In one, the court declined to hear an appeal from a death row inmate who argued that he should not be executed because the 32 years he spent on death row amounted to cruel and unusual punishment barred by the Eighth Amendment. The court’s decision not to hear the case touched off a lively debate among three justices.
The court also ruled that a Vermont man’s right to a speedy trial had not been violated despite a three-year delay.
When the court accepted the speedy-trial case, Vermont v. Brillon, No. 08-88, it appeared to be ready to decide whether delays by court-appointed lawyers provided by the state may sometimes amount to a violation of the right. The ordinary rule is that only the prosecution’s delays count against the government.
But the tangled record in the case demonstrated that the defendant, Michael Brillon, had fired one of his lawyers and threatened the life of a second.
Those facts made the case an imperfect vehicle for a broad pronouncement. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, dissented, saying he would have dismissed the appeal.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the seven-justice majority, said delays caused by the defendant or his lawyer, whether court-appointed or not, did not ordinarily count against the speedy-trial clock. “Unlike a prosecutor or the court,” Justice Ginsburg wrote, “assigned counsel ordinarily is not considered a state actor.”
Justice Ginsburg left the door open, though, to a challenge where the delay was caused by “a systemic breakdown in the public defender system.”
In the capital case, Thompson v. McNeil, No. 08-7369, two justices said the delay in executing William L. Thompson, convicted of a participating in the gruesome torture and murder of a woman in 1976, warranted attention from the court.
Justice John Paul Stevens, who has been increasingly vocal about his discomfort with the death penalty generally, said that Mr. Thompson’s confinement in “especially severe conditions” and two near-death experiences as executions were stayed at the last minute were dehumanizing.
“Executing defendants after such long delays is unacceptably cruel,” Justice Stevens wrote.
Justice Breyer added that Mr. Thompson’s accomplice may have been more culpable but did not receive the death penalty. At a resentencing hearing, a jury that heard evidence on this point recommended, 7 to 5, that Mr. Thompson be sentenced to death.
Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed with his two colleagues. Justice Thomas set out the details of the crime in vivid detail and said that Mr. Thompson, who had twice pleaded guilty, was the source of the delays and so should not be their beneficiary.
“It is the crime — and not the punishment imposed by the jury or the delay in petitioner’s execution — that was ‘unacceptably cruel,’ ” Justice Thomas wrote.