Cases like this are always difficult. The crimes involved are heinous and justice for the victims and their families is always a concern. The death penalty is an issue on which many Americans have differing views.
While the American Bar Association does not specifically oppose the death penalty, we do insist it is applied and used fairly.
And that is what is at issue here.
Important evidence was never presented
Nothing has a greater impact on fairness in capital cases than the effectiveness of legal representation. Courts have long recognized a fundamental constitutional right to effective counsel at trial. Unfortunately, the representation provided to indigent defendants often falls short of this promise.
A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the trial attorney for David Ramirez, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of his girlfriend and her 15-year-old daughter in Phoenix, failed to present evidence of Ramirez’s intellectual disability and childhood abuse.
A different 9th Circuit panel found that the trial attorney for Barry Lee Jones, who was convicted and given a death sentence in the 1994 murder of his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter in Tucson, did not present medical evidence that raised questions about Jones’ guilt.
In both cases, the mistakes of trial counsel to not present mitigating or innocence evidence in the original trial were not raised on appeal, but were presented for the first time when the case reached the federal courts. But in a life and death Catch-22, federal courts are prohibited from hearing claims that are not first heard by the state courts.
Law often forces courts to refuse to hear claims
The law that created this prohibition, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), was enacted with the expectation that it would expedite the capital appeals process. In practice over the past 25 years, it has frustrated justice because courts must routinely refuse to hear, on procedural grounds, claims that might otherwise result in reversal of a conviction or death sentence.
While it might seem unbelievable that a court would refuse to hear a serious claim that a fundamental constitutional right was violated simply because of a procedural rule, prisoners have been executed because of this prohibition. Jones and Ramirez now look to the U.S. Supreme Court to avoid a similar fate.
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the fairness issues created by the AEDPA in Martinez v. Ryan. The court decided to allow federal courts to consider an “ineffective assistance of trial counsel” claim even if that claim was not raised in the state appeal trial.
While the Martinez decision marked a significant positive step toward ensuring effective representation in capital cases, it did not explicitly address another provision of the AEDPA that prevents defendants from presenting new evidence in a federal appeal that was not first developed in state court.
Post-conviction appeals can be a Catch 22
But virtually all post-conviction appeals require the development of new evidence to win. Yet another Catch 22. In the Ramirez/Jones case, the prisoners argue that the 9th Circuit was correct in holding that the Martinez exception must allow for introduction of new evidence, or it has no meaning.
But the Arizona Attorney General’s Office is arguing that the rulings by the 9th Circuit Court were incorrect because the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act strictly limited the introduction new evidence in federal appeals.
American Bar Association policies call for the appointment of qualified counsel at every stage of capital cases. Our policy urges Congress to amend AEDPA to require independent review of ineffective assistance of counsel claims in the federal courts.
The Ramirez/Jones appeal to the Supreme Court will determine whether defendants appealing a death sentence in federal court will be able to effectively raise claims of ineffective counsel and what limits might be placed on the introduction of new evidence.
Given that capital punishment is the ultimate penalty that, once carried out, cannot be corrected, all efforts must be made to guarantee that the proceedings are fair. Allowing the consideration of all relevant facts on appeal is a positive step in that direction.
Source: ourcommunitynow.com, Patricia Refo, The Arizona Republic, August 24, 2021. Patricia Lee Refo is the immediate past president of the American Bar Association. She's a partner at Snell & Wilmer in Phoenix.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde