The Supreme Court started its new term with an order list that mainly consisted of the court declining to weigh in on an array of appeals. Justices sometimes issue dissents or other separate writings from these routine denials. There was only one such writing, from one justice, in the term’s first list Monday morning.

It was a familiar figure and topic: Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a death penalty case.

The Obama-appointed justice’s statement in Mulkey v. Alabama highlighted her continued focus on matters of crime and punishment in which her colleagues have not shown the same interest.

It follows the GOP-appointed majority’s unexplained order last week that let the lethal injection of Christa Pike proceed in Tennessee, over dissent from the court’s three Democratic appointees, led by Sotomayor. Despite the high court’s help, the state failed to carry out the death penalty for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, as Pike survived — at least for the time being — what her lawyers called a “torturous” botched execution.

In Monday’s case from Alabama, Sotomayor again put attention on a capital case — this time all alone, as she has done before — writing that it was especially important to do so “where the defendant’s life hangs in the balance.”

The defendant is Steven Mulkey, who was sentenced to death for killing elderly couple Ching and Siu Mei Kao during what the state said was “a dispute over thirty dollars’ worth of yard work” in 2018.

In his Supreme Court petition which the justices denied Monday, Mulkey’s lawyers argued that his constitutional rights were violated because the trial judge publicly sanctioned and jailed a prospective juror in front of the jury pool for running late, and the judge failed to inquire how the remaining potential jurors were affected, despite indications that at least some of them were intimidated or otherwise affected by the judge’s conduct.

Sotomayor recounted that two potential jurors expressed fears of sharing their views. When the judge asked one of them about his unwillingness to recommend the death penalty, they asked if they would “be charged or thrown in jail.”Another said they “kind of based [my opinion] on what the Judge told me, because I don’t want to get in trouble for my beliefs.”

The judge assured them they wouldn’t be punished, but Sotomayor emphasized that that assurance “was given during the individual questioning and not in the presence of the rest of the jury pool.”Therefore, she said, it’s unclear how many others “felt similarly but did not share their fear because they were not called for individual questioning.”Still, she agreed with her high court colleagues that Mulkey’s petition did not warrant review, citing the high procedural standard for the defense’s argument because he did not raise an objection during the state proceedings.

“Because that posture limits the scope of our review, I concur in the Court’s denial of certiorari,” she wrote, using the technical term for the petitions that ask the justices to take their cases. It takes four justices on the nine-member bench to grant review of a petition.

But Sotomayor said she wrote her brief statement “to highlight that this case provides an example of why judges should restrain themselves from conducting any proceedings that are collateral to the trial in front of a jury.”

The justice raised the concern that conduct like the judge’s in this case “can have a profoundly negative impact on members of the jury pool,” affecting not only what they might be willing to tell the judge “but also whether they will apply their independent judgment instead of following what they perceive the judge may personally think.”

She said that danger “is especially acute in a capital case such as this one, where the defendant’s life hangs in the balance. To guard against it, judges should limit exposing a jury to collateral proceedings, particularly when those proceedings might frighten or intimidate the jury.”The post Sotomayor starts term by speaking out in capital case where ‘life hangs in the balance’