High Court Rejects Case of Mexican Death Row Inmate

Yesterday's opinions showed that four of the justices -- John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer -- preferred to maintain federal jurisdiction over the case even as it returned to the Texas courts.

But Justice Sandra Day O'Connor refused to join them. She argued instead the court should rule now that the case should be sent back to the federal appeals court for Texas, rather than to the state courts.

Ginsburg, however, felt that the state courts could well make the federal case moot. There being fewer than five votes for a stay, Ginsburg decided to join Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas in dismissing the case, because, she wrote, that offers the least risk of "disturbance" to the case Medellin's lawyers have already started in the Texas courts.

The case is Medellin v. Dretke, No. 04-5928.

In another death-penalty case yesterday, the court ruled that the Constitution forbids the routine visible shackling of convicted murderers when they sit in front of a jury that is deciding whether to impose capital punishment.

The decision was the court's first opportunity to address a courtroom security issue since the recent killing of a judge by a rape defendant in Georgia.

The law has long prohibited the visible shackling of defendants at trial, except when the court makes a formal finding that a particular defendant would pose a threat to security. Yesterday's 7 to 2 decision extended that rule to the sentencing phase of a capital case.

To put even a convicted felon before the jury in chains, the court ruled, would unfairly make him appear uncontrollably dangerous, the court ruled.

"The appearance of the offender during the penalty phase in shackles, however, almost inevitably implies to a jury, as a matter of common sense, that court authorities consider the offender a danger to the community . . . nearly always a relevant factor in jury decisionmaking," Breyer wrote for the court.

Breyer was joined by all other justices except Thomas and Scalia.

Breyer wrote that the court is "mindful of the tragedy that can result if judges are not able to protect themselves and their courtrooms," but that this could not outweigh the right of an offender to a fair sentencing hearing.

Thomas wrote that the court's opinion "leaves no real room for ensuring the safety of the courtroom." Joined by Scalia, he said that it is unrealistic to suggest that an offender's image would be damaged more by shackling than it already had been by his conviction.

The case is Deck v. Missouri , No. 04-5293.