The Supreme Court today upheld the death sentence for a Tennessee inmate whose attorney, during his trial, presented no witnesses and made no closing argument. By an 8-1 vote, the justices said this was his attorney's legal strategy, and he doesn't get another trial just because it didn't work. By most accounts, the guy looks guilty as hell, but Justice Stevens says it's really not kosher to sentence a man to death when the defense "entirely failed to subject the prosecution's case to meaningful adversarial testing."

I thought even if everyone "knows" the guy is guilty that the prosecution was still supposed to fight to prove it. The opposite is a guilty plea, no? Maybe I'm a fogey like Justice Stevens.