Monday, the Supreme Court Justices delivered their oral opinion summaries in the Term’s high-profile death penalty decision, Glossip v. Gross. Rather than reading from his concurring opinion or from a prepared statement, Justice Antonin Scalia — still frazzled from release of the same-sex marriage cases — appeared to be improvising.  He accused Justice Stephen Breyer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of expressing personal “policy preferences,” and added that the “two justices are willing to kill the death penalty outright rather than just pecking it to death.” Why the defensiveness and outrage?

Citation
Brandon L. Garrett & Lee Kovarsky, Last Words for the Death Penalty, Huffington Post (June 30, 2015).