Talk:Glossip v. Gross

Removed material and added Justice Scalia quotations

On April 15 and 16 User:Harry1835 made this series of eight edits removing reliably sourced material and added lengthy quotations to the Justice Scalia’s concurrence subsection. Six of those edits were labeled minor. All edit summaries were left blank.

On 18 April, I made this series of edits. I restored the reliably sourced material and attempted to accommodate the new Scalia quotes by placing them in block quotes and converting their citations to the Bluebook format.

Later that day, the user made this series of seven edits reverting my changes. Three of those edits were labeled minor. The edit summaries explained “add infos” or were left blank. One edit explained “Fell free to discuss in talk page” and replaced the procedural history of Glossip’s two trials with a discussion of the rape and murder by Charles Warner and this discussion: “Richard Glossip was condemned in 2004 for instructing Justin Sneed to kill Barry Van Treese, something he done by beating him with a baseball bat.”

I reverted all of these edits to the last stable version and then started this Talk discussion. The blank or uninformative edit summaries make it difficult to guess why those changes were made. I can discern, however, two major proposed changes: the new Scalia quotes and the removal of the procedural history.

1) Why were these quotations added? The quotes are reliably sourced to the primary source and are accurate. However, they are disproportionate. Currently, our article’s discussion of the opinion of the Court, which covered 29 pages in the slip opinion, is 276 words. The new changes would make the discussion of Justice Scalia’s concurrence, which covered 6 and a half pages in the slip opinion, 464 words. That is unbalanced and inappropriate.

Furthermore, it is hard to tell why these quotes were selected. The editor references directly to the primary source and these particular quotes do not seem to be highlighted by any secondary source. Although Justice Scalia’s mentions of Shakespeare, the “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness” of the majority, and Justice Breyer’s “creative arithmetic” are memorable, they do not discuss doctrine nor do they provide new information. Because this was a short concurrence joined only by one other justice, such extensive quotations are disproportionate.

2) Why was the procedural history removed? The edit summary here did clarify “These infos are interesting but belongs to the Richard Glossip article, not this one about lethal injection.” Why? What core content policy justifies removing reliably sourced information here?

This article is not about lethal injection. It is about Richard Glossip’s case before the United States Supreme Court. The procedural history is relevant. Furthermore, all five of the Supreme Court opinions discuss the reliability of the death penalty. It is notable that the petitioner in this case insists on his actual innocence and that his conviction had divided the lower appeals court justices. That it is why actual innocence and the procedural history are discussed in the lengthy news media exposé and the Harvard Law Review comment, the referenced secondary sources. That is why it needs to be included in our article. Lord Monboddo (talk) 23:36, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

You don't give an explanation for the removal of all my edits as you did here. I would like to discuss quietly just about some of them, to find a compromise with you.

Have you any objection over this sourced paragraph?:

After oral arguments, it was asserted that the main reason for which the court declined to stay Warner's execution was the "impatience" of the five conservative majority with obstructionism from abolitionists, who make sodium thiopental unavailable by putting pressure on the companies that manufactured it. Justice Alito called it a "guerilla war against the death penalty", and Justice Kennedy insisted on whether the court should consider this element.

Harry1835 (talk) 10:49, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

I restored most of your oral argument discussion. SCOTUSblog is a reliable source and your edit fairly reflects that source. Because the source never directly mentions Warner or sodium thiopental, I removed them, and I put the part quoted from Justice Scalia in quotes. It’s inclusion makes the article better, and I thank you for it. One tip, you can use the news template to help fully cite web articles by inputing the URL and then clicking the magnifying glass icon.

I apologize for removing all of your edits. Because your removal of reliably sourced material was not clearly documented in the edit summaries, it was difficult to identify any new reliably sourced material.

Please feel free to add any uncontroversial reliably sourced material to the article, and clearly document what you are doing in the edit summary. You can read my concerns about extensively quoting Justice Scalia above. I would also encourage you to take more care to observe WP:MINOR. Lord Monboddo (talk) 01:58, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

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