An interesting thing to ponder. I suppose it comes down to two opposing points of views (please excuse the density of double negatives):
It is better that the non-innocent will not go unpunished (even if it means innocents may be punished).
It is better that innocents not be wrongfully punished (even if it means that non-innocents may go unpunished).

"Is it bad that I am happy that he died? "

Clearly, people think that it is bad.

No, he didn't say they should or shouldn't be put to death. He merely said there is nothing in the US Constitution regarding this.

You seem to be mixing up the legislature and juidiciary.

Of course.
But you seem to forget Scalia was a judge, not a congressman. His job was not to create or change laws, or to decide whether they're morally "good" or "evil" but to make rulings based on existing ones. If the law is bad, blame the legislature who made it, not the juidiciary.

That aside, as RWarehall explained, there is a solid reason behind double jeopardy.

I'm probably misunderstanding the whole situation then..

I have to disagree with that.. I think that anyone making a decision like that has to take morality into it (whether they are a judge or jury or whatever), that's surely the point of their job? If it was just a strict matter of following the law we could probably have a computer make the decisions instead...

When I did provide the real quote of the actual official response, I only quoted the part that was bastardized in the media. Further on, he has more to say that clearly does not show him to be as "evil" as certain activists want you to believe...

We granted certiorari on the question whether it violates due process or constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for a State to execute a person who, having been convicted of murder after a full and fair trial, later alleges that newly discovered evidence shows him to be “actually innocent.” I would have preferred to decide that question, particularly since, as the Court’s discussion shows, it is perfectly clear what the answer is: There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough), for finding in the Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction. In saying that such a right exists, the dissenters apply nothing but their personal opinions to invalidate the rules of more than two thirds of the States, and a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure for which this Court itself is responsible. If the system that has been in place for 200 years (and remains widely approved) “shocks” the dissenters’ consciences, post, at ____, perhaps they should doubt the calibration of their consciences, or, better still, the usefulness of “conscience-shocking” as a legal test.
I nonetheless join the entirety of the Court’s opinion, including the final portion (pages 869-870)—because there is no legal error in deciding a case by assuming arguendo that an asserted constitutional right exists, and because I can understand, or at least am accustomed to, the reluctance of the present Court to admit publicly that Our Perfect Constitution 1 lets stand any injustice, much less the execution of an innocent man who has received, though to no avail, all the process that our society has traditionally deemed adequate. With any luck, we shall avoid ever having to face this embarrassing question again, since it is improbable that evidence of innocence as convincing as today’s opinion requires would fail to produce an executive pardon.
My concern is that in making life easier for ourselves we not appear to make it harder for the lower federal courts, imposing upon them the burden of regularly analyzing newly-discovered-evidence-of-innocence claims in capital cases (in which event such federal claims, it can confidently be predicted, will become routine and even repetitive). A number of Courts of Appeals have hitherto held, largely in reliance on our unelaborated statement.

Adjust the slider to a happy mix of most guilty get caught and most innocent go free. No matter what you do, there will be innocent that get wrongly punished and guilty that run free in the dynamics of power.

Actual marriage isn't a right. It's not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, and everyone has to apply (and be approved for) a license. I do not understand why people say it is a right that was being denied. There is no trampling of a Right here, but left wing spinners will spin it however they see fit. Why is it gay people who were denied marriage licenses were being denied a simple right, but straight people who were also denied marriage licenses weren't? Sure there were exponentially more gay people denied for an obvious reason (the law didn't allow for same sex marriage) but it was a legal reason. I'm not arguing that the law being overturned was wrong. I'm glad it was. My point is more on the angle of the argument. The argument taken was always that marriage is a basic right, and it isn't.

Yes, President Obama will nominate someone. However, the chances of the GOP controlled Senate confirming anyone that Obama nominates is slim. I hope I am wrong about that.

Why? I'm done with Obama screwing up this country. There needs to be a breath of fresh air.

Just listen to something else othet than Linking Park once in a while that will fix it.

Short explanation: legal rights change as the society which is governed changes. See: every federal law passed since 1789.

Hyperbolically-inappropriate analogy: it was once a protected right for white people to own black people. We even had a tussle about that, once.

Mollifying addendum: Since benefits are given to those in a marriage, denying license based on who someone is causes them a legal harm. Though the path is wending, the benefits of marriage were considered basic; denying someone those benefits had to be done on a case by case basis, instead of as a group, which is considered discriminatory. Basically, the essence of the person cannot be considered when deciding to permit something - only the things they do and the effects the permission will have.

Thus, you may not consider marriage a right, but the people who make the rules do. And their opinion is more valuable than yours.

EDIT: Also, you may find the text of the ninth amendment illustrative of why your entire argument is flawed.

That's not principled that's murder. If he wasn't a Supreme Court Justice we'd normally call that conspiracy to commit murder and he'd be in prison for a very long time.
Happy at the death of somebody that made the lives of millions worse because he couldn't get his head out of his own ass to do his job like a competent jurist. Bottom line is that originalism hasn't been a viable path to take in at least 200 years. We can't ask the people who wrote and ratified the constitution to tell us what they meant, so it's a matter of reading tea leaves.
That's ridiculous, people regularly get let out of prison because the prosecutors in the case failed to hand over ex-culpatory evidence. Having new evidence come to light isn't substantively any different. The police could do a less than thorough job of checking up on the facts because they don't contribute to a guilty verdict and a lot of the people on death row are there because they lacked competent counsel and the funding to look into these things at the time.

The only way in which this ruling would have made any sense is if everybody had the right to a competent, effective and properly funded counsel before and during the trial. We don't have that. You're just entitled to an attorney being physically present. Not necessarily mentally present or even doing their job.

Well, it really is. It's the difference between doing something that you know is wrong, and something that happened to be wrong but you thought was right. It's procedurally very important, and lawyers love their procedural details. That's why you can get sent to jail for, say, rigging a case; but not for sentencing someone who is later found innocent. EDIT: On the other side of the bench, it's why we have different felony categories for, say, premeditated murder, and negligent manslaughter

I don't have a problem with your stance, but that detail is glaring.

So, it's OK to allow people with a massive conflict of interest and delusions to murder and kidnap people that are innocent because they couldn't be bothered to do their jobs properly?

Bottom line here is that there's a long history in the US of prosecutors fighting to keep people in prison that are known to be innocent and the system is set up such that they mostly get away with it. It's expedient for them to not find evidence at the time of the trial and to not look into it too thoroughly as that would make it harder for them to secure a conviction.

The police likewise have little incentive to investigate possible alibis or look for evidence that would lead to an acquittal even if they sent somebody to prison for something they didn't do. Hence why things like bite mark analysis and finger printing are used in criminal cases. No scientific backing, but they happen to give the prosecution more ammo.

What's more, they'll use threats of harsh penalties to secure plea bargains knowing full well that they might not have been able to secure a conviction in court.

So no, this isn't a case of mistakes being made. This is a case of the people on the law enforcement side deliberately overstepping the boundaries as much as possible to secure a conviction without any consideration being paid to whether or not justice is being served. And jurists like Scalia and Thomas just reinforce that behavior by failing to consider the constitutions protections as intended.

I can play the tilting at windmills game too, if that's how you prefer to argue.

So, it's fine to throw out legal precedent and indeed the entire framework of our legal system just because sometimes it gets things wrong, and sometimes some of it can be gamed? We should just do away with all criminal courts, since we know eyewitnesses can't be trusted, people can be framed, and proof can be fabricated. Indeed, if there's ever any evidence that doesn't utterly support something, we can't make a criminal complaint, because we've abandoned the concept of reasonable doubt in favor of utterly unreasonable nitpicking. Jurists like Scalia and Thomas are the only thing keeping our legal system from plummeting into unsalvageable disarray.

You fucked up one statement, hedwards. Own that shit. You're not an idiot; don't choose to be a baby.