Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court threw out a death sentence Thursday because a Pennsylvania judge who voted to uphold the verdict previously had prosecuted the case as the Philadelphia district attorney.
The 5-3 ruling was the latest to see the Supreme Court address ethical standards in elected state courts, where judges lack the lifetime tenure intended to insulate their federal counterparts from political or financial pressure.
Ronald Castille, then chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, refused to recuse himself in an appeal of Terrance Williams’s death sentence, which a lower state court had invalidated because prosecutors withheld evidence helpful to the defendant.
In his previous elected position as district attorney, Mr. Castille had authorized his prosecutors to seek the death penalty that as a state chief justice he then voted to reinstate.
”The due process guarantee that ‘no man can be a judge of his own case’ would have little substance if it did not disqualify a former prosecutor for sitting in judgment of a prosecution in which he or she had made a critical decision,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Justice Kennedy said that result followed from a 1955 precedent, when the court invalidated a Michigan procedure allowing a judge to act as a “one-man grand jury” investigating a crime-and then personally charge, prosecute and convict witnesses he disbelieved of contempt.
Supreme Court Throws Out Death Sentence Over Judge Who Had Prosecuted Case
This is an interesting case.
The 5-3 ruling was the latest to see the Supreme Court address ethical standards in elected state courts, where judges lack the lifetime tenure intended to insulate their federal counterparts from political or financial pressure.
Ronald Castille, then chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, refused to recuse himself in an appeal of Terrance Williams’s death sentence, which a lower state court had invalidated because prosecutors withheld evidence helpful to the defendant.
In his previous elected position as district attorney, Mr. Castille had authorized his prosecutors to seek the death penalty that as a state chief justice he then voted to reinstate.
”The due process guarantee that ‘no man can be a judge of his own case’ would have little substance if it did not disqualify a former prosecutor for sitting in judgment of a prosecution in which he or she had made a critical decision,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Justice Kennedy said that result followed from a 1955 precedent, when the court invalidated a Michigan procedure allowing a judge to act as a “one-man grand jury” investigating a crime-and then personally charge, prosecute and convict witnesses he disbelieved of contempt.
Supreme Court Throws Out Death Sentence Over Judge Who Had Prosecuted Case
This is an interesting case.
