You can always count on Steve Dunleavy to play the right wing tune note for note. Reading the Salon article : "The record shows that as a justice on the Missouri Supreme Court White voted 41 times to affirm death penalty cases, and 18 times to reverse execution sentences. In many of those 18 rulings White joined the majority with justices appointed by Ashcroft. Five of those 18 decisions striking down death sentences were unanimous ... [j]ust three times in nearly 60 death penalty cases did White write solo dissents urging death row prisoners be granted new trials. And in none of White's decisions did he argue the death penalty was unjust or unconstitutional. ... White never suggested Johnson was innocent or that his crimes did not warrant the death penalty. 'If Mr. Johnson was in control of his faculties when he went on this murderous rampage, then he assuredly deserves the death sentence he was given,' White wrote. 'I find it is reasonably likely that a jury that had not seen the defense destroy its own credibility would have been sufficiently receptive to the expert diagnosis of a mental disease or defect to permit a reasonable likelihood of a different result.' White wrote that opinion in April 1998. Sixteen months later in August 1999, Ashcroft held a press conference to criticize it." Now, almost 3 years later, Dunleavy has as well, "[t]he fact that White tried to overturn the death sentence of a man who shot dead three sheriffs and a sheriff's wife was judicial insanity." It seems the thrashing Ashcroft gave White over one dissent will be the same dissent used to defend Ashcroft's assault. I don't think it will hold up very well.
- posted by levinson @ 1/08/2001 12:22:00 PM