Over dissent, Supreme Court allows execution of Alabama inmate

Last month, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to execute Christopher Price, who was on death row for the 1991 murder of minister Bill Lynn. However, the state didnt execute Price that night: It had called off the execution a few hours earlier because the warrant for Prices execution was set to expire. Instead, Price was executed last night, just after 7:30 p.m. local time.

In an order issued in the early morning hours on April 12, the justices overturned orders by the lower courts blocking the execution. The Supreme Courts ruling sparked a sharp dissent from the courts liberal wing, with Justice Stephen Breyer complaining that the justices should have at least waited to discuss Prices case at their private conference that day.

The justices continued to spar over Prices case earlier this month, when they rejected his petition for review. Justice Clarence Thomas (in an opinion joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch) filed a relatively rare statement in which he agreed with the courts decision not to take Prices case. Addressing Breyers dissent from the previous month, Thomas suggested that Breyers proposed rationale for delaying Prices execution does not withstand even minimal legal scrutiny and would harm victims.

Price returned to the Supreme Court once more this week. He again asked the justices to block his execution, to allow a trial to go forward on his claim that executing him by lethal injection would violate his constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The court rejected that request without comment, allowing the state to go ahead with Prices execution last night.

Breyer again dissented from the courts refusal to put Prices execution on hold. All three of Breyers liberal colleagues Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the first part of the opinion, in which Breyer explained that he would have allowed Prices trial to take place next month as scheduled. Only Ginsburg joined the second part of the opinion, in which Breyer lamented that Prices case demonstrates once again the unfortunate manner in which death sentences are oftenperhaps inevitablycarried out in this country. As he has in other cases, Breyer suggested that the Court should reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty in an appropriate case.

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.