{"id":339,"date":"2026-06-09T18:39:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=339"},"modified":"2026-06-09T18:39:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:39:16","slug":"a-death-row-case-that-divided-kavanaugh-and-gorsuch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"A Death Row Case That Divided Kavanaugh and Gorsuch"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>On the surface, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh share much in common. They are both judicial conservatives, both self-professed originalists, both former federal appellate court judges with respected records, and both were appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by the same president.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=337\">Nude Shrek Text to Ohio State Senator Reportedly Lands Blogger in Jail<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yet there are certain legal issues that have brought out notable differences between them. The Supreme Court&#8217;s recent 5\u20134 decision in  offers a fascinating case in point.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>You\u2019re reading <em>Injustice System<\/em> from Damon Root and <em>Reason<\/em>. Get more of Damon\u2019s commentary on constitutional law and American history.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<form>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><label>Facebook<\/label><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><label>Email<span><span>(Required)<\/span><\/span><\/label><\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div> <button>SUBSCRIBE<\/button>\n<\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<p><iframe id=\"gform_ajax_frame_43\" name=\"gform_ajax_frame_43\" src=\"about:blank\" style=\"display:none;width:0px;height:0px;\" title=\"This iframe contains the logic required to handle Ajax powered Gravity Forms.\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Pitchford v. Cain<\/em> centered on the reach of a 1986 SCOTUS precedent called <em>Batson v. Kentucky<\/em>. In <em>Batson<\/em>, the Court reaffirmed that it was unconstitutional for a prosecutor to exclude prospective jurors on account of race. In <em>Pitchford<\/em>, the Supreme Court was tasked with deciding whether Terry Pitchford&#8217;s rights were violated when a lower court decided that his defense lawyer had waived the right under <em>Batson<\/em> to challenge the prosecution&#8217;s supposedly race-neutral rationales for peremptorily excluding four out of five prospective black jurors in the case.<\/p>\n<p>Writing for the majority, Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, held that Pitchford&#8217;s constitutional rights had indeed been violated.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;After a prosecutor asserts race-neutral reasons for a peremptory strike, the defense counsel must at least have an opportunity to argue that the asserted race-neutral reasons were not the actual reasons\u2014that is, the reasons were pretextual,&#8221; Kavanaugh wrote. &#8220;Then, the trial court can determine whether those asserted reasons were the actual reasons or instead were pretextual.&#8221; But &#8220;in this case,&#8221; Kavanaugh continued, &#8220;whether due to confusion, oversight, an overly hurried jury selection process, or some other cause, things broke down, and the ordinary trial-court procedure for resolving <em>Batson<\/em> claims at step three never occurred\u2014notwithstanding the repeated efforts of Pitchford&#8217;s counsel to pursue and preserve the <em>Batson<\/em> objection.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=335\">The World Cup Isn\u2019t the Best Soccer Has To Offer, but the World Loves It Anyway<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Writing in dissent, Gorsuch, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett, denied that any such injustice had occurred. &#8220;Nothing in the record indicates a trial court seeking to thwart defense counsel&#8217;s ability to represent their client,&#8221; Gorsuch argued.<\/p>\n<p>Normally, when it comes to matters of criminal justice, Gorsuch is the one with the reputation for being more sympathetic to criminal defendants. Kavanaugh, meanwhile, generally has a reputation for being the more reliable vote in favor of law enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>But this case flipped the script. Here, thanks to an opinion by Kavanaugh, written over Gorsuch&#8217;s dissent, a death row inmate&#8217;s conviction and death sentence were tossed out. This time around, it was Kavanaugh, not Gorsuch, who gave the civil liberties side the win.<\/p>\n<h1><strong>Gordon Wood, RIP<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>I just learned the sad news that Gordon Wood, the towering historian of the American Revolution, was struck and killed by a car on Sunday. He was 92.<\/p>\n<p>I first encountered Wood&#8217;s work as an undergraduate history major and have been reading or rereading him ever since. Probably my favorite among Wood&#8217;s acclaimed books is <em>The Radicalism of the American Revolution, <\/em>which earned him a justly deserved Pulitzer Prize. For those of us who write regularly about early American intellectual, political, and legal history, Wood is one of those scholars whose influence is ever present. RIP.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=333\">DOJ Claim That Trump Could \u2018Bulldoze\u2019 Statue of Liberty Fits a Pattern<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling in Pitchford v. Cain highlights an important difference between the two conservative justices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-supreme-court"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Death Row Case That Divided Kavanaugh and Gorsuch - Pioneer Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=339\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Death Row Case That Divided Kavanaugh and Gorsuch - Pioneer Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Supreme Court&#039;s ruling in Pitchford v. 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