WASHINGTON — With no fanfare, the Supreme Court this summer granted a last-minute reprieve to a man who had spent the last 17 years on death row in Pennsylvania. Convicted of stabbing a tavern owner to death and setting him on fire, Ronald Rompilla had run out of appeals when the high court stepped in.
By the narrowest of margins — 5 to 4 — the court vacated the death penalty and returned the case for resentencing. It marked the third time since 2000 that a loose coalition of liberal and swing-vote justices has struck down death-penalty cases because of poor work by defense lawyers.
Of broader importance, the court in the Rompilla case overturned a lower ruling written by U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. — the same man who appears likely to replace one of those swing voters on the Supreme Court early next year.
