Update: SCOTUSblog reports the Supreme Court has further delayed this already long-overdue execution, Justices Scalia and Alito dissenting. Order here. Unlike yesterday's order in the state case, which had some welcome and unusual explanation, this one says only that the stay is granted pending the Court's disposition of the certiorari petition.
The Jackson Clarion-Ledger had this story today before the stay.
Jan Greenburg has this story at ABC.
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Still waiting for word, and hopefully an explanation, from the Supreme Court on whether justice can finally be carried out for the kidnapping and beating to death of Mary Bounds twenty years ago in Chickasaw County, Mississippi. Danza Johnson has this story in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, with comments from Mrs. Bounds' husband, Charlie. SCOTUSblog has the murderer's stay application here. The State's brief in opposition to the certiorari petition is here. The response to the stay request, which simply incorporates the arguments of the brief in opp., is here.
ABC News is working on a story for tonight, possibly including comments from yours truly. (We never really know until it airs.)
Yesterday's order denying cert. and a stay on the case from the Mississippi Supreme Court is here.
There is one word for this stay--lawless. And cruel to the victim's family.
20 years for justice? What justice is that?
This is a definitive example of exalting form over substance.
And it is an example of how "death is different" has metastasized from an obnoxious slogan to a fetish.
Despite clear law that (a) states (and victims) should not be subject to the indignity of having the execution of judgments delayed by last-minute dilatory filings and (b) such dilatory filings are abusive and vexatious, the Court decided, in its infinitessimal wisdom, to reward a convicted murderer.
States should fight back. I, for one, would not make it easy (a) to serve process or (b) have communications with courts. There is no law that says that a state official has to answer the phone or keep its fax machine on.
In my opinion, the Court has really crossed a line with the Berry stay.
When the Court said that federal courts can and should protect states from these types of filings, apparently it meant all federal courts except itself. So much for the rule of law.