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Constitutional Law Keyed to Choper
Callins v. Collins
Citation:
510 U.S. 1141 (1994)Facts
Bruce Edwin Callins was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Texas. His case involved the shooting of a man in a tavern who was left to bleed to death. Callins challenged his death sentence through various appeals, ultimately petitioning the Supreme Court. While the specific details of his crime were not extensively discussed in the Court’s opinions, the case became significant not for its particular facts but because it served as the vehicle for Justice Blackmun’s landmark dissent from the denial of certiorari. In this dissent, Justice Blackmun announced his conclusion that the death penalty could not be administered in a manner consistent with constitutional requirements. The Court denied certiorari, effectively allowing Callins’s execution to proceed as scheduled for February 23, 1994.
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