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Supreme Court turns down Louisiana death penalty case

By Allen Cone
The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a Louisiana murderer's request to consider whether the death penalty is constitutional. File photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI
The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a Louisiana murderer's request to consider whether the death penalty is constitutional. File photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

WASHINGTON, May 31 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request by a Louisiana murderer to decide whether the death penalty is unconstitutional.

Two of the eight justices -- Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- agreed to consider the question. It takes four justices to take a case and the court is short one justice since the death of Antonin Scalia in February.

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Breyer wrote that Lamondre Tucker "may well have received the death penalty not because of the comparative egregiousness of his crime, but because of an arbitrary feature of his case, namely, geography."

Breyer noted that the parish in Shreveport "imposes almost half the death sentences in Louisiana, even though it accounts for 5 percent of the state's population and 5 percent of its homicides."

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Tucker was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder of his 18-year-old girlfriend in 2008 in Caddo Parish. Tavia Sills was five months pregnant at the time. The jury deliberated for one hour in 2011.

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In January, the Supreme Court declined to take up another capital punishment case. Without comment, the court denied an appeal by Shonda Walter of her death sentence for the murder of an 83-year-old Pennsylvania man in 2003.

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