Sen. Ted Cruz had a reputation for being "obsessed" with the death penalty when he was serving as a clerk of Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1996, according to colleagues who spoke with The New York Times.
"That I think was a special interest of his," former clerk Renée Lerner told the Times. Lerner also remarked on how Cruz paid special attention to the more grisly details of murders in his memos, rather than summarizing them and moving on to the legal merits of the case as other clerks tended to do. "It was unusual for a Supreme Court clerk to do that," Lerner said.
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