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 kicked off the week by slamming his Supreme Court colleagues for taking the time to correct an "inconsequential" error in a death penalty case while "routinely" doing nothing in other cases when "it would actually matter" for "law-abiding Americans."
Thomas' critique came in a dissent on Monday, at the end of an orders list. The court issued a per curiam decision on behalf of the unnamed majority, taking the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to task for considering DNA evidence the jury never saw, and resulting in a win in name only for Florida death row inmate Gary Richard Whitton, 67.
Reports from the time period noted that Whitton was sentenced to death in 1992 for the stabbing and beating murder of his 50-year-old "friend" James Stallings Maulden — a "fellow alcoholic" — in a motel fight.
The matter was before the Supreme Court because Whitton said the state relied on information from a jailed high schooler in the area on spring break who had falsely denied having a prior criminal history when he claimed to have heard Whitton confess to the stabbing. Once at the 11th Circuit, the appellate court "did something peculiar" by considering DNA evidence the jury "never saw," according to the majority.
"The evidence in question relates to blood stains on Whitton's boots, which were seized the day after the murder," the per curiam opinion said. The high court concluded the 11th Circuit shouldn't have considered the DNA evidence because it was "immaterial" to the question of whether a jailhouse informant's lie "influenced the jury's verdict."
Thomas, who has traditionally sided against defendants in capital punishment cases, saw this exercise as a waste of time because the end result will be a revised opinion from the 11th Circuit that removes "one-and-a-half sentences" and leaves Whitton on death row.
"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.
Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.