MARCUS DANTE REED v. LOUISIANA (2017)

     The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

     Justice Breyer, dissenting from the denial of certiorari.

     Marcus Dante Reed was sentenced to death in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, a county that in recent history has apparently sentenced more people to death per capita than any other county in the United States. See Aviv, Revenge Killing: Race and the Death Penalty in a Louisiana Parish, The New Yorker, July 6 & 13, 2015, p. 34. The arbitrary role that geography plays in the imposition of the death penalty, along with the other serious problems I have previously described, has led me to conclude that the Court should consider the basic question of the death penalty's constitutionality. See Glossip v. Gross, 576 U. S. ___ (2015) (Breyer, J., dissenting). For this reason, I would grant Reed's petition for a writ of certiorari.

     The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

     Justice Breyer, dissenting from the denial of certiorari.

     Marcus Dante Reed was sentenced to death in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, a county that in recent history has apparently sentenced more people to death per capita than any other county in the United States. See Aviv, Revenge Killing: Race and the Death Penalty in a Louisiana Parish, The New Yorker, July 6 & 13, 2015, p. 34. The arbitrary role that geography plays in the imposition of the death penalty, along with the other serious problems I have previously described, has led me to conclude that the Court should consider the basic question of the death penalty's constitutionality. See Glossip v. Gross, 576 U. S. ___ (2015) (Breyer, J., dissenting). For this reason, I would grant Reed's petition for a writ of certiorari.