Federal Judge: Delaware Execution ​“Highlights Profound Failings in Our Judicial Process”

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory M. Sleet has crit­i­cized the lack of judi­cial review pro­vid­ed by the state and fed­er­al courts pri­or to Delaware​’s 2012 exe­cu­tion of Shannon Johnson, say­ing Johnson’s exe­cu­tion ​“high­lights pro­found fail­ings in our judi­cial process.” In an arti­cle in the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice mag­a­zine, Judge Sleet — who was Chief Judge at the time of the case — called “[t]he Johnson case, and its result, … by far the most trou­bling I have encoun­tered.” Johnson con­fessed to the crime and sought exe­cu­tion by waiv­ing his appeals. Johnson’s state court lawyer then advo­cat­ed in sup­port of his wish to be exe­cut­ed and opposed efforts by lawyers for Johnson’s rel­a­tives to obtain review of his men­tal state. Questions about Johnson’s men­tal com­pe­tence and the state’s process for deter­min­ing com­pe­tence were nev­er reviewed by any court. Sleet stayed the exe­cu­tion twice, express­ing con­cerns about flaws in the state com­pe­ten­cy pro­ceed­ings, but the stays were lift­ed by the fed­er­al Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. “[T]he case was and remains dis­turb­ing to me because, in the unnec­es­sary haste to exe­cute Johnson before his exe­cu­tion cer­tifi­cate expired — a haste arguably exac­er­bat­ed by the State and the Third Circuit – I believe that the judi­cia­ry’s fun­da­men­tal role of ensur­ing due process, as real­ized through an adver­sar­i­al process, was sac­ri­ficed or, at the very least, under­mined,” Sleet wrote. Sleet argued that Johnson’s case illus­trates larg­er prob­lems in the death penal­ty sys­tem. “[I]f one of the goals of our adver­sar­i­al process is, as I believe it to be, to ​‘pre­serve the integri­ty of soci­ety itself,’ we must face the fact that, in so far as the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty is con­cerned, the process is bro­ken,” he said.

(J. Masulli Reyes and B. Horn, ​“Judge blasts Delaware death penal­ty case,” The News Journal, September 4, 2015; G. Sleet, ​“The Execution of Shannon Johnson,” Criminal Justice, Summer 2015.) See New Voices and Mental Illness.