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Samuel Alito on CrimeSupreme Court Justice (nominated by Pres. George W. Bush 2005) |
ALITO: We had to apply the standard of review that is set out in the habeas corpus statute as revised by Congress.
FEINGOLD: Would your approach have been any different as a Supreme Court justice?
ALITO: One of the attorneys was the head of a public defender's office. My evaluation of the facts of the case would be the same. But the Supreme Court's decision in that case is a precedent that I would have to deal with.
ALITO: I've only sat on a handful of capital cases, and in some of them I voted to uphold the death penalty and in a number of them I voted to strike down the death penalty.
FEINGOLD: What are your views on the potential of these three issues?the jury selection, the inadequate representation and an elected judiciary?to skew a capital prosecution against the defendant?
ALITO: I think the elected judges in Pennsylvania do a conscientious effort to carry out their responsibilities. Congress reformulated the standards in AEDPA, in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, limiting our review, and it is our obligation to conduct the kind of review that Congress has indicated we should be conducting.
Alito noted that New Jersey courts have not made servers of alcohol liable beyond injuries resulting from drunken driving or accidents or brawls in a bar. Alito saw no evidence of a legislative intent to make casinos liable for giving alcohol to gamblers. Alito also cited the lower court's opinion that making casinos liable for losses incurred by drunken gamblers "could present almost metaphysical problems of proximate causation, since sober gamblers can play well yet lose big, intoxicated gamblers can still win big, and under the prevailing rules and house odds, 'the house will win and the gamblers will lose' anyway in the typical transaction."
Judge Alito wrote the Court?s majority opinion in this capital case, concluding that the district court improperly vacated defendant's death sentence on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel. While the defendant argued that his attorneys should ?take all the steps that might have been pursued by the most resourceful defense attorneys with bountiful investigative support.? Case Summary: US v. Sherman (3d Circuit 1998)
In a unanimous decision, Alito joined two other judges overturned a lower court ruling dismissing a doctor?s indictment for perjuring himself under oath as an expert in a medical malpractice
trial. The doctor was not entitled to assert a recantation defense when it was ?too late to allow him to rely upon it to defend himself from prosecution under the general perjury statute.?
-- Court reinstates a doctor?s perjury indictment.
In a unanimous decision, Alito joined two other judges overturned a lower court ruling dismissing a doctor?s indictment for perjuring himself under oath as an expert in a medical malpractice
trial. The doctor was not entitled to assert a recantation defense when it was ?too late to allow him to rely upon it to defend himself from prosecution under the general perjury statute.?
-- Court reinstates a doctor?s perjury indictment.
