Before joining the US Supreme Court 20 years ago, then-appellate judge Clarence Thomas said that he wanted to sit on the highest court in the land to bring a level of empathy to defendants with tough backgrounds and hardscrabble lives.

Thomas said back then that he had often gazed out from the courthouse window at arriving prisoners and would say to himself, "But for the grace of God, there go I."

"So I can walk in their shoes and I could bring something different to the court," he said during his confirmation hearing.

Fast-forward 20 years and Thomas' record shows an almost complete lack of empathy and near disdain for those kinds of defendants, according to story published in 'USA Today' this week.

Per the story, Thomas has established a significant legacy on law, notably on cases involving prisoners. This spring, he dissented alone when the court threw out a harsh re-sentencing order for an Iowa drug dealer who earlier had won leniency, entered rehabilitation and turned his life around. Another example the story noted was the reversal of a $14 million civil rights judgment for a New Orleans death-row inmate whose prosecutors had concealed blood evidence that could have helped prove his innocence. Thomas wrote the court's opinion in that case.

In another recent opinion, Thomas wrote against a convict in California who claimed that his lawyer was ineffective because the jury wasn't told about his childhood brain injuries, abuse and deprivation. In that case Thomas referred disapprovingly to an "infatuation with 'humanizing' the defendant."

Justice Thomas has long been a pariah in the black community, lambasted as an Uncle Tom whose image as a Justice has largely been shaped by the Anita Hill scandal, his ultra-conservatism on the bench and reluctance to speak during court hearings. But Thomas' seeming disdain for defendants might also shape his ongoing legacy.

"When he steps in the shoes of people," Stanford University law professor Jeffrey Fisher told the paper, "he's more likely to say tough-love is necessary and you have to take responsibility."