Jackson dissents in SCOTUS denial of death penalty case – The Supreme Court’s liberal wing was so thoroughly convinced that prosecutors illegally withheld evidence in the case of a botched-prison-escape-turned-murder that they would have reversed a convicted man’s death sentence without even hearing argument. The Court’s conservative majority refused to hear the case, however, leaving the condemned inmate’s looming execution intact despite another man’s confession.
David Brown is part of the “Angola 5,” a group of inmates took prison guards hostage during an attempted escape from the maximum-security state penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, in late December 1999. The original group consisted of six inmates, but one was shot and killed during the escape attempt. Capt. David Knapps, 41, was also killed, and all five inmates were charged with — and convicted of — first-degree murder.
