On Thursday night, Arkansas executed Ledell Lee—the state’s first  execution in 12 years. Lee’s final plea to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected by a 5–4 vote. Justice Neil Gorsuch cast the deciding vote allowing Lee to die. It was his first recorded vote cast as a justice of the court. Lee insisted upon his innocence from the day of his arrest through the night of his execution. He implored Arkansas to let him take a DNA test and compare the results to DNA collected at the scene of the murder he allegedly committed, but the state refused.

The Supreme Court issued an extraordinarily disappointing 5-3 decision on Monday in Utah v. Strieff, a Fourth Amendment case about police searches. Yet ...