On a Big Issue, Little Is Known

By Charles Lane

Monday, August 1, 2005; Page A15

Activists on both the left and right have focused intently on every shred of possible evidence that Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. would vote to overrule the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion.

But there has been far less attention to an equally contentious issue that takes up far more of the justices' time each term than abortion: capital punishment. Every death sentence in the country comes before the court not once but twice or more: first on direct appeals, the vast majority of which are brushed aside, and then on habeas corpus challenges claiming constitutional violations at trial or sentencing.