A Horrifying Miscarriage of Justice in North Carolina
How many times was Justice Antonin Scalia wrong about Henry Lee McCollum and the death penalty?
The convictions of two mentally disabled half-brothers were vacated and the two men were ordered released by Superior Court Judge Douglas Sasser in North Carolina on Tuesday. They were freed from prison Wednesday.
Henry Lee McCollum, 50, had been on death row for 30 years, longer than anyone else in North Carolina history. He and Leon Brown, 46, who was serving a life sentence, were convicted for the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. DNA evidence implicated another man, a known sex offender the police had not investigated, despite the fact that he lived next to the crime scene.
McCollum and Brown were 19 and 15 at the time local police were investigating the murder of Sabrina Buie. Both confessed to the crime after lengthy police interrogations. They recanted shortly after—in fact McCollum has recanted 226 times—but were convicted, largely on the basis of the false confessions, even though no physical evidence connected them to the crime scene. Police also hid exculpatory evidence for years.
Scalia's Views on Religious Neutrality Reveal He Is Neutral on Sanity
Published on Jan 6, 2016 by Mike Malloy
Speaking at a Catholic high school in New Orleans recently, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said, "To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from To be sure, you can't favor one denomination over another but can't favor religion over non-religion?"
This question is astonishing on many levels, but mostly because it exposes a gross ignorance unbecoming a justice of the Supreme Court. The right not to believe is no less protected by our Constitution than the right to believe in any particular god. If the government cannot favor one religion over another, it cannot favor belief over rationalism. Doing so obviously is in direct violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.