On Monday, in her first vote as a Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor joined the Court’s other three reliable liberals in a losing effort to stay the execution of Jason Getsy, a hit-man who in 1995 shot but did not kill his target while shooting and killing his target’s mother during the crime.

According to the Chicago Tribune, “Prosecutors said Charles Serafino (the target of the paid-for hit attempt) was lying wounded on the floor when Getsy struck his mother in the head with a revolver, opening a 4-inch gash, and then shot her twice.”

Getsy’s attorney’s appealed for a stay, arguing that execution by lethal injection was unconstitutional. In my view, that argument is obviously false. But even if it weren’t, I’d be hard-pressed to be concerned if Jason Getsy suffered slightly too much discomfort as he met his reward – which he did at 10:19 AM on Tuesday morning.

Getsy’s case had some other interesting aspects:  John Santine, the man who paid Getsy $5,000 to kill Charles Serafino over a business dispute, was sentenced to life in prison rather than given the death penalty.  That difference caused the a 3-judge panel US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to rule on a 2-1 vote that Getsy’s death penalty was impermissible.  The full Court then reinstated the sentence on an 8-6 vote.

The death penalty is one of those easy-to-understand issues for the average American, at least in terms of whether they support it or not, and one which focuses the mind on the importance of who gets appointed to fill Supreme Court vacancies…and therefore why elections have consequences.