Supreme Court's Conservatives Defend Their Handling Of Death Penalty Cases

The bitter battle over the death penalty continued Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court with the highly unusual release of explanatory statements from the court's conservatives as to why they reached such apparently contradictory decisions in two death cases in February and March.

On Feb. 7, the court ruled by a 5-4 vote that Alabama could go ahead with its execution of a Muslim prisoner convicted of murder. The newly energized five-man conservative majority overruled the temporary stay put in place by the lower court because Alabama allowed only a Christian minister in the execution room and refused to allow the condemned man's imam to be present.

The decision was widely condemned by religious groups on the left and right, not to mention the blistering dissent from the court's liberals, who called the decision "profoundly wrong."

Then, just seven weeks later, the court stayed the execution