“Court upholds cop killer’s death sentence”: Bill Rankin of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a news update that begins, “The federal appeals court has upheld a death sentence against man who killed a sheriff’s deputy, even though the condemned inmate’s lead lawyer drank a quart of vodka every day during trial.”
You can access yesterday’s ruling of a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit — in which each of the three judges wrote separately — at this link.
Senior Circuit Judge J.L. Edmondson‘s opinion concurring in the judgment, which appears at page 105 of the document, is rather unusual. He writes:
In my experience, longish opinions always present a strong possibility of error lurking somewhere in the text. That the opinion writer is a skilled and careful judge does not eliminate the risk. Furthermore, no one wishes to join in an opinion that they do not understand fully. It is hard, time-consuming, painstaking work for the panel’s other judges to check long opinions, line by line, cited case by cited case. (Of course, always other cases are awaiting decision and also demand the judges’ time and attention.)
A footnote then goes on to observe:
It seems to me that the incidence of long opinions has been on the rise in the last decade or, at least, more are coming across my desk. I should say that I, broadly speaking, do not agree that the length of an opinion necessarily reflects the thought, labor, and care that has been invested by judges in their endeavor to decide the case correctly. The shorter opinions often reflect the greater study and thought leading up to the ultimate decision. Mark Twain touched on a related idea: “If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”
Circuit Judge Ed Carnes wrote the 104-page lead opinion in the case.
Posted at 10:54 PM by Howard Bashman
