A Hawaii Supreme Court justice used a ruling overturning a decades-old criminal conviction to deliver a blistering rebuke of Chief Justice John Roberts’ Supreme Court, accusing the nation’s highest court of weakening constitutional rights, damaging democracy and advancing a political agenda.
Justice Todd Eddins authored the 91-page majority opinion Wednesday in State v. Granillo , a case involving a man convicted in 1990 of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman on Maui. The court ordered a new trial after concluding that hair and fiber evidence presented by an FBI expert relied on forensic science that has since been discredited.
But in roughly eight pages of the opinion, Eddins argued Hawaii’s courts should not look to the Roberts Court when interpreting the state constitution, using the case to deliver an unusually sharp critique of the nation’s highest court.
LAWYER WHO BEAT HAWAII GUN LAW CALLS STATES RELIANCE ON BLACK CODE DISGRACEFUL
“When six justices walk away from those they are supposed to protect, state constitutions hold the line,” Eddins wrote, referring to the court’s six conservative justices. “That is not defiance. That is the design.”
Eddins argued that Hawaii’s Constitution provides stronger protections than the federal Constitution as currently interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, and said the Court has abandoned landmark civil rights principles.
“The Court that now defines federal due process does not honor the work of 1954,” Eddins wrote. “It revives the work of 1857. The work of 1896.”
Eddins was referring to Brown v. Board of Education, ruled in 1954, which ended racial segregation in public schools, as well as Dred Scott v. Sandford, the infamous 1857 decision denying citizenship to Black Americans and Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 ruling that upheld racial segregation.
Eddins argued that the Roberts Court no longer reflects the constitutional principles established in Brown v. Board of Education, but instead, he argued the Court’s originalist approach relies on the same type of constitutional interpretation in the discredited Dred Scott and Plessy decisions.
“Todays hubristic originalists use the same method to control modern life,” Eddins wrote.
SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN LIMIT ON PARTY CAMPAIGN SPENDING IN COORDINATION WITH CANDIDATES
“The Court overrides what Congress passed,” Eddins continued. “It overrides what the people chose. All to serve its own ends. What this Court has done to constitutional rights, democratic institutions, and the rule of law explains why HawaiÊ»is Constitution takes no instruction from it.”
Throughout the opinion, Eddins pointed to many of the Roberts Court’s most consequential decisions as evidence that constitutional protections have been weakened, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion; Citizens United v. FEC on campaign finance; Rucho v.
