High Court Opens With Flurry, Awaiting Souter

The Supreme Court opened its new term today by agreeing to review its recent decisions barring sentencing juries from considering the character of the defendant’s victim or the grief of the victim’s family.

There were only eight justices on the bench as the court issued a flurry of about 1,000 orders after returning from a three-month summer recess. It denied review in the vast majority of the cases.

David H. Souter is expected to receive Senate confirmation Tuesday as the nation’s 105th justice of the Supreme Court.

In the sentencing case, the court agreed to consider reinstating an Ohio man’s death penalty for a love-triangle murder.

Ediberto Huertas fatally stabbed Ralph Harris Jr. in Lorain, Ohio, on June 7, 1986. He now is serving a life prison term for the crime.

On leave from the Air Force, Harris was spending the night with Elba Ortiz. Huertas, who had fathered two children with Ortiz, allegedly warned Harris he would “waste him” if he continued to see the woman.

A state jury imposed the death sentence after hearing evidence that Harris’ parents wanted Huertas to die for his crime. Elizabeth Harris, the victim’s mother, also testified emotionally that she was proud of her churchgoing son and that his death had devastated his son.

The Supreme Court in 1987 ruled that such “victim-impact” evidence should not be considered by sentencing juries. And last year, the justices voted 5 to 4 that a jury generally may not be told about the victim’s character.

The court said a South Carolina murderer unfairly was sentenced to die because the jury heard such testimony.

That ruling was written by Justice William J. Brennan, who has since retired.

The four justices who dissented from last year’s decision said then that they were ready to overturn the 1987 ruling and permit victim-impact testimony in criminal sentencing.

The Ohio Supreme Court relied on both U.S. Supreme Court rulings when last May it reduced Huertas’ death sentence to life in prison.

In other action, the court:

* Agreed to decide whether lawyers in non-criminal cases may bar potential jurors because of their race.

* Permitted the random drug testing of New York City’s 10,000 jail guards.

* Let stand a ruling that church-run schools must pay employees the federal minimum wage and may not pay women teachers less than men.

* Rejected the appeal of three white men from New York City convicted in the Howard Beach incident of 1986, a racially motivated attack in which a black man died.

* Agreed to consider letting states outlaw all barroom-style nude dancing as it voted to hear an effort to reinstate such an Indiana law.