Well here I am. All it took was for my brother to nag me a bit and I'm posting again. I have been really busy this past week with homework (as my brother mentioned I would say). I had to do a take-home test in my Corrections Law class last week and it ended up being 11 pages typed by the time I was done, and then I had to write a paper (and first read) about Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies (for information on her you can try her website at Dynamist.) So I was pretty swamped between doing that and the rest of my homework. Also, quite frankly I'm a little lazy and couldn't really think of anything to write. If anyone who reads Japanese sees this they might find it... well crazy. My Japanese friend just told me that I should write this on the site. It is one of the few Japanese phrases I know "watashi no te wa midori to nagai" The big news that I have come acrossed recently is that the Supreme Court has decided to take an appeal, which could be the most important death penalty decision since Furman v. Georgia in 1972. This case involves a man named Timothy Ring and although I don't know the exact case name, it can be found at CNN. An educated guess would be that the case is Ring v. Arizona, but like I said I don't know for certain. The gist of this case is that the petitioner is arguing that the administration of the death penalty sentence by a judge is in violation of the 6th amendment provision entitling a defendant to a trial by an impartial JURY . This amendment is of course applied to the state of Arizona by the 14th amendment's incorporation doctrine. For those of you who want to check out the specifics of these amendments, the constitution and all of it's amendments can be found at The Constitution. The upshot of this cases importance is that IF the Supreme Court decides in favor of Timothy Ring then the current death penalty statutes of 5 states (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Nebraska) would be found unconstitutional and therefore voided, as judges handle the sentencing phase in all of these states. In four other states the statutes would also likely be voided, the main difference in these states (Florida, Alabama, Deleware, and Indiana) being that while the Judge still handles the sentencing the jury makes recommendations to the judge. If this were to occur (which I for one find a bit unlikely in the Rehnquist lead court) then the sentences of those currently on death row would be immediately changed to life in prison. This would save nearly 800 inmates from state sanctioned death (assuming they wouldn't have been found innocent through DNA evidence or been granted reprieve through successful appeals). Pretty signifigant I would say. I'll post the case ruling on the site as soon as I hear what happens. Well folks, it took me suprisingly long to write this little bit, since I had to figure out how to link sites and stuff, so that's about all for me right now.

Your Supreme Guide,