SCOTUS Refuses to Hear Trial on Constitutionality of Death Penalty

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg supported the minority opinion in the death penalty
case against Lamondre Tucker or Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Photo: CharlesDharapak/AP | MSNBC.

Lamondre Tucker of Caddo Parish, Louisiana was convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend in 2008 and sentenced to death. Caddo Parish is responsible for half of the death sentences in the state of Louisiana but is home to only 5% of that state’s population, and only 5% of its murders.

The United States Supreme Court rejected the appeal of a death row inmate who has argued that his sentence was unconstitutional.

The minority opinion, written by Justice Stephen Breyer, was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, states that the court should have heard the case in order to explore the constitutional status of the death penalty, which many argue qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.

It stands to reason, as Justice Breyer pointed out that, had Tucker been tried even in a neighboring parish, he would not be on death row.

The majority did not offer an explanation of why they denied a writ of certiorari, which asks for a Supreme Court review of a lower court finding.

The question of the constitutionality of the death sentence stems primarily from the question of whether it should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. In Louisiana, for example, midazolam, which is the first drug used in lethal injection, does not make a person incapable of feeling pain.

Subsequently, it is argued, the other drugs in the process take effect without any kind of safeguard, meaning that people executed in this way suffer from agonizing pain during the execution process.

There is also an argument, which justice Breyer used in a 2015 dissent to Glossip v. Gross, that the death penalty is often arbitrary, and the process, which supports it, is prone to mistakes.

This seems especially relevant to sentences passed down before improvements in DNA sampling and other evidence techniques, which can call into question the guilt of inmates.