EXCERPT
LAST year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a 31-page dissent to a 5-to-4 decision upholding Oklahoma’s controversial method of executing criminals. To rely on a drug cocktail with a track record of torturing prisoners to death, she wrote in Glossip v Gross, is “barbarous” and violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments. This week, Justice Sotomayor wrote her first majority opinion in a death-penalty case, taking just ten pages to explain why Florida’s death-sentencing procedures are out of whack with the jury-trial guarantee in the Sixth Amendment.
