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A Judicial Revolution

© Gina D. Gipson

Lots of fancy, serious-sounding words, but the Supremes put it in perspective, in rejecting the Circuit court's ruling: "there is no foundation in the decisions of this Court." Meaning, somebody over in New Orleans must have had a little too much time on their hands.

The Smith case had no announced author - it's a per curiam decision - but the final words are familiar: "The judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. It is so ordered." Anything fuzzy about this command? Any question about who is supposed to dispense the Supreme law of the land?

If that's not enough for you, there's Miller-El vs. Cockrell, Director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. This is another death penalty case, but it addresses a different issue - at least, in one sense. It addresses an Equal Protection violation.

Miller-El is a Dallas County case, where the prosecutors used peremptory strikes to exclude eleven eligible African-Americans to serve on the jury. A motion was filed, based on unconstitutional elimination of those jurors. The trial judge denied it, finding "no evidence of systematic exclusion of Blacks." Yeah, it was definitely a coincidence.

The Supreme Court heard the case after all the aforementioned courts upheld the defendant's conviction. Justice Kennedy, who delivered the opinion, seemed a bit concerned when he mentioned that "91% of the eligible African-Americans were struck, that some of the reasons the Dallas prosecutors gave for striking them also applied to white jurors - being hesitant to vote for death because a defendant may be capable of rehabilitation and the jurors' own history of criminality - prosecutors used racially disparate questioning, the state court failed to consider their use of a jury shuffle" and finally, my favorite reason, "the historical evidence of racial discrimination by the Dallas County District Attorney's Office." Lordy, Lordy. I can't help but to wonder, what's wrong with these people?

Does any of this concern anyone? The Constitution is not a suggestion. The Supreme Court doesn't sit there just to look pretty. Justice isn't whatever is popular with the people, who'll be voting for these state judges making the decisions.

"Justice has nothing to do with expediency. It has nothing to do with any temporary standard whatever. It is rooted and grounded in the fundamental instincts of humanity."

Such is the commands of the Constitution, so eloquently articulated by Woodrow Wilson. Let us take heed, lest we become what we reap.