On Monday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court made the American criminal justice system a little less just. First, the court granted immunity to a police officer who shot a woman four times because she was holding a kitchen knife. Second, the court rejected an appeal from two capital defendants in Florida who argue, quite plausibly, that they were sentenced to death in violation of the Constitution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from both decisions in a pair of opinions seething with indignation at her colleagues’ solicitude for violent cops and indifference toward death row inmates. Her dissents illustrate a galling asymmetry in the court’s jurisprudence. Powerful defendants get a quick helping hand. Powerless ones get screwed.
from Stories from Slate https://ift.tt/2q4iO4q
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