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Justice Sotomayor thumbs nose at calls to resign: Reports

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 07:58:13 +0000

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaks during a panel discussion at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has told people close to her that she has no plans of stepping down before Donald Trump takes office, according to multiple reports, as calls have emerged on the left for her to do so in a bid to clamp Trump’s power.

“This is no time to lose her important voice on the court,” a source close to Sotomayor told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. “She just turned 70 and takes better care of herself than anyone I know,” the source said.

Another person close to the justice, who spoke to CNN, said: “She’s in great health, and the court needs her now more than ever.” Sources also told ABC News that Sotomayor wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

Sotomayor, the most senior liberal member of the Supreme Court, has been receiving calls to step down immediately by Democrats in the days since Trump’s election win, with many believing it would be foolish to give Trump another opportunity to nominate a justice, should Sotomayor not make it through his second term for some reason.

“This would probably be a good day for Sotomayor to retire,” David Dayen, executive editor of American Prospect magazine, wrote on X after the election.

Reports about Sotomayor having type 1 diabetes, which she is publicly spoken about, have been making the rounds online, per the WSJ, and there has been an influx of stories shared about Justice Ruth Ginsburg’s death in 2020, which resulted in Trump nominating Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

At 70, Sotomayor is currently the third oldest Supreme Court justice followed by Samuel Alito, 74, and Clarence Thomas, 76. She was appointed by Barack Obama in 2009.

Ginsburg was 87-years-old when she died and suffering from various health problems, including treatment for cancerous lesions on her liver in July 2020 just months before her death, per reports. Sotomayor, meanwhile, is said to be perfectly healthy at the moment.

“I don’t think it’s the sensible approach,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday about the calls to resign.

Sanders, who is 83, said he had heard “a little bit” of talk from Democratic senators about the resignation push, but he wasn’t paying it any mind.

“No,” Sanders said when asked if Sotomayor should step down. “I don’t.”

Since justices are given lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court, the topic of resignation has become a popular one on both sides of the aisle. Republicans, for example, have also been reportedly discussing whether their aging justices should step down and give the party more secured votes in the country’s highest court once Trump is in office.

“Justice Sam Alito is gleefully packing up his chambers,” wrote legal analyst and Trump ally Mike Davis on X after the election.

Attempts by Law&Crime to reach Sotomayor for comment were unsuccessful Sunday.

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Should Justice Sotomayor retire? Chemerinsky, White House haven’t joined calls for her to step down

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 15:24:45 +0000

U.S. Supreme Court

Should Justice Sotomayor retire? Chemerinsky, White House haven’t joined calls for her to step down

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 4, 2024, 1:23 pm CDT

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in October 2022. (Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press)

Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School, is among the commentators who are calling for 69-year-old Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sotomayor, the oldest Democratic appointee on the high court, has Type 1 diabetes. Campos would like to give President Joe Biden a chance to name her replacement while Democrats control the U.S. Senate.

“You have the votes right now, and you’re not going to have the votes a year from now,” Campos told HuffPost. “It’s really that simple.”

The fear is that history could repeat itself. Then-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg resisted calls to step down, and she died at age 87 while then-President Donald Trump was in the White House. She was replaced by now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett, giving the Supreme Court a 6-3 conservative majority.

If a Sotomayor replacement gives conservatives a 7-2 Supreme Court majority, “you go from a captured court to a full MAGA court,” Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told NBC News.

“Certainly, I think if Justice Ginsburg had it to do over again, she might have rethought her confidence in her own health,” said Whitehouse, who nonetheless is not joining calls for Sotomayor to step down.

Another legal academic, Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and an ABA Journal contributor, had called on Ginsburg to retire. But he does not think that Sotomayor has to do so, according to HuffPost and NBC News. He noted that Sotomayor is only 69, while Ginsburg was in her 80s.

He is also concerned that a progressive nominee to replace Sotomayor might not get confirmed because of the “slim Democratic majority” in the Senate.

The White House is also taking a hands-off approach, Law360 reports.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press conference Wednesday a decision on retirement is “a personal decision,” and justices should be given the “space and freedom” to decide.

Campos said some Democrats wonder why it’s necessary to replace Sotomayor with a liberal nominee when conservatives have a six-person majority on the court.

“That’s like asking, ‘What does it matter to give up another touchdown in the second quarter when we’re already down 14 points?’” Campos said. “At some point, you have to make your comeback.”

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Justice Sotomayor says she’s tired and working harder than ever, but she’s not giving up

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 12:23:42 +0000

U.S. Supreme Court

Justice Sotomayor says she’s tired and working harder than ever, but she’s not giving up

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 30, 2024, 11:31 am CST

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told law students Monday that the Supreme Court is hearing bigger and more demanding cases while also dealing with a busy emergency calendar. (Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press)

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told law students Monday that the Supreme Court is hearing bigger and more demanding cases while also dealing with a busy emergency calendar.

Sotomayor said she is tired and working harder than ever, Bloomberg Law reports.

“And to be almost 70 years old, this isn’t what I expected,” she said.

What keeps her going, Sotomayor said, is the high court’s impact on people, the country and sometimes the world.

Speaking at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, Sotomayor also remarked on the frustration that she feels as one of the liberal dissenters on the Supreme Court, according to Bloomberg Law, CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle.

“I live in frustration. And as you heard, every loss truly traumatizes me in my stomach and in my heart. But I have to get up the next morning and keep on fighting,” Sotomayor said.

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Sotomayor issues warning over nitrogen hypoxia execution

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 15:30:53 +0000

Left: Right: This undated photo provided by Alabama Department of Corrections shows inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted in a 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of a preacher’s wife. (Alabama Department of Corrections via AP). Right: Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor poses for the official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 7, 2022. (OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)

The U.S. Supreme Court did not intervene to stop the nation’s first execution by nitrogen hypoxia — a move that all three justices of the court’s liberal wing opposed.

“With deep sadness, but commitment to the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment, I respectfully dissent,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissent issued Thursday afternoon regarding the then-pending execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith. Smith, 58, was put to death Thursday night.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Smith has been on death row since 1996 for his role in a gory murder-for-hire plot that left a minister’s wife dead after a vicious beating and repeated stabbing inside her Alabama home in 1988. After years of legal wrangling and a failed execution attempt in November 2022, Smith died by capital punishment on Thursday night, after Justice Clarence Thomas rejected Smith’s final appeal in a two-sentence denial earlier that day.

“The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied,” the order said. “The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.”

Sotomayor’s disdain for this rejection — and Alabama’s commitment to using nitrogen hypoxia to kill Smith — was apparent.

“Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before,” she wrote in her dissent. “The world is watching.”

Calling the nitrogen hypoxia method “untested” and noting that Alabama only released its “heavily redacted protocol under five months ago,” Sotomayor described the way Smith would experience his death in stark terms.

“What Smith knows is that he will be strapped to a gurney,” she wrote. “He will wear a nitrogen-supplying, off-the-rack mask for which the State has not fitted him or even tried on him. Once the nitrogen is flowing into the mask, his executioners will not intervene and will not remove the mask, even if Smith vomits into it and chokes on his own vomit.”

According to The Associated Press, Smith’s execution took around 22 minutes, and he was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. Smith was apparently conscious for several minutes, and The Associated Press described him as shaking and writhing on the gurney for at least two minutes, at times pulling against his restraints. His death by nitrogen hypoxia marked the first time that a new execution method was used since lethal injection was introduced in 1982.

Sotomayor said that Smith had valid legal challenges to the execution method, and admonished her fellow justices for “again” allowing Alabama to “‘experiment . . . with a human life,’ while depriving Smith of ‘meaningful discovery’ on meritorious constitutional claims.”

According to Sotomayor, allowing Smith to complete discovery into nitrogen hypoxia is valuable for future death row inmates, in addition to Smith.

“That information is important not only to Smith, who has an extra reason to fear the gurney, but to anyone the State seeks to execute after him using this novel method,” she wrote.

In her dissent, Sotomayor appeared to mourn a version of the Supreme Court that she described as having relatively recently valued Eighth Amendment protections.

“Not long ago, this Court remarked that “[t]he Eighth Amendment’s protection of dignity reflects the Nation we have been, the Nation we are, and the Nation we aspire to be,”” she wrote (citations omitted). “This case shows how that protection can be all too fragile.”

Her colleagues on the bench, she said, have “ignored Smith’s warning that Alabama will subject him to an unconstitutional risk of pain,” and recalled that he has already “survived to describe the intense fear and pain [he] experienced during Alabama’s tortuous attempts to execute [him].”

“This time, he predicts that Alabama’s protocol will cause him to suffocate and choke to death on his own vomit,” she continued. “I sincerely hope that he is not proven correct a second time.”

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a separate dissent emphasizing the “novel” use of the nitrogen hypoxia method.

“The State’s protocol was developed only recently, and is even now under revision to prevent Smith from choking on his own vomit,” Kagan wrote. She said that Alabama “declined to provide Smith with all the discovery respecting its protocol which he has requested,” and added that he “has a well-documented medical condition posing special risks” from the chosen method of execution.

Kagan wrote that in 2015, the Supreme Court set an “extremely demanding standard” for showing a potential violation of the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment — specifically, someone seeking an alternative method of execution must show that serious pain is “sure of very likely” to occur.

“Arguably, that standard can work fairly only when more is capable of being known about an execution method,” Kagan wrote. “To allow this Court to address that important issue, I would also grant Smith’s application for a stay of execution.”

The first attempt to execute Smith via lethal injection in November 2022 failed after intravenous lines needed for the procedure could not be connected to him properly and the clock ran out on the warrant to execute him. The state moved ahead with plans to execute him again, but that prompted a lawsuit from Smith in which he requested death by nitrogen hypoxia, for which protocols were incomplete at that point.

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