2026-06-01T15:45:28.094Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/politics/supreme-court-death-penalty-appeals-thomas
周一，美国最高法院支持了佛罗里达州一名死刑犯的诉求，该囚犯此前被阻止对其刑期提出上诉，尽管下级法院承认一名关键证人在庭审中作了伪证。这是近几周来保守派占多数的高等法院第三次支持被判处死刑的囚犯。
在一份未署名的判决意见中，最高法院推翻了联邦上诉法院支持州政府的裁决，理由是该上诉法院考虑了庭审中未提交的DNA证据。在两名保守派大法官持反对意见的情况下，最高法院的即决判决要求联邦上诉法院重新审理此案。
这是最高法院近期在多起备受关注的死刑案件中，不顾法院内部保守派成员的反对，支持被告方的最新一例。
上周，最高法院裁定支持密西西比州一名死囚，该囚犯指控检察官在遴选陪审团时以种族偏见排除黑人陪审员。更早一周，最高法院维持了上诉法院的裁决，禁止阿拉巴马州对一名被下级法院认定存在智力障碍的男子执行死刑。
通常情况下，最高法院极少介入阻止死刑执行，尤其是在紧急审理日程中。今年5月，最高法院曾驳回田纳西州和佛罗里达州死刑执行的暂缓申请。
但在实体审理案件中，最高法院的态度则更为复杂。去年，最高法院下令为理查德·格洛西普重新审理案件，他的上诉曾引发全国关注并得到该州保守派总检察长的支持。在入狱近30年、三次推迟临刑晚餐后，格洛西普于上月获得保释出狱。
本案中的佛罗里达州囚犯是加里·理查德·惠顿，他于1992年被定罪，罪名是1990年在一家汽车旅馆谋杀了其朋友詹姆斯·莫尔登。惠顿一直否认有罪，正试图推翻自己的定罪。该案最初由佛罗里达州陪审团审理，30多年来已经过五家佛罗里达州或联邦法院的审理，最近的审理法院分别是佛罗里达州最高法院和位于亚特兰大的美国第十一巡回上诉法院。
莫尔登被发现死于佛罗里达州德斯廷市阳光沙滩汽车旅馆的房间内。法庭记录显示，他的头骨有骨折，胸部和身体其他部位曾被多次刺伤。
惠顿此前曾两次向最高法院提起上诉，均未成功。
周一的最高法院判决遭到了克拉伦斯·托马斯大法官的强烈反对，他认为同僚们过度解读了第十一巡回法院对DNA检测的关注重点。托马斯还写道，多数派大法官急于插手惠顿的案件，而在他看来其他一系列同样值得关注的案件中，最高法院却拒绝介入。
大法官们当时正在审查第十一巡回法院的一项判决，该判决承认检方未披露关键证人杰克·奥齐奥曾有少年被捕记录，尽管奥齐奥在庭审中声称自己并无此类前科。但联邦上诉法院裁定，鉴于针对惠顿的其他“压倒性”证据，这一情况并不重要。
上诉法院称，这些其他证据包括2002年的DNA复检结果，该结果将惠顿靴子上的喷溅血迹与受害者联系起来。但这项检测是在庭审结束十年后进行的，从未在法庭上被采纳为证据。
“上诉法院做了一件不同寻常的事：它不仅考虑了惠顿庭审时提交给陪审团的证据，还考虑了陪审团从未见过的证据，”最高法院在周一的判决中写道，“相关证据涉及惠顿靴子上的血迹，这些靴子在谋杀案发生次日就被扣押了。”
在惠顿的庭审中，陪审团听到了一名DNA专家截然相反的证词，该专家称惠顿靴子上发现的血迹与受害者的DNA不匹配。包括奥齐奥在内的两名惠顿的同狱犯人也作证称，惠顿在狱中曾对他们说“我捅了那个混蛋”，但两人后来都翻供了。
惠顿的律师辩称，巡回法院不应被允许采纳2002年的检测结果。佛罗里达州官员反驳称，靴子上的血迹并非第十一巡回法院判决推理的核心依据，并指出联邦法律限制法院审查州刑事定罪的权限。
而这正是托马斯在部分得到塞缪尔·阿利托大法官支持的反对意见中提出的观点。
托马斯写道，最高法院的判决依据仅是上诉法院判决意见中的“一个半句子”。
“在驳回惠顿的一项主张——即便基于其他理由该主张本就无法成立——时，第十一巡回法院提到了一个值得注意但显然对其分析不具决定性的事实：DNA检测进一步证实了惠顿有罪。”
在判决意见接近尾声时，托马斯还就最高法院拒绝以即决判决介入的其他几起非死刑案件发表了看法。其中包括两年前最高法院拒绝审理的一起备受关注的案件，该案涉及波士顿三所精英公立学校是否违反宪法，该校采用基于邮政编码的招生政策以确保种族多样性。
“即便多次获得机会维护家庭以无差别肤色的方式为子女争取教育的权利，本院仍‘拒绝纠正明显的宪法错误’，”托马斯在反对意见中写道。
这位保守派大法官还提及了去年最高法院拒绝审理的一起涉及印第安纳大学“偏见应对小组”的案件，该小组旨在平息激烈的言论争议，但批评者称其最终会压制校园内的言论自由。
“令人遗憾的是，法院应一名已定罪杀人犯的请求进行干预，以纠正第十一巡回法院微不足道的程序性失误，”托马斯写道，“更糟糕的是，法院在这么做的同时，却拒绝为守法公民纠正远为严重的错误，比如波士顿那些遭受歧视的家庭。”
A Supreme Court skeptical of death row appeals has recently sided with three inmates
2026-06-01T15:45:28.094Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/politics/supreme-court-death-penalty-appeals-thomas
The Supreme Court on Monday sided with a death row inmate in Florida who was blocked from challenging his sentence even though a lower court acknowledged a key witness lied on stand, marking the third time the conservative high court has backed an inmate sentenced to death in recent weeks.
In an unsigned opinion, the court threw out a decision from a federal appeals court that sided with the state because, it said, the judges considered DNA evidence that had not been presented at trial. Over a dissent from two conservative justices, the Supreme Court’s summary decision will require the federal appeals court to take another look at the case.
It was the latest of several high-profile death penalty cases in which the Supreme Court has sided with a defendant over the objection of some members of the court’s conservative wing.
Last week, the court ruled in favor of a Black man on death row in Mississippi who said the prosecutor engaged in racial bias by striking Black jurors. A week earlier, the court let stand an appeals court decision that barred Alabama from executing a man that lower courts found is likely intellectually disabled.
Especially on its emergency docket, the Supreme Court rarely steps in to stop an execution. In May, the court denied requests to halt executions in Tennessee and Florida.
But the record is more mixed in merits cases. Last year, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Richard Glossip, whose appeal drew national attention and support from the state’s conservative attorney general. After nearly three decades in prison and three last meals, Glossip was released on bond last month.
The Florida inmate, Gary Richard Whitton, was convicted in 1992 for the 1990 murder of his friend James Maulden in a motel. Whitton has denied his guilt and is attempting to have his conviction overturned. The case, initially tried before a Florida jury, has made its way through five Florida or federal courts in over 30 years, most recently the Florida Supreme Court and the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
Maulden was found in his room at the Sun and Sand Motel in Destin, Florida. His skull was fractured, court records show, and he had been repeatedly stabbed in the chest and other parts of his body.
Whitton had unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court twice before.
The Supreme Court’s decision Monday drew a sharp dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas, who said his colleagues had overread the significance of the 11th Circuit’s focus on the DNA testing. And, Thomas wrote, the majority had been willing to swoop into Whitton’s case even when it has failed to do so in a series of other cases he felt were just as worthy.
The justices were reviewing an 11th Circuit decision that acknowledged prosecutors failed to disclose that a key witness named Jake Ozio had been previously arrested as a juvenile, even though he claimed on the stand that was not the case. But the federal appeals court ruled that it didn’t matter due to other “overwhelming” evidence against Whitton.
That other evidence, the appeals court said, included a 2002 DNA retest that linked splattered blood on Whitton’s boots to the victim. But that test was conducted a decade after the trial and was never admitted in court.
“The Court of Appeals did something peculiar: It considered not only the evidence that was presented to the jury at Whitton’s trial, but also evidence the jury never saw,” the Supreme Court said in its decision Monday. “The evidence in question relates to blood stains on Whitton’s boots, which were seized the day after the murder.”
At Whitton’s trial, the jury heard an opposite account of the blood from a DNA specialist who said the blood found on Whitton’s boots did not match the victim’s DNA. Two co-inmates of Whitton, including Ozio, also testified that he told them he “stabbed the bastard,” while in jail, but both have since recanted their statements.
Whitton’s attorney argued that the circuit court should not be allowed to consider the 2002 test. Florida officials counter that the boots were not central to the 11th Circuit’s reasoning, and they note that federal law restricts the ability of courts to review state criminal convictions.
And that is the point that Thomas made in a dissent joined in part by Justice Samuel Alito.
Thomas wrote that the court was basing its decision on “one-and-a-half sentences” in the appeals court opinion.
“In rejecting one of Whitton’s claims — which would fail on other grounds anyway — the Eleventh Circuit mentioned a fact that was notable but certainly not dispositive to its analysis: DNA testing had since further confirmed that Whitton is guilty.”
Toward the end of the opinion, Thomas also opined about several other non-death penalty cases in which the Supreme Court has declined to weigh in with a summary decision. That included a high-profile case the Supreme Court declined to hear two years ago dealing with whether three elite Boston public schools violated the Constitution with a zip-code based admissions policy intended to ensure racial diversity.
“Even when presented with multiple opportunities to vindicate the rights of families to pursue education for their children on color-blind terms, this court ‘refused to correct a glaring constitutional error,’” Thomas wrote in his dissent.
The conservative justice also pointed to a recent case the court declined to hear last year involving Indiana University’s “bias response team,” an effort to lower the temperature of heated rhetoric that critics say winds up chilling speech on campus.
“It is unfortunate that the court chose to intervene at the request of a convicted murderer to correct the Eleventh Circuit’s inconsequential foot fault,” Thomas wrote. “What makes it even worse is that the court does so even while it refuses to correct far more consequential errors for law-abiding citizens, such as the discriminated-against families in Boston.”