Shackled to a jurisprudence

As detailed here, the US Supreme Court yesterday granted cert. in Deck v. Missouri, 04-5293. In Deck, a capital defendant contends, according to this decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri, that “having to appear before the jury wearing leg irons and handcuffed to a belly chain” during the penalty phase of his capital trial “violated his rights to due process, equal protection, confrontation of the evidence, a fair and reliable sentencing and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.”

Though I am not an expert on defendant shackling jurisprudence, I know enough about death penalty litigation to conclude that the precise issue before the High Court in Deck probably arises in only a few dozen cases each year. Though obviously this issue is very important to Mr. Deck, the broader jurisprudential significance of Deck for capital sentencing law and policy is probably quite limited. But the cert. grant in Deck is another reminder of how much work the Supreme Court created for itself since it started seriously regulating capital sentencing procedures three decades ago after its landmark rulings in Furman and Gregg.

As I noted here, I see some jurisprudential parallels between the developing Apprendi/Blakely line of non-capital sentencing regulations and the Furman/Gregg line of capital sentencing regulations. I will not be surprised if it takes three decades and even longer to sort out all of the issues that Blakely raises. I thus wonder if the Justices are already feeling shackled by Blakely and all the jurisprudential work that lies ahead.