Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion ensures that innocent people will spend years behind bars.
Left-leaning justices have long argued that the criminal justice system should primarily try to determine whether a criminal defendant has actually committed a crime — and that there should be adequate safeguards to ensure that someone who is wrongfully convicted can challenge that conviction.
Meanwhile, justices on the Court’s rightward fringe have long argued that the primary purpose of the criminal justice system is to reach final judgments concerning an individual’s guilt. Under this view, this need for finality can even overcome a claim that a prisoner is innocent.
I really can’t emphasize this enough: fuck the right.
What? I… I literally cannot get my head around how that thought process can work
This is just wrong at every level. We need to oust these assholes in the court.
Hear hear, this isn’t even close to the first time Thomas and other Supreme Court conservatives have bent over backwards to protect the ability of the state to hurt innocent people (for example, this case from 2011 that made it just about impossible for exonerated people to sue prosecutors who knowingly his evidence of their innocence in the trials that sent those exonerees to proson). There isn’t going to be a moment where they say, “This is going too far, we can’t support that,” they’ll happily greenlight whatever outrageous cruelties cops and prosecutors can bring them. The only way this stops is if other Americans decide they’ve had enough and shut down this illegitimate court.
