Polls Show More than 80% Support for the Death Penalty: At Homicide Survivors, Dudley Sharp posts that "[w]hen polls correctly ask about true capital, death penalty eligible murders, support" remains high for the death penalty. Sharp points out that the polls which correctly ask whether the respondent supports a death sentence for capital murder demonstrate that support remains very high. In other polls, where respondents have been asked whether they support the death penalty for murder, positive responses are only 60-75% of the time. Sharp dismisses these as "irrelevant" because they asked the wrong question. He believes that the "error rate" (80% vs. 65%) is due to several factors, such as reluctance to voice support unless specific details of the murderer and the crime is provided. A good example? In a 2001 Gallup poll concerning Timothy McVeigh's execution "57% of those who say they oppose the death penalty, generally, actually do support it for McVeigh's execution (81% supported the execution of McVeigh, 16% opposed (Gallup 5/02/01)), while 65% offer general support for executions for "murder," with 28% opposed (Gallup, 6/10/01)."
Sotomayor Hearings - Where Will GOP Focus?: Amy Harder writes at the Ninth Justice that after polling ten Supreme Court watchers, the NationalJournal.com has found that the GOP is most likely probe Judge Sotomayor on her decisions in Ricci v. Destafano and Maloney v. Cuomo. The ten respondents were given seven choices, ranging from Judge Sotomayor's role in Didden v. Village of Port Chester (property rights case) to her views on abortion, and asked to rank the choices. Each respondent had to give reason for his or her ranking. For one expert, Ricci ranked first because "Ricci is the worst, and the most unpopular with voters, and she is the most vulnerable on that, in part for the sweep-it-under-the-rug approach and recent Supreme Court rebuff." To find out if these Supreme Court watchers were right, take Crawford Greenburg's advice on Legalities and check out ABCNews.com livestream of the hearings next Monday, 10a.m.ET.
Split Ninth Circuit Decides When Prison Officials Are Liable for Depriving Outdoor Exercise: Doug Berman has a quick post at Sentencing Law and Policy on Norwood v. Vance, a Ninth Circuit decision granting qualified immunity to prison officials who denied prison inmates outdoor exercise during four separate lockdowns after serious inmate assaults on staff. Gregory Norwood was incarcerated at a maximum security prison near Sacramento, CA, during a two-year period of exceptional violence against prison staff and other inmates. Norwood brought a ยง1983 action, claiming the officials had violated his Eighth Amendment right to outdoor exercise. Judge Kozinski's ruling on the merits states that in qualified immunity cases, and under Saucier v. Katz, "[t]he relevant, dispositive inquiry . . . is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted." For two of the three Judges on the panel, it would be "particularly odd to hold that liability attaches in this case, where hindsight validates defendants' decisions." Eugene Volokh also has a post on Norwood, which focuses on the majority and the dissent's understanding of the word "deference" when discussing a jury instruction.
Federalist Society Debate on Judge Sotomayor: Both Eugene Volokh and Edward Whalen have posts linking the Federalist Society's Online debate on Judge Sotomayor's nomination. Volokh's post is available here on Volokh Conspiracy, and Whalen's is available on NRO's Bench Memos. Whalen is actually taking part in the debate, along with Tom Goldstein, Louis Michael Seidman, David Stras, and Wendy Long.
Sotomayor Hearings - Where Will GOP Focus?: Amy Harder writes at the Ninth Justice that after polling ten Supreme Court watchers, the NationalJournal.com has found that the GOP is most likely probe Judge Sotomayor on her decisions in Ricci v. Destafano and Maloney v. Cuomo. The ten respondents were given seven choices, ranging from Judge Sotomayor's role in Didden v. Village of Port Chester (property rights case) to her views on abortion, and asked to rank the choices. Each respondent had to give reason for his or her ranking. For one expert, Ricci ranked first because "Ricci is the worst, and the most unpopular with voters, and she is the most vulnerable on that, in part for the sweep-it-under-the-rug approach and recent Supreme Court rebuff." To find out if these Supreme Court watchers were right, take Crawford Greenburg's advice on Legalities and check out ABCNews.com livestream of the hearings next Monday, 10a.m.ET.
Split Ninth Circuit Decides When Prison Officials Are Liable for Depriving Outdoor Exercise: Doug Berman has a quick post at Sentencing Law and Policy on Norwood v. Vance, a Ninth Circuit decision granting qualified immunity to prison officials who denied prison inmates outdoor exercise during four separate lockdowns after serious inmate assaults on staff. Gregory Norwood was incarcerated at a maximum security prison near Sacramento, CA, during a two-year period of exceptional violence against prison staff and other inmates. Norwood brought a ยง1983 action, claiming the officials had violated his Eighth Amendment right to outdoor exercise. Judge Kozinski's ruling on the merits states that in qualified immunity cases, and under Saucier v. Katz, "[t]he relevant, dispositive inquiry . . . is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted." For two of the three Judges on the panel, it would be "particularly odd to hold that liability attaches in this case, where hindsight validates defendants' decisions." Eugene Volokh also has a post on Norwood, which focuses on the majority and the dissent's understanding of the word "deference" when discussing a jury instruction.
Federalist Society Debate on Judge Sotomayor: Both Eugene Volokh and Edward Whalen have posts linking the Federalist Society's Online debate on Judge Sotomayor's nomination. Volokh's post is available here on Volokh Conspiracy, and Whalen's is available on NRO's Bench Memos. Whalen is actually taking part in the debate, along with Tom Goldstein, Louis Michael Seidman, David Stras, and Wendy Long.
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