Comments on: Court protects trial judges on juror dismissal http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/court-protects-trial-judges-on-juror-dismissal/ The Supreme Court of the United States blog Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:56:34 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Kent Scheidegger http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/court-protects-trial-judges-on-juror-dismissal/comment-page-1/#comment-11291 Kent Scheidegger Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:23:08 +0000 http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/uncategorized/court-protects-trial-judges-on-juror-dismissal/#comment-11291 In footnote 1 of the dissent, Justice Stevens writes, "The Court opens its opinion with a graphic description of the underlying facts of respondent’s crime, perhaps in an attempt to startle the reader or muster moral support for its decision." This is a very strange statement. The "graphic" description consists of, "Respondent Cal Coburn Brown robbed, raped, tortured, and murdered one woman in Washington. Two days later, he robbed, raped, tortured, and attempted to murder a second woman in California." Either Justice Stevens has a very different idea of what constitutes "graphic" than I do (and, I believe, most people do), or else he is referring to a description in a draft of the opinion that was later deleted, and he didn't amend his dissent to match. In footnote 1 of the dissent, Justice Stevens writes, “The Court opens its opinion with a graphic description of the underlying facts of respondent’s crime, perhaps in an attempt to startle the reader or muster moral support for its decision.”

This is a very strange statement. The “graphic” description consists of, “Respondent Cal Coburn Brown robbed, raped, tortured, and murdered one woman in Washington. Two days later, he robbed, raped, tortured, and attempted to murder a second woman in California.”

Either Justice Stevens has a very different idea of what constitutes “graphic” than I do (and, I believe, most people do), or else he is referring to a description in a draft of the opinion that was later deleted, and he didn’t amend his dissent to match.

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