You mad?

Louisiana State Supreme Court justices rage impotently over matters.

Justice Jeanette Theriot Knoll — in an almost two-page criticism of the five U.S. Supreme Court justices forming the majority in Obergefell — stated she concurred with the opinion only because she is “constrained to follow the rule of law.”

She continued, “I write separately to express my views concerning the horrific impact these five lawyers have made on the democratic rights of the American people to define marriage and the rights stemming by operation of law therefrom. It is a complete and unnecessary insult to the people of Louisiana who voted on this very issue.”

Knoll, who in 2005 wrote the court’s unanimous ruling in Forum for Equality PAC v. McKeithen validating the state’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, further called the federal ruling an “imposition” on the Louisiana public’s wishes.

“I wholeheartedly disagree and find that, rather than a triumph of constitutionalism, the opinion of these five lawyers is an utter travesty as is my constrained adherence to their ‘law of the land’ enacted not by the will of the American people but by five judicial activists,” she wrote in Tuesday’s written comments on the Lafayette case seeking marriage and adoption rights.

"The opinion of five lawyers" is supposed to be some sort of belittlement, I guess. But since this is a State Supreme Court justice who is herself a lawyer picking on US Supreme Court justices who are also lawyers for being lawyers I think, maybe, it loses its punch.  Maybe if she threw in a few "jiggery pokerys" she would have had something.

Anyway, that is one mad lawyer. The Louisiana State Supreme Court does not suffer well the equal protection of the law in the interest of granting everyone some basic dignity. 

Meanwhile, back in federal court, the lawyers on the 5th Circuit are totally fine with torturing convicts.

Louisiana does not have to air-condition the entire death row facility at the State Penitentiary at Angola but does need to provide some relief to three condemned killers with medical conditions who complained that extremely hot conditions on death row subject them to heat-related injury, a federal appellate court ruled Wednesday.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans agreed with Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson, of Baton Rouge, that Louisiana is in violation of the three prisoners’ Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

The 5th Circuit panel, however, said Jackson went too far in ordering that heat indexes on death row be maintained at or below 88 degrees, which the panel said effectively requires the state to install air conditioning throughout the death row housing.

 It's partly cloudy and 93 degrees in Angola today. About 10 degrees hotter if Justice-Lawyer Knoll walks in the room, though. Better keep her away from the prison for a while.