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On Monday, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion about a criminal defendant’s right to a fair trial and an honest prosecution. The case concerned an appellate court decision that had determined a man’s guilt based on new facts that had never gone before the jury; the Supreme Court reversed this holding, ruling that the defendant’s rights were violated. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, would have allowed the man, Gary Whitton, to be found guilty and be subject to execution, despite the procedural error in the court below. And although the start of their dissenting opinion is fairly consistent with Thomas’ and Alito’s harsh jurisprudence on criminal matters, the justices then do something strange. In this criminal-law case, they dig into a pile of past civil cases concerning completely unrelated legal issues for which the court has recently denied certiorari, then try to argue that SCOTUS goes out of its way to protect murderers while allowing rights to be taken from “law-abiding citizens.” As this term has shown, what we actually have is a court that frequently lets lawlessness reign when the government does something wrong but fights tooth and nail to deny fair process for the people it views as criminals.

Gary Richard Whitton was accused of committing a 1990 murder in Florida. A Florida jury later found him guilty and sentenced him to death. But two issues emerged as the case proceeded. The first was that a key witness, one who claimed he had heard Whitton confess to the crime while in prison, had lied to the court about having a criminal record. State prosecutors were aware of this lie but failed to disclose it, denying Whitton of the key constitutional right to challenge the credibility of a witness against him. In considering this issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit then created a second problem with Whitton’s case. The court claimed that even though it “agreed with Whitton that [the witness’s] criminal-history testimony was false, and that the State knew it to be false,” he should be found guilty and executed anyway. In explaining why, the 11th Circuit relied on, among other things, evidence from a DNA test that was conducted a decade after the state had convicted Whitton; according to the court, the test established his guilt regardless of the witness issue.

The Supreme Court reversed this decision, stating that the lower court acted inappropriately by considering a postconviction DNA test that Whitton never got to challenge and that his jury never got to review.

Thomas and Alito would have disregarded both the witness and the postconviction........

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