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U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court agrees to take up death penalty sentencing law

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Tuesday it would consider reinstating a death penalty law that requires juries to sentence a defendant to die - rather than serve life in prison - when the evidence for and against imposing death is about equal.

Justices will hear arguments next fall in Kansas' appeal of a state Supreme Court ruling that found the law unconstitutional.

The 1994 law says if the evidence for and against imposing a sentence of death is roughly equal, Kansas juries must choose death instead of life in prison.

The Kansas court ruling invalidated the death sentences of six convicted killers. The high court case involves Michael Marsh II, a Wichita man convicted of fatally shooting and stabbing a woman and setting a fire that killed the woman's toddler.

The Supreme Court will consider how juries weigh evidence for and against death sentences, as well as some technical issues, including whether it's proper for the Supreme Court to intervene.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted an injunction that kept a disgruntled former client of defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran from picketing outside Cochran's office.

Justices did not address broad free-speech questions raised by the appeal because Cochran died a week after the case was argued in March.

Instead, the court ruled 7-2 that in light of Cochran's death, a judge's order limiting the demonstrations of Ulysses Tory "amounts to an overly broad prior restraint upon speech."

Tory argued he had a First Amendment right to picket outside Cochran's Los Angeles office to complain about the services of Cochran, best known for defending O.J. Simpson.

A California judge ordered Tory and his wife to refrain from making any statements about Cochran in a public forum.

Cochran had said that Tory's protests wrongly defamed his reputation and invaded his privacy.

[Last modified June 1, 2005, 00:39:12]