The Mississippi Supreme Court has a handful of decision lists out since the new members have joined the court, and a number of opinions in these lists are split decisions that might provide some clues about the impact of the change in court personnel (we have three new justices) at the reading-the-runes level of court watching. What we have here is enough evidence to start us scratching our heads, but too small a sample to draw conclusions. This also may just be an artifact about how quickly various judges write. But it’s what we have so far to go on.
I’ve already written about one split decision, arguing that Justices Dickinson and Kitchens got it right in their dissents (where they were joined by Justice Graves) in the Solomon Osborne case. Here’s a story in the Greenwood Commonwealth about the Osborne case, which also notes:
The state Supreme Court is still considering another recommendation, based on an unrelated case, that Osborne be banned for life from the bench. That case involves a then 17-year-old Greenwood female whom Osborne ordered detained n a move the commission claims was the result of “improper, illegal and inappropriate” acts.
There are three more cases with slit opinions. I’m not counting a zoning decision written by Justice Randolph to which Justice Graves dissented without written opinion– without an opinion from him one can’t tell anything about why Justice Graves dissented.
Details about all this below the fold.
