SCOTUS Watch
Glossip v. Gross, Docket No. 14-7955,
on Appeal from the
Tenth Circuit
Introduction
“From this day
forward, I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death. For more than twenty years I have
endeavored—indeed. I have
struggled—along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and
substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to
the death penalty endeavor. Rather than
continue to coddle the Court’s delusion that the desired level of fairness has
been achieved and the need for regulation is eviscerated, I feel morally and
intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment
has failed.”
In the current term of the United States
Supreme Court, the Justices are set to decide a case which almost literally
questions the “machinery of death” and the “death penalty experiment.”
