Troy Davis was executed last night.

I can’t explain the details surrounding his case better than Jeff Gamso has; I can’t argue with Mark Osler’s article on cnn.com explaining why we should err on the side of not murdering someone. It almost seems like there is nothing left to say… but I can’t sit now and say nothing.

 The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”) has been construed in Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362 (2000) and Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167 (2001) as furthering the principles of finality of judgment, comity and federalism. Which is to say that the law tries to prevent people convicted of state crimes to be able to supplant the state issue with a federal issue in an effort to avoid dealing with the state issue. For example, someone who has been convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Georgia can try to raise the federal constitutional issue that he may, in fact, be innocent. If we allow this purely hypothetical person to continue living based on his federal claim, we are allowing him to supplant the state issue with a federal issue.
So the courts have the difficult job of balancing the interests of federalism with the interests of maybe not murdering an innocent man.

You might be inclined to argue that this law furthering federalism is a general one, and the pesky issue of innocent people being killed is an unfortunate side effect. Wrong! The name of the law has “Effective Death Penalty” in it.

I’m not really being fair, you hardly ever hear federalism as the reason why federal appeals of death sentences are rejected. (After the state level avenues for “relief” are exhausted, that is. Federalism is the excuse used for all federal appeals to be ignored until then, so it does play a large role in this farce.)

The phrase that’s all the rage, though, is “finality of judgment.” What does that mean? Is it simply a way to tell society, to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, “When we screw up a judgment, god damn it, it stays screwed up.”?
Most articles I’ve read about this concept focus on the victim’s family; they need closure, they need satisfaction, they need to know that there is a finality to the judgment. That’s special.
I don’t mean to disparage those people who have had their whole lives ripped apart by a horrific crime; I have nothing but sympathy for them. However, why are we making the victim’s family’s feelings a higher priority than discovering the truth and saving a possibly innocent man’s life? Do they need closure and a sense of finality? There is therapy to help with that, they don’t need laws.

Let’s save our laws for those who need it. Like potentially innocent people who are murdered in the interest of finality.

Like Troy Davis.

Supreme Court at night

In the throes of finals preparations, I have been circling an idea that I decided needed to be recorded. I took Federal Jurisdiction this semester with a brilliant professor who was extremely capable of both communicating the intricacies of the material as well as boil it down to what it means to a practicing attorney.

The issue that is gnawing at the back of mind is that the practical use of the class can be cut short to maybe a week of material. Most of it ends with, “…and the Court will end up doing whatever it feels like, so hedge your bets.”

I found the class and material fascinating, but was it necessary? All I needed was for someone to tell me the important cases to cite in certain circumstances and warn me that there’s no telling what will happen… Which, I gather, is the first piece of advice any litigating attorney has to offer.