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Justice Alito casts his first vote

WASHINGTON - New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito cast his first vote on Wednesday, as the court refused to give Missouri permission to immediately execute a man who killed a teenage honor student.

The court's 9-0 action was procedural, however, because a stay was already set to expire Wednesday afternoon.

Separately, the court acting without Alito rejected Michael Taylor's appeal that argued that Missouri's death penalty system is racist. Taylor is black and his victim was white.

"The death penalty as practiced in the state of Missouri discriminates against African-Americans such as (Taylor), such that it is a badge of slavery," the justices were told in a filing by Taylor's lawyer, John William Simon.

Taylor had won a stay until Wednesday afternoon in a lower court, and Missouri wanted the justices to lift that stay. It was the second time in two days that the Supreme Court had turned down a Missouri request to allow it to proceed with the execution. The Tuesday vote, without Alito, came hours after he won Senate confirmation to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and took the oath.

Alito had a second swearing-in Wednesday, this time with a big ceremony at the White House.

In his first month on the bench, the court's new junior justice will find himself in the thick of fights over the environment, evidence rules for accused killers, Texas politics and the fortune of Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith's late husband.

On a more practical level, there are other concerns for the 55-year-old Alito: getting a new office and staff, having his picture made, finding his parking space, even learning about the court cafeteria and gym.

In the courtroom, he will take the seat at the far right, the one for the court's newest member. He will sit next to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a one-time women's rights attorney who was President Bill Clinton's first Supreme Court nominee.

Three seats down will be Justice Antonin Scalia, the court's other New Jersey native and Italian American with whom Alito is often compared. O'Connor's retirement gives Scalia a better seat, right next to Chief Justice John Roberts.

To help with case prep work, Alito can bring his law clerks from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and also ask some of O'Connor's clerks to stay.

Alito is expected to side with prosecutors more often than O'Connor, who has been the swing vote in capital punishment cases.

Rob Warden, director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, predicted that more death row inmates will raise similar claims on race, based on studies about how race affects the outcome of cases.

"I think that argument is going to have a new life during the term that Justice Alito serves on the court," Warden said.

Also Wednesday, Alito was given his assignment for handling emergency appeals: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

In Missouri's appeal, the state argued that the stay was preventing it from preparing for Taylor's execution. The state must deal with "preserving security and order in the process, and adequately caring for victim's family, public, and other witnesses," the justices were told by Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon.

Lower courts were still reviewing Taylor's lethal injection claim, so another Supreme Court appeal was possible.

The victim, 15-year-old Ann Harrison, was waiting for a school bus when Taylor and an accomplice kidnapped her in 1989.

[Last modified February 2, 2006, 02:15:36]