24 May 2007 :

the US Supreme Court made it more difficult for death row prisoners to challenge their sentences, as 2 new conservative justices appointed by President George W. Bush made clear their hostility to such challenges.
The recent addition of the 2 new Bush appointees, chief justice John Roberts and justice Samuel Alito, may have substantially shifted the balance of power on the court on death penalty issues, experts said.
Before their appointment, the court had done much to chip away at the edifice of the death penalty, by insisting on improvements in legal representation for capital defendants and ruling unconstitutional the application of capital punishment to juveniles and the mentally retarded.
At the same time, the US public has been demonstrating growing unease about the way prisoners are executed in many states.
A nationwide Gallup poll last year showed Americans evenly divided over death or a life sentence without parole, after many years in which capital punishment was strongly preferred. xecutions last year fell to their lowest level in a decade.
The 5-4 ruling split the court into conservative and liberal camps, and appears to signal that the Supreme Court is no longer going to insist so aggressively that capital defendants – most of whom do not have the money to pay a top-class lawyer – get a competent defence.
Monday's case tested the duty of defence attorneys to find mitigating evidence that could persuade a jury to spare a capital defendant's life. The court ruled that a man, who refused to let his lawyer present mitigating evidence from certain witnesses, did not have the right to challenge his sentence on the grounds that his lawyer did not do a good enough job defending him.
The prisoner claimed that he did not have effective assistance of counsel, as required by the US constitution, because his lawyer did not, among other things, uncover evidence that he had a serious brain disorder.
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said the man did not deserve a new hearing because he "would have undermined the presentation of any mitigating evidence that his attorney might have uncovered".
The court's 4 liberal members issued a stinging dissent: "The court's decision rests on a parsimonious appraisal of a capital defendant's constitutional right to have the sentencing decision reflect meaningful consideration of all relevant mitigating evidence," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the dissenters. He said a psychological evaluation of the man "would have uncovered...a serious organic brain disorder".