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One more Alito or Roberts, and we're done.

In my Daniel Day-Lewis "Last of the Mohicans" voice: "Justice Stevens .... stay alive!!! Whatever you have to do, .... stay alive!!!"

I've been involved in 7 death penalty cases, and for the past 13 years, have been appellate counsel for 2 guys still on death row.

There is a huge difference between life imprisonment and strapping a guy to gurney and putting him down like a rabid dog. The process for which we decide who gets executed, and who doesn't, is grossly disparate from state to state, case to case, and the deck is heavily stacked against the accused.

The appellate courts and the US Supreme Court are very familiar with the unfairness aspects, that stem from homicide cases.

Part of the rationale in limiting the death penalty to homicide cases, is a recognition of the Court that the mass mob mentality jumps out in child rape cases, which are the the most likely type of case for an innocent person to be convicted, as all it takes it some child saying "he made me suck his penis". No physical proof ... no nothing. Just a prosecutor with the powerful argument, "why would the child make such a thing up?"

Had the Court gone the other way, appellate courts would be forever swamped litigating a slew of death penalty cases, and the state legislatures would forever be involved in a game of deuling banjos, expanding the death penalty to robbery, drug dealing, DUI's, and every other crime on the food chain.