What Would Zimbabwe Do?

In 1999 one of the scores of death-row appeals that land at the Supreme Court each year caught the eye of Justice Stephen Breyer. Thomas Knight, who had been sentenced to death by the State of Florida in 1975 for killing a married couple, argued in the appeal that he had been living in anguished anticipation of execution for so long that his sentence had become a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Knight's case was joined with that of Carey Moore, who'd been on Nebraska's death row for nineteen years for killing two cabdrivers.

No court in the United States had ever lifted a death sentence for this reason. But Breyer had a hunch that courts in other countries might have done so, and he asked his clerks to investigate. He had issued a similar directive earlier that term, when he wanted to know more ...