Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent in a case this week involving the death penalty in Alabama was not aimed at public opinion, but it could be Exhibit A for why the nation's judiciary is falling in the public's estimation.
Sotomayor wrote a 12-page dissent when her colleagues refused to review the state's law that allows judges to overrule jury decisions on whether a defendant should be executed. She called it "an outlier" that might contradict the Constitution.
The Alabama case was concerned with Mario Dion Woodward, who was convicted of murder in 2008. The prosecution asked for the death penalty, but the jury voted 8 to 4 against it — finding that the state-asserted aggravating circumstances did not warrant capital punishment....
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."
Winter is Coming
Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
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