The Bill Barr Death Machine
By 
Bernard was 18 when he was with a group of young men who murdered two people. The capital sentence was based on the (ludicrously false) premise that he was a full and equal member of a violent gang: pic.twitter.com/j0rBbsMJj2— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) December 11, 2020
But they did not only did not disclose Bernard's low status in the gang but elicited knowingly false testimony in spite of it, giving us two material constitutional violations: pic.twitter.com/y7W5g8DqDD— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) December 11, 2020
"Under this rule, prosecutors can run out the clock and escape any responsibility for all but the most extreme violations." pic.twitter.com/10RVZt9A5T— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) December 11, 2020
This case, then, is an object illustration of the freakish arbitrariness of the death penalty. It most definitely does not single out the worst of the worse. Here, a rare federal execution was carried out against someone whose role in a murder was so limited the state had to lie— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) December 11, 2020
Given different results in the 2014 midterms and more symmetrical strategic retirements, the death penalty might be categorically unconstitutional by now. Instead, this will be the most pro-death-penalty Court in decades.— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) December 11, 2020
One of these days Amy Coney Barrett might cast a vote that doesn’t kill somebody.