WASHINGTON — Newly seated Justice Sonia Sotomayor cast her first recorded vote on the Supreme Court by joining three liberal justices in an unsuccessful effort to stop a pending execution in Ohio.
The full court turned down the last-minute appeal from lawyers for Jason Getsy late Monday evening by a 5-4 vote. Getsy, 33 and a convicted hit man, was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday morning.
In a 1995 murder-for-hire attack, Getsy shot Charles Serafino seven times, although the victim survived. Ann Serafino, his mother, was killed in the shooting.
No one questioned Getsy’s guilt, but lawyers argued that he should be spared because others in the murder-for-hire plot, including its architect, did not get the death penalty.
Last month, the Ohio Parole Board recommended sparing Getsy’s life on those grounds, but Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, disagreed Friday. He said the more lenient treatment given the other defendants did not call for sparing the life of the shooter, Getsy.
The Supreme Court issued a two-line order Monday evening rejecting Getsy’s plea for a stay of execution. Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sotomayor dissented.
Sotomayor replaced Justice David Souter, who often voted with the liberal bloc to limit the use of the death penalty or to delay a pending execution.
Earlier Monday, the high court, in a 6-2 decision without Sotomayor, ordered a federal judge to examine the evidence in the case of Troy Davis, who was awaiting execution for the 1989 shooting of a police officer in Savannah, Ga. Lawyers for Davis say seven of the nine witnesses at his trial have recanted their testimony.
