Cert petition says judge's 89-page opinion was ghostwritten by prosecutors
An Alabama death-row inmate is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether federal courts may defer to an 89-page judicial opinion that was entirely ghostwritten by prosecutors.
The state judge who adopted the ghostwritten opinion as his own didn’t even drop the word “proposed” from the title “Proposed Memorandum Opinion,” the Marshall Project reported in a look at the case in June. The cert petition (PDF) filed on behalf of the inmate, Doyle Lee Hamm, argues the case presents “the opportunity to rectify the problem of sham judicial opinions in capital cases.”
Though judges often rely on attorneys to draft routine orders, judges in both Alabama and Texas rely on ghostwriting for substantive opinions, the article reported.
Since that initial story, the Marshall Project says it received “a wave of emails from defense attorneys” who said judges have also relied on ghostwritten opinions in capital cases in Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Ohio.
Stephen Bright, president and senior counsel of the Southern Center for Human Rights, told the Marshall Project the problem of ghostwritten opinions in Alabama has lingered for decades. He believes appeals courts have never directly addressed the issue partly because judges don’t want to embarrass each other.
Updated at 2:30 p.m. to correctly state Stephen Bright’s title.
