Monday was a busy day for the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation’s top jurists handed down a bunch of rulings on several cases that will affect all Americans, but among those decisions was one concerning the death penalty.

The case concerned convicted Virginia killer Bobby Lee Ramdass’ death-sentence appeal.

Ramdass had challenged his sentence in federal court on the grounds that his defense had not been allowed to include informing the jury that any life sentence he served would not include the possibility of parole, according to The Associated Press.

The jury in his case might very well have settled for life in prison, except that prosecutors in this case emphasized his “future dangerousness.”

This is one of those peculiar cases in which selected information is kept from juries, information that might easily make a difference to the outcome of a case. Knowing full well that Ramdass would not be let out of prison until his natural death, prosecutors pushed for the politically popular death sentence by using a scare tactic on the jury that defense counsel was not allowed to counter.

The decision could not come at a less propitious time as a recent study conducted by Columbia University has concluded that there are significant flaws in most death-penalty cases. Between 1973 and 1995, two-thirds of death penalty appeals were successful, according to AP.

Of the 4,578 appeals studied between those years, Columbia law professor and chief author of the study James Liebman said the cases were “so seriously flawed that they have to be done over again … our 23 years worth of findings reveal a capital punishment system collapsing under the weight of its own mistakes.”

In fact, only 5 percent of the 5,760 death sentences handed out during that period were carried out.

A February Gallup poll indicates that 66 percent of Americans are still in favor of the death penalty, but the numbers were as high as 80 percent in the 1990s. It has taken some time and a great deal of controversy to get to that point.

With all the recent proof — not debate, but actual proof — showing that the death penalty is handed out unfairly to minorities, the poor and anyone with an incompetent lawyer, the nation’s highest court should be doing all it can to assure that any and all appeals are as fair as is humanly possible.

Juries need to hear all the facts in a case, especially those facts that affect sentencing.

Prosecutors get enough people sent to the electric chair without using outright lies to get them there.

Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Kate Kompas,Greg Jerrett, Heidi Jolivette, Justin Kendall and Tara Payne.