2008—Even by Justice John Paul Stevens’s unusual standards, his opinion concurring in the judgment in Baze v. Rees is remarkably strange. Stevens rambles on for some nine pages explaining the idiosyncratic bases—at bottom, “my own experience”—for his newfound view, after more than three decades on the Court, that the death penalty itself violates the Eighth Amendment. But Stevens then concludes that he will abide by the Court’s precedents that the death penalty is constitutional—and that he agrees that petitioners failed to prove that Kentucky’s lethal-injection protocol violates the Eighth Amendment.
In a brief opinion responding to Stevens’s folly, Justice Scalia comments on Stevens’s ultimate reliance on his “own experience”: “Purer expression cannot be found of the principle of rule by judicial fiat.”
2010—As part of an impressive early bid to displace Rosemary Barkett as the wackiest judge on the Eleventh Circuit, new Obama appointee Beverly B. Martin votes in dissent (in United States v. Lee) to overturn Van Buren Lee’s conviction for attempting to entice a child to engage in illicit sexual activity. Martin argues that there was insufficient evidence to support the jury finding that Lee had taken a “substantial step” towards committing enticement, as he “never bought a plane, bus or train ticket” to travel to California (where he believed the targets of his actions to live) and “never set a date for a visit.”
Travel logistics aside, the majority spells out in painful detail that Lee and “Candi Kane”—the postal inspector posing as the mother of two girls, ages seven and twelve— “repeatedly discussed whether, how, and when Candi would grant Lee sexual access to her daughters, and Lee produced and sent Candi and her daughters sexually explicit images of him.”