An epilogue on the Butler Campaign

Today it was reported that the US Supreme Court has decided that in most cases, a murder victim's prior communications to the police are inadmissible because the accused murderer has no ability to cross-examine the victim on the statements. The local paper is reporting that this could end up meaning a retrial for Mark Jensen, against whom such a statement was said by jurors to be the sine qua non evidence for conviction.

Having offered the same opinion as the majority of the highest court of the land was offered as evidence of Louis Butler's being unqualified or undeserving to remain on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in attack ads that successfully removed him from the bench.

But the decision does reflect well on Scalia. This was one of those instances of exactly the type he cited where fealty to his judicial philosophy yielded a decision that was not the desired result for conservatives. The conservative wing of the court was pro-defendant to the man. It was Breyer, Stevens and Kennedy dissenting. It is gross stereotyping to presume that anyone on this court is entirely consistent or blandly predictable either positively or negatively.