New York Times Editorial: A Good Day for Judicial Discretion

New York Times Editorial: A Good Day for Judicial Discretion
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/opinion/15tue2.html?th&emc=th


Equity is an elusive legal concept that occasionally allows some leeway in applying the rules of the law and is often unappreciated by judges who insist the law means only what it says. That was clear in 2008 when the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit refused to allow federal courts to consider a death-penalty conviction of Albert Holland because his lawyer had inexcusably let the filing deadline pass. Fortunately, seven members of the Supreme Court proved less rigid in their thinking on Monday and reversed that blinkered decision.

Mr. Holland, who was convicted of first-degree murder and is on Florida’s death row, continually asked his court-appointed lawyer about the paperwork deadlines and pressed him to keep all options of appeal open. But the lawyer barely communicated with his client and missed the filing deadline set by Congress in 1996.

In giving Mr. Holland a second chance to make his case, the Supreme Court acted in the highest legal tradition and demonstrated why society invests so much hope in the wisdom of justices — and not just their knowledge of legal principles. Writing for the court’s majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said that a hard and fast adherence to absolute legal rules could impose “the evils of archaic rigidity.”

That was not enough for Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who dissented. They provided a clear illustration of what happens when jurisprudence is stripped of all human empathy — that recently vilified but still vital heartbeat of the legal system. Justice Scalia wrote that while it is tempting to tinker with technical rules to achieve a just result, the Constitution does not give judges the discretion to rewrite Congress’s rules. The law is the law, in other words, and tough luck if your incompetent lawyer leaves you hanging.

It was heartening to see that Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito Jr. refused to subscribe to that philosophy, just as they have broken with Justice Scalia in other criminal justice cases.

The full court demonstrated that same spirit of understanding in another opinion issued Monday, when it ruled that a minor drug offense did not justify deporting a legal immigrant. The case was brought by Jose Angel Carachuri-Rosendo, an immigrant from Mexico found in possession of a single tablet of Xanax, the anti-anxiety drug, without a prescription. Overruling the lower courts and disagreeing with the Obama administration, the court said that the possession did not qualify as a serious felony, even though Mr. Carachuri-Rosendo had a previous misdemeanor conviction.

The decision gives hope to other immigrants fighting deportation on minor charges that are taken far too seriously by the government. Taken together, the outcome of Monday’s cases suggests that even on a conservative court, the letter of the law has its limits.