Supreme Court Rejects Louisiana Inmate’s Challenge To Death Penalty

On May 31, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a Louisiana death row inmate’s appeal to his sentence.

Lamondre Tucker, a 20-year-old, was convicted in 2009 of killing his 18-year-old girlfriend after she became pregnant and told him that he was the father, reports the Associated Press. Tucker’s appeal is the most recent of many challenges to whether or not the death penalty is constitutional.

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer called to re-evaluate capital punishment in a 2015 dissent, saying the system is arbitrary, costly and has a high rate of mistakes. Breyer dissented again during Tucker’s case, pointing out that the defendant was sentenced in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, an area responsible for half the state’s death sentences despite only accounting for 5 percent of the state’s population and 5 percent of its homicides.

“One could reasonably believe that if Tucker had committed the same crime but been tried and sentenced just across the Red River in, say, Bossier Parish, he would not now be on death row,” Breyer said, notes AP.

Fellow liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg echoed similar concerns and stated that she too would have heard the case.

In his appeal, Tucker said black males, like himself, are more likely to face capital punishment for murder in the Caddo Parish area, pointing out that, at the time of his conviction, a Confederate flag flew outside the county courthouse, Reuters reports.

According to Tucker, his death penalty sentence is unconstitutional because it qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.

The defendant “may well have received the death penalty not because of the comparative egregiousness of his crime, but because of an arbitrary feature of his case, namely geography,” Breyer wrote in his dissent, according to Reuters.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the other two liberal justices, did not echo Breyer’s opinion, so the case was dismissed. In order to hear a case, the court needs at least four votes.

One of the nine Supreme Court seats remains empty following the February death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Since then, the court has largely avoided hearing large cases.

Sources: AP via NOLA, Reuters / Photo Credit: Ken Pioriski/Flickr