The U.S. Supreme Court announced on March 24 that it will rehear Kansas v. Marsh. This case involves the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Kansas’ death penal­ty law, which was struck down by the state Supreme Court in 2004. Kansas law required a death sen­tence if the jury found that there was an equal bal­ance between the aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors pre­sent­ed at the sen­tenc­ing hear­ing. The U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ments ear­li­er in December when Justice O’Connor was still on the Court. Now that she has been replaced by Justice Alito, and prob­a­bly because the Court is split in such a way that his vote would be deci­sive, the Court will hold a re-argu­ment on both the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the statute and on whether the High Court has juris­dic­tion to resolve this issue involv­ing a state law. The argu­ment will like­ly be held in April. 

(Associated Press, March 25, 2006). See Supreme Court.

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