Left: Gary Richard Whitton (Florida Department of Corrections). Right: U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas speaks at The Catholic University of America”s Columbus School of Law, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.).
Justice Clarence Thomas began the week with a pointed critique of his Supreme Court peers, criticizing them for addressing what he described as a minor mistake in a death penalty case, while frequently ignoring issues that he believes would significantly impact “law-abiding Americans.”
Thomas expressed his disapproval in a dissenting opinion on Monday, coinciding with the release of an orders list. In a per curiam decision, the Supreme Court majority reproached the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for considering DNA evidence that the jury hadn’t reviewed, resulting in a nominal victory for Florida death row inmate Gary Richard Whitton, aged 67.
Historical reports indicate that in 1992, Whitton received a death sentence for the murder of his 50-year-old “friend” James Stallings Maulden, who was described as a “fellow alcoholic,” during a violent altercation at a motel.
The Supreme Court reviewed the case because Whitton argued that the state’s case relied on testimony from an incarcerated high schooler who falsely claimed not to have a criminal record. The student alleged hearing Whitton confess to the murder. The 11th Circuit court had taken an unusual step by considering DNA evidence unseen by the original jury, according to the majority opinion.
The per curiam decision noted, “The evidence in question pertains to blood stains found on Whitton’s boots, which were collected the day following the murder.” The Supreme Court concluded that the 11th Circuit erred in considering this DNA evidence as it was irrelevant to whether the jailhouse informant’s falsehood swayed the jury’s decision.
Justice Thomas, known for his general opposition to overturning capital punishment verdicts, viewed this as an unnecessary endeavor since the outcome merely requires the 11th Circuit to amend “one-and-a-half sentences,” leaving Whitton’s death sentence intact.
“Fortunately, though, the Court’s decision will have no real-world effect. The Eleventh Circuit can reissue a virtually identical opinion after deleting one sentence on page 42 and one part of one sentence on page 40, where the Eleventh Circuit discussed the 2002 DNA tests,” he wrote, before criticizing the court for not consistently error-correcting across the board, particularly in cases in which “summary” intervention would matter.
“This Court has increasingly granted summary relief in certain cases based on lower court errors that seemingly had no effect on the outcome of the case. It would be one thing if this practice reflected the Court’s consistent commitment to correcting legal error in all cases. But, in reality, this Court routinely declines to provide relief to law-abiding Americans when it would actually matter, even after lower courts conspicuously flout this Court’s precedents in ruling against them,” Thomas said.
Thomas added “[i]t is unfortunate that the Court chose to intervene at the request of a convicted murderer to correct the Eleventh Circuit’s inconsequential foot fault.” The conservative justices argued college “students with ‘unpopular’ views” who have had to “self-censor” themselves, “discriminated-against” white and Asian “families in Boston,” and the widow of an Air Force Staff Sergeant Cameron Beck faced “far more consequential errors” but got no hearing.
Beck was off-duty and riding his motorcycle home to have lunch with his family when he died in a car crash at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on April 15, 2021. A civilian employed by the federal government and driving a government-issued van became “distracted on her phone” and turned the vehicle into Beck’s path. Beck died at the scene and the driver later pleaded guilty to criminal negligence, stating that “the accident was ‘100 percent’ her fault,” court records showed.
And yet, his widow could not sue.
“Today, the Court denies her petition, so Mrs. Beck will recover nothing in tort for her husband’s wrongful death,” Thomas wrote in a November dissent.
Justice Samuel Alito joined Thomas’ Monday dissent, except for his analysis on the Beck case.
