Thread by @stevenmazie

BREAKING: For the fourth time this week, the Supreme Court has voted 6-3 to clear the way for a last-minute federal execution before Trump leaves office. Justices Breyer and Sotomayor write dissents. Justice Kagan also notes her dissent.

Dustin Higgs has COVID-19 and will be executed tonight despite lung damage that could turn his lethal injection into an egregiously painful death.

Here is Justice Sotomayor’s closing.

Here is Breyer on the SCOTUS majority’s rush to execute

Sotomayor names the federal inmates who have been killed since Trump revived the federal death penalty—a punishment that Biden will put a moratorium on next week

Sotomayor: “This is not justice.”

Tonight’s rush to execute is galling but not surprising. The selectively pro-life conservative majority has an appetite for capital punishment. That goes for the comparatively-moderate-on-some-other-issues Chief Justice, as I wrote @Slate google.com/amp/s/slate.co…

As depressing as SCOTUS’s we’ll-bend-over-backwards-to-lift-execution-stays posture is, it’s chilling to imagine these going forward without Sotomayor’s voice of conscience calling out the injustice

The full opinion supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf…

Justice Barrett wasn’t kidding

The accident of timing: the four inmates strapped to gurneys this week would not have been killed if their execution dates had been set for a few days later, as the new administration intends to stop federal executions.

Acting with such haste despite deep questions of injustice looks suspicious even if the impending administration switchover isn’t part of the justices’ calculation.

Perhaps that appearance of bias should be reason enough to slow things down when it’s a matter of life or death.

Why did Sotomayor use the traditional “I respectfully dissent” rather than the more emphatic “I dissent”—esp given her “this is not justice” line?

I think she is signaling respect less for her 6 colleagues and more for the 13 people the federal govt killed over the past 6 mos.