When Samuel Alito was a Justice Department lawyer in the 1980s, he wrote that he saw no legal problem with a police officer shooting and killing an unarmed 15-year-old who was fleeing from a $10 burglary.
Alito, now nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, said the shooting "can be justified as reasonable" and advised his bosses that the courts shouldn't interfere with police discretion to use deadly force. But the Supreme Court thought otherwise - by a 6-3 vote. Justice Byron White noted that the Constitution bars "unreasonable" searches and seizures, adding acidly that "a police officer may not seize an unarmed, nondangerous suspect by shooting him dead."
The case is one of numerous examples of Alito's troubling deference, both as a government lawyer and a judge, to the power of government institutions, employers and others in authority. Whether that deference adequately protects rights of individuals deserves very close scrutiny at Senate hearings on his nomination next month:
?In a death penalty case, Alito rejected a 17-year-old's claims that his public defenders had failed to use mitigating evidence of mental retardation and traumatic upbringing. Again the Supreme Court disagreed, using the case to warn state courts that shoddy defense work in capital cases shouldn't be tolerated.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051227/cm_usatoday/ifyoucherishyourrightsthisnomineebearsquestioning;_ylt=AheKDF11Atss6ma4XjBXBPas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3YWFzYnA2BHNlYwM3NDI-