The conservative-majority Supreme Court is not a fan of death row prisoners or DNA testing. So it’s worth noting a recent decision that lets a man who was sentenced to death pursue such testing as he seeks to prove his innocence. Yet, this common sense outcome still split the court 6-3, with one of the dissenters, Clarence Thomas, taking solace in what he saw as the bright side: The man seeking DNA testing can still be executed.
Innocence wasn’t the issue at the Supreme Court in Rodney Reed’s case, which has been championed by celebrities like Kim Kardashian. Rather, the justices were sorting out a drier but important question over the statute of limitations: When did the legal clock start running for Reed’s claim?
Texas state trial and appellate courts denied Reed’s bid for testing certain evidence, such as a belt used in 1996 to strangle Stacey Stites, the white woman who Reed, a Black man, was convicted of killing.
Thomas’ hardest-right colleagues didn’t join his 20-page effort, which doubled as a prosecution memo against Reed.
Reed pressed a due process claim in federal court, challenging state procedures that denied him testing. But the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (the same right-wing court that’s considering the pending abortion pill litigation) said Reed was too late, because, it said, the clock started running when the state trial court ruled against him. Reed argued that the ruling doesn’t make sense, because he was challenging state law, which is interpreted by the state appeals court, so the clock shouldn’t run until the state appeal is resolved.
The Supreme Court agreed. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh observed that, if the clock started running with a state trial court denial, that would lead people to bring federal claims while appealing at the state level.
“We see no good reason for such senseless duplication,” Kavanaugh wrote on April 19 for the bipartisan majority, which included his fellow Republican appointees,…
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