained “steadfast” in his view that execution after such delay is unacceptably cruel because it subjects death row inmates to decades of severe, dehumanizing conditions of confinement. Delaying an execution, he added, also does not further the public purposes of retribution and deterrence.

Thomas said Stevens first proposed his “novel” Eighth Amendment argument 14 years ago. Thomas stated, "There was no support for the argument then and there is no support now". Then Thomas goes all "Blackstone" on him, stating:

"There are alternatives to current procedural safeguards .... As Blackstone observed, the principle that punishment should follow the crime as early as possible was expressed in an English statute decreeing that “in case of murder, the judge shall in his sentence direct execution to be performed, on the next day but one after sentence passed.”

Thomas went further: "I have no doubt that such a system would avoid the diminishing justification problem Justice Stevens identifies ...."

Has anyone informed Thomas that, according to the Innocence Project, there have been no less than 245 post conviction DNA exonerations in the United States, 17 of which were people sentenced to DEATH.

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CAPTAIN OUT .................


(I removed the portion of the post about the changes in County Court procedures because I like to stick to one major topic. I will post the now infamous Slom Memo soon. HR.)