and weight is put by a family member impacted by a loved one on trial. that may not work. the defense s job is to create doubt as far as saving this person s life and trying to delay the trial because this is one of those inevitable cases. you know this is a very, very slow guilty plea, and what the defense wants to do is lay enough groundwork for possible appeals, which some of us may know it takes years and years and years on death penalty cases for the death penalty to be actually impacted. so what we have right here is a slow what we call a slow guilty plea where they re trying to preserve this man s life and try to get to the hearts of some of those jurors. so meanwhile, as we talk about this and mariana reporting on the fact there is a federal case, the state case, the death penalty, charleston grappling with the mistrial of michael slager, so that s competing for headlines, and we re hearing from the jury foreman who says in the slager case that while there was a mistrial
featured all the presidential candidates this weekend. rachel maddow asked hillary clinton about the death penalty, which clinton recently said she supports. if the supreme court struck down the death penalty sometime soon, as justice scalia has suggested they might, would you be disappointed? no. would you think we were losing something of value? no. here s what i ve said. look, the vast majority of death penalty cases as you know arise out of state judicial proceedings. i do think a number of states again predominantly but not exclusively in the south have moved too quickly to try people for capital offenses that carry the death penalty. if the supreme court said no, it violates the eighth amendment, it s cruel and unusual punishment, i would fwrooet a sigh of relief about that. i do have some you know, questions about removing it
will this make the senator popular or unpopular? in that level of politics, i don t see it here. if you apply that view to their decisions, what he s saying, when it comes to abortions, affirmative action back up before the court, and four death penalty cases, he said they look at them for the outcome and the constitution, not what people are going to like in the short run. which is not really what a lot of people think. they think they re playing politics with some of these decisions. you just mentioned abortion, is that going to be the big one if they take it on in this term? i think it s significant. we got a clue earlier when texas made those rules that made it harder to go to clinics. the courts stayed that, they stopped texas from going forward. they could then decide to hear the whole thing and that goes to a question as to whether the safety regulations that we hear about, often from republican legislatures, are in the court s view, too far down the road
rights. ari has been writing about the five big questions. calling it a historic last term for the supreme court. you ve got death penalty cases for, none which go to the heart of the question are we doing this right, is it constitutional? all which deal with how we meet out that punishment. we ve also got cases on abortion, on electoral decisions. there is a lot in there. you brought up the issue of abortion. the court is taking up the abortion case in texas. the first case to be taken up by the court since 2007. this is the case people will remember because texas enacted these strict rules on abortion clinics leading to the closure of about half the state s 41 clinics. the question is do those rules even though for safety, for what many would agree is a good
shown a police photo lineup with ruben cantu s picture. moreno identified ruben cantu as the assailant. he was charged with murder. the case was taken and accepted by the district attorney s office. district attorney, sam millsap, the youngest big city d.a. in the country would now decide whether to try 17-year-old ruben cantu as an adult, making him eligible for the death penalty. we had very, very young people committing very adult crimes, very brutal crimes. and i was moved by that. the only thing that prosecutor could do in that situation because of the brutality of the crime is to prosecute it as capital murder. and i had a perfect record in death penalty cases. ruben cantu s trial began on