Because, according to today’s story story, it seems as though Seamus McCaffery forgot:

Last week, he made a point of his police background during an oral argument in a death-penalty case - and his remarks have become a hot topic among judges and lawyers who handle criminal cases, with some expecting defense attorneys to challenge McCaffery's ability to be fair to death-row inmates.

The case focused on the novel question of whether defendant Thavirak Sam, who was sentenced to death in 1991, can be forcibly medicated so his appeal can proceed.

The question is important because Sam, who suffers from mental illness, can't be executed because he has been ruled mentally incompetent. If he is forcibly medicated with antipsychotic drugs, Sam might become competent, and that could set the stage for his execution.

As defense lawyer Jules Epstein made his case that it would be unconstitutional to forcibly medicate Sam, McCaffery leaned forward and told the packed courtroom that he could restrain himself no longer.

The justice said he felt compelled to point out that Sam's relatives had been waiting years for justice.

Referring to his years on the police force, McCaffery said, "I was the one who picked up the bodies" and notified family members about such deaths. "How about finality for these family members?" he asked.

In addition to interjecting overly personal statements about “picking up bodies” McCaffery said he couldn’t help himself.

Well, he needs to. He’s not on the court to be a knee-jerk reactionary to any murder situation he sees. This is a question of forced medication of a mentally ill man. His job is to listen to the arguments and consider them in light of constitutional rights of all parties.

If he can't help himself, then he needs to recuse himself from this and all other death penalty cases.

Reading the news these days gets me excited about what seems like some significant wins for criminal justice reform.

As most of you probably already read, NJ abolished the death penalty today and earlier this month there have been several changes to federal drug sentencing laws .

It will be interesting to see if NJ's decision will give more momentum to the PA anti-death penalty work and can be leveraged to force a more timely response to the demand for a moratorium. It will also be interesting to see how other criminal justice related work specific to PA laws, like changing the terms of life sentences, can benefit from the public attention to these other changes.