Circuit breaker Supremes

George Will:

here should be two Supreme Courts, one to reverse the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, the other to hear all other cases. Last term, 18 of the court's 82 cases (22 percent) came from the liberal 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, and the 9th was reversed in 15 of the 18. The 9th's winning percentage (.167) was worse than that of the 1962 Mets (.250). On Monday, in the first decision of this term, the Supreme Court reversed the 9th's fretfulness on behalf of Fernando Belmontes.

In order, as he explained to one of his accomplices, to "take out a witness," Belmontes used perhaps 20 blows with a metal dumbbell bar to bludgeon to death Steacy McConnell, whose home he had entered for a burglary. He emerged drenched with her blood and carrying her stereo, which he sold for $100. She was 19. Belmontes killed her 25 years ago.

How did capital punishment jurisprudence reach its current baroque condition, in which cases live longer than did the murder victims? At the hands of judges such as Stephen Reinhardt, a residue of Jimmy Carter's presidency, who says Belmontes's "robbery gone wrong" lacked "especially heinous elements."

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Reinhardt, writing for the 9th's divided three-judge panel, overturned Belmontes's death sentence because the trial judge "failed to instruct the jury that it was required to consider" what Reinhardt considered Belmontes's "principal mitigation evidence" -- his aptitude for prison life. On Monday the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 against the 9th.

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Reinhardt was also the author of an opinion that reversed a conviction because the victim family members wore a button that did not mention the accused. He is an example of what happens when Democrats control the selection of judges. His cases would make a good case for not having a Democrat majority in the Senate or on the court.