...as Alito's rulings as a judge on the 3d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reflect, his prosecutorial experience does not lead him in the same direction as it did Warren. "It is a different time, a different place and a different set of realities," said sentencing law scholar Douglas Berman of Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law.
Alito's rulings, as many noted last week, have something for everyone. In the criminal justice area, he doesn't always rule in favor of the government, but he does more often than not.
..."My general sense is he is a prosecutor's prosecutor and likely to view the world from that perspective," predicted Berman. "He generally thinks guidelines are OK and he's confident prosecutors will exercise discretion properly. You can see that reflected in a lot of his criminal justice decisions. Do I think he will bend over backward for prosecutors? Not exactly. But I think criminal defendants should hope he is more like Scalia than Rehnquist and O'Connor in that Scalia is more willing to take his concerns about the Constitution and government power and bring them home in the criminal justice context."
One note of pessimism that I agree with:
He's more predictable than consistent, said another defense attorney. Alito has granted habeas relief in a few cases to come before him, he explained, "But the bottom line is he is a very predictable, very conservative law enforcement vote in criminal cases. There is now on the Supreme Court a very strong voting block of four in criminal cases to be extremely receptive to most arguments made by the government."
