Woops: Supreme Court Decision Based on False Information

According to today's New York Times, the Supreme Court's decision determining that imposition of the death penalty in cases of child rape is unconstitutional was based on an assertion that federal law does not impose such a penalty, but in fact in 2006 the uniform code of military justice was modified to include the death penalty for child rape.

Comment: This seems like a real failure in the system. If the point was identified by one side's advocates incorrectly, it should have been refuted by the other side's advocates. I would also expect the Justice Department and the Department of Defense to consider such arguments, and to post amicus briefs refuting incorrect statements about the law. Moreover, I would expect the legal staff of the Supreme Court to check such statements of fact before they are included in a formal opinion.

If the Supreme Court is the highest tribunal for determining questions of constitutionality, then it should "almost never" make mistakes of fact in its decisions. (Almost never means with probability approaching zero.) JAD