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Kennedy v. Louisiana

By cdw

The Supreme Court, as most by now know, refused rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana. The SCOTUSBlog’s analysis begins this way: After a summer of public conversation, and legal argument, the Supreme Court put an end ? at least temporarily ? to the speculation that it might alter its approach to the constitutionality of the death penalty. Despite the very unusual (though not unprecedented) alteration of a previously issued opinion, the Court still is committed to a two-step method of deciding whether a death sentence for a given crime violates the Eighth Amendment. If there is anything new about that calculus, is it that military law probably does not count in it. In fact, the Court left open ? as it had before ? the question of whether the Eighth Amendment governs the military in the same way it does the civilian community...continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on October 01, 2008 (boomark / email).