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Show TEN CHAIRS: NINE ARE LEATHER; ONE'S ELECTRIC. THE SUPREME COURT'S STRUGGLE FOR EQUAL JUSTICE IN CAPITAL PUNISHMENT Jackson Spencer Wixom for habeas corpus relief claiming that the judge's failure to explain to the jury how to use the state sentencing statute violated both his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The appeal eventually reached the Supreme Court who stayed Weeks's execution and granted his petition of certio-rari. The Court delivered its Weeks opinion on January 19, 2000. A five-to-four majority, consisting of Justices Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, felt that the judge used the best method of explanation possible for the jury and the sentence of death should stand. As stated by the Court, "Given that petitioner's jury was adequately instructed, and given that the trial judge responded to the jury's question by directing its attention to the precise paragraph of the constitutionally adequate instruction that answers its inquiry, the question becomes whether the constitution requires anything more. We hold that it does not." (Weeks v. Angelone 2000). The thin five-to-four margin on the Weeks decision further emphasizes the fact that death penalty cases coming before the Court have legitimate arguments on both sides. Thus, the Court is in a no-win situation. In this dilemma, the justices must either risk usurping the role of the states in a federal system and engaging in judicial activism by laying down uniform sentencing guidelines, or if the status quo persists, they must prepare themselves for a greater amount of difficult cases. The more each case is measured independently and compared to different, state-legislated criteria, the greater the possibility of substantive inequality creeping into the death penalty sentencing process. THE PROCEDURAL TRAP Creating substantive justice among death penalty cases is not the Court's only obstacle. Questions also arise concerning the Court's procedure when handling habeas petitions of certio-rari and stays of execution. The writ of habeas corpus was designed to grant relief to convicted felons whose constitutional rights have been violated in the judicial process, "It is most often used to get a person out of unlawful imprisonment by forcing the captor and the person being held to come to court for a decision on the legality of the imprisonment" (Oran's 2000). The stay of execution, defined as "A stoppage or suspension of Judgment," gives the Supreme Court and lower appellate courts the right to keep a state from executing an inmate while the inmate's case is being reviewed and decided (Oran's 2000). In 1983, the Court ruled in Barefoot v. Estelle that federal appeals courts could treat death-sentenced habeas petitioners to a special shortened version of the usual appellate process. This decision was monumental for the Court in developing a tight appeals procedure. The Court instructed the Federal Circuits not to grant stays of execution unless there was a "substantial showing" of a violation of federal law (Barefoot v. Estelle 1983). Also, in the case of Sawyer v. Whitley any indication that a habeas petition could have been included in an earlier appeal and was not; constituted an "abuse of writ" and resulted in an automatic denial of habeas relief (Schrader 1996). These new rules made granting cer-tiorari or receiving a stay of execution much more difficult for death row inmates because their petitions were compared to the ideal standard of Sawyer and Barefoot. Petitions that were considered late or mediocre were now automatically thrown out. A perfect example of possible inequality in the new, tighter process came to the Court in 1984- The case involved James Hutchins, a man convicted of murdering three police officers, who was sentenced to death in 1979. While awaiting his execution, Hutchins's attorneys filed a petition for federal habeas relief that was full of new misconduct claims against the state, none of which ever emerged at Hutchins's original trial. The habeas petition was also filed right before Hutchins's scheduled execution. The federal district judge denied the petition, but never gave an explanation as to why. As a last ditch effort, Hutchins attorneys appealed to Circuit Judge James Phillips and received a stay of execution with only days to spare before Hutchins's execution. This contradictory move by the Circuit Judge infuriated the Supreme Court's pro-death penalty majority and the Court promptly vacated Judge Phillips's stay. A few hours after the Court handed down its decision to vacate the stay, James Hutchins died in the electric chair. The reason the Supreme Court vacated Judge Phillips's stay had nothing to do with the substance of Hutchins's habeas petition. No federal judge, including the nine Justices, ever actually ruled on the petition itself. Instead, the issue which decided Hutchins's fate was procedural: the proper filing of his habeas petition according to the process established. The Court refused to even consider the claims of misconduct only because the defendant had not made them earlier in his trial and appeals process, thus making them contrary to Sawyer. Granted, the justices must find ways of protecting themselves from the procedural burdens of baseless petitions that are filed only as a desperate act by death row inmates to avoid execution. However, the possibility still exists that the claims of James Hutchins may have been legitimate. The Supreme Court does not grant equal justice when it considers some habeas petitions and refuses to consider others based only on a procedural factor such as a filing deadline. The time for setting strict guidelines should be when the cause for the eventual certiorari petition is being formed, i.e. during the sentencing process. The Court sends conflicting messages when its ambiguity in sentencing allows for more petitions, but then its tight appeals procedures kill these petitions without proper consideration of their content. A NUMBERS GAME In 1981, a more moderate Justice Stewart retired and was replaced by the first woman to ever sit on the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The conservative Justice 38 |