When William Sallie asked for a stay of execution Tuesday because of alleged juror bias, the justices refused, apparently without dissent. Sallie, 50, became the ninth man put to death in Georgia this year, a 40-year high.
When Ronald Smith asked that his execution be blocked Thursday because a judge overrode a jury's recommendation of life without parole, the court deadlocked 4-4. Smith, 45, later heaved and coughed during his 34-minute lethal injection.
And when Florida's Henry Sireci, Ohio's Romell Broom, Louisiana's James Tyler and South Carolina's Sammie Stokes asked for their death sentences to be reconsidered — because of new evidence, a previously botched lethal injection, a disputed guilty plea and a lawyer's conflict of interest, respectively — the justices delayed action for several weeks. On Monday, all four petitions were turned down, but with a biting dissent from Justice Stephen Breyer.
"Individuals who are executed are not the 'worst of the worst' but, rather, are individuals chosen at random on the basis, perhaps of geography, perhaps of the views of individual prosecutors, or still worse on the basis of race," Breyer, who would have heard Sireci's and Broom's cases, said. "The time has come for this court to reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty."
The six cases illustrate the continuing battle inside the Supreme Court over the nation's ultimate penalty — one imposed and carried out less often each year, but which voters in three states, including California, decided to retain last month.
