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Late Night Drama: SCOTUS Grants Last-Second Stay Of Execution For Alabama Man

REUTERS/Jenevieve Robbins/Texas Dept of Criminal Justice

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Kevin Daley Supreme Court correspondent
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The U.S. Supreme Court granted a dramatic last-minute stay of execution for an Alabama convict on Thursday night.

The order was issued minutes before the execution was scheduled to take place.

Uncertainty gripped Holman Correctional Facility while Thomas D. Arthur, a contract killer sentenced to death in 1982, waited late into the night while the high court considered his petition. Arthur’s lawyers asked the Court to stay the execution and review his case.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who hears emergency appeals from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, issued an order at 10:30 pm staying the execution pending a decision from the entire Court. Shortly before midnight, the full Court issued a stay of execution, which will remain in effect while the justices consider Arthur’s petition for review of his conviction. If the justices deny the request, the execution will proceed. (RELATED: Supreme Court Hosting First Live Webcast) 

A majority of justices is needed in order to grant a stay. Chief Justice John Roberts furnished the requisite fifth vote to postpone the execution, but indicated he did so only as a courtesy to his colleagues who sided with Arthur. In the Court’s order halting the execution, he wrote:

I do not believe that this application meets our ordinary criteria for a stay. This case does not merit the Court’s review: the claims set out in the application are purely fact specific, dependent on contested interpretations of state law, insulated from our review by alternative holdings below, or some combination of the three. Four Justices have, however, voted to grant a stay. To afford them the opportunity to more fully consider the suitability of this case for review, including these circumstances, I vote to grant the stay as a courtesy.

Justice Stephen Breyer granted a courtesy fifth vote in August to grant a stay in Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., the case concerning the Obama administration’s order requiring public schools to allow transgender students to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity. Breyer, an avowed death penalty opponent, likely cast the fifth vote to grant a stay in that case in the hopes that one of his conservative colleagues would return the gesture on a death penalty petition.

Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito noted they would have denied the stay.

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