Haymarket and SCOTUS

Some points of legal procedure regarding Karl's Haymarket narrative. The trial of the Haymarket anarchists was, of course, a pre-scripted show without even a semblance of the Due Process protections that the recently enacted 14th Amendment (1868) had guranteed them. Significant portions of the trial transcript can be read here A year to the day later, on November 2, 1887, the anarchists petitioned for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, who, by denying the the writ, allowed the trial verdict stand. Spies, Parsons and the rest were thereafter hanged in short order. If SCOTUS sinned in this, it was one of omission rather than commission. Karl uses interesting phraseology, and points up an interesting fact of the U.S. federalist scheme of government, when he says that by denying cert. SCOTUS "knowingly" allowed innocent defendants to hang. Factually, Karl's probably correct. No clear-headed, honest reviewer of the record could believe that there was sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the anarchists were guilty. Quite the contrary. But under the U.S. system of jurisprudence factual guilt or innocence is often not the primary concern of an appellate court when determining whether the federal courts should review a state court decisions. State's rights concerns are often determinative, the result being that it is not uncommon that most-likely factually innocent defendants are often deprived of their property, liberty or, as in this case, even their lives. For a more recent instance of judicial expression of these concerns see Chief Justice Roberts' dissent in House v. Bell, in which he argues that a post-conviction DNA exoneration is not enough to grant federal review of a state court verdict. (Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_v._Bell; SCOTUS opinion: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-8990.pdf ) In that case Mr. House remains on death row despite being almost certainly exonerated by DNA evidence unavailable at the time of his trial. If Roberts' view had prevailed with the Court and Mr. House had been executed, would Roberts bear any moral culpability in this death? Thankfully for Mr. House, the new Chief Justice's reasoning did not persuade a majority on the Court. But had Roberts had his Druthers Mr. House's chancing of meeting a similar fate as Messrs. Spies, Parsons et. al would've increased exponentially. However morally culpable the 1887 Court was or was not for denying cert., the same must be said for Roberts. --Nate