Prometheus 6

This is from the NY Times article I linked in the previous post.

Noted quote:

Instead of considering much of the evidence recited by the Supreme Court majority, the appeals court engaged in something akin to plagiarism. In February, it again rejected Mr. Miller-El's claims, in a decision that reproduced, virtually verbatim and without attribution, several paragraphs from the sole dissenting opinion in last year's Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas.

I want to call this ironic or something nicer than what it is: a lust for death.

There's a very well reasoned theory that lynching in the South was an act of human sacrifice (there's an excellent overview of the concept available online, though the seminal work is Orlando Patterson's Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries). It seems Texas still has that ol' time religion.

Now, the quote of note from which the noted quote was taken.
The actions of the two appeals courts that hear capital cases from Texas help explain why the state leads the nation in executions, with 336 since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated, more than the next five states combined.

In the Miller-El case, appellate lawyers and legal scholars are buzzing over what they say is the insolence of the Fifth Circuit.

In an 8-to-1 decision last year, the Supreme Court instructed the appeals court to rethink its "dismissive and strained interpretation" of the proof in the case, and to consider more seriously the substantial evidence suggesting that prosecutors had systematically excluded blacks from Mr. Miller-El's jury. Prosecutors used peremptory strikes to eliminate 10 out of 11 eligible black jurors, and they twice used a local procedure called a jury shuffle to move blacks lower on the list of potential jurors, the decision said. The jury ultimately selected, which had one black member, convicted Mr. Miller-El, a black man who is now 53, of killing a clerk at a Holiday Inn in Dallas in 1985.

Instead of considering much of the evidence recited by the Supreme Court majority, the appeals court engaged in something akin to plagiarism. In February, it again rejected Mr. Miller-El's claims, in a decision that reproduced, virtually verbatim and without attribution, several paragraphs from the sole dissenting opinion in last year's Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas.

"The Fifth Circuit just went out of its way to defy the Supreme Court on this," said John J. Gibbons, a former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, who joined a brief supporting Mr. Miller-El. "The idea that the system can tolerate open defiance by an inferior court just cannot stand."