For the past several weeks, we’ve been comparing the death penalty jurisprudence of the Illinois and California Supreme Courts. Having reviewed the county-by-county reversal rates last week, this week we’re looking at the individual Justices. We’ll review two indices of the Justices’ views and influence on the Court: first, the percentage of cases where the Justice voted with the majority, and next week, the distribution of each Justice’s votes between affirmance, partial reversal and complete reversal.
In order to capture evolutions in the Justices’ views, we review the data five years at a time. Justices Moran, Ward and Cunningham voted in the majority in 100% of their death penalty cases. Justice Moran voted with the majority in 51 cases. Justice Cunningham was in the majority in all 29 of his death penalty cases. Justice Ward was in the majority in all 14 of his death penalty cases. Justice Bilandic voted with the majority in 95.08% of his 61 death penalty cases. Justice Ryan voted with the majority in 92.86% of his fourteen death penalty cases. Justice Freeman voted with the majority 91.94% of the time during these years. Justice Heiple did so in 90.48% of his 63 cases. Justices McMorrow and Nickels each joined the majority in 89.29% of their cases – 25 of 28. Justice Calvo did so in 88.24%. Justice Miller voted with the majority in 86.42%. Justice Clark voted with the majority in 84.31% of his 51 death penalty cases. Justice Stamos voted with the majority in 10 of his fourteen death penalty cases of these years – 71.43%. Finally, Justice Harrison voted with the majority in 70.37% of his death penalty decisions from 1990 to 1994.
Next, we turn to the years 1995 through 1999. For these years, Justice Nickels was most in sync with the Court’s majority in death penalty cases, voting with the majority in 98.59% of his seventy-one cases. Justice McMorrow voted with the majority in 94.81% of seventy-seven death penalty cases. Justice Heiple did so 90.91% of the time. Justice Freeman was in the majority 89.74% of the time. Justice Miller voted with the majority in 85.9% of his seventy-eight cases. Justice Harrison did in 81.16% of his sixty-nine cases. Finally, Justice Bilandic joined the majority in 80.46% of his eight-seven cases. Justice Rathje voted with the majority in four of his five death penalty cases – 80%.
Join us back here as we review the Court’s voting data for the years 2000 through 2010, when the Court decided its last death penalty case.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Raymond Cunningham (no changes).