William Baude on the Supreme Court's Secret Decisions
The Supreme Court's Secret Decisions
CHICAGO — A CONVICTED murderer, Charles F. Warner, was executed in Oklahoma last month after the United States Supreme Court denied his request for a lastminute stay. Mr. Warner and other deathrow inmates had challenged the state’s lethal injection procedures as unconstitutional. In a strange twist, the court agreed to hear his claims — a week after Mr. Warner had been executed.
Traditionally, the court postpones an execution once it has decided to hear an inmate’s case. Why did the court wait to accept the case until it was too late for Mr. Warner? Did it decide for some reason to depart from tradition? The court gave no explanation. Four justices dissented from the refusal to stay the execution, but the majority issued only a onesentence order stating that the application for a stay had been denied.
Mr. Warner’s execution illustrates the high stakes in a crucial part of the court’s work that most people don’t know anything about: its orders docket.
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