At the Supreme Court, the least significant and least noticed cases sometimes say the most about the institution and our system of justice.
Dretke v. Haley, decided last month with no fanfare, is just such a case. Unfortunately, the story it tells is of an institution and a system remarkably unconcerned with the common call simply to do the right thing.
Everyone involved in Michael Wayne Haley's case -- the State of Texas, which prosecuted him; the lower federal court judges who heard his case; and all the U.S. Supreme Court's justices -- recognize that he's been in jail more than six years for a crime carrying a maximum sentence of two years.
Yet in jail he remains, while his case winds its way through the appellate process. Read the strange and fascinating story of Mr. Haley's case here, from Findlaw columnist Edward Lazarus.