U.S. Supreme Court Reverses Arizona Ruling That Barred Death Row Appeal

In a 5-4 decision in Cruz v. Arizona on February 22, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court held that John Cruz should have been able to inform his sentencing jury that if he were spared a death sentence, he never would have been eligible for parole.

The Court said that its holding was in direct line with its previous decisions in Simmons v. South Carolina and Lynch v. Arizona, which established this right and its specific applicability to Arizona.

This ruling not only allows Cruz to renew his appeal for a new penalty trial, but it could affect nearly 30 other capital defendants in Arizona who were also sentenced to death under the state’s unconstitutional process.

In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Simmons v. South Carolina that when future dangerousness is at issue in capital sentencing, a defendant has a right to inform the jury that a life sentence means life without parole, assuming that is the effect in the state. Despite this ruling, Arizona consistently denied defendants the right to so inform the jury, arguing that life-sentenced prisoners might receive clemency. In Lynch v. Arizona (2016), the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly rejected this interpretation of Simmons.

When Cruz renewed his appeal based on Lynch, he was blocked on state procedural grounds, with the state arguing that Lynch did not apply retroactively to Cruz because the rule of Simmons was already well established at the time of Cruz’s trial. Justice Sotomayor, writing for the majority, noted the irony in the state’s position because Arizona was misapplying the law it claimed was “clearly established.”

Sotomayor called the state’s logic a “catch-22,” noting that Arizona was requiring Cruz and similarly situated petitioners to prove that Lynch was both a “significant change in the law,” and at the same time was an application of “settled” federal law to satisfy retroactivity requirements.

The Court, with Justices Roberts, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Jackson concurring, reversed the Arizona Supreme Court and remanded the case for further action. The 4 dissenting Justices argued that the majority’s ruling was an improper interference with state law.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Staff, February 24, 2023

_____________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW US ON:

TELEGRAM

TWITTER

CONTACT: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Florida Set to Execute Man Who Said He Killed to Reach Death Row, Challenging Misconception that Death Penalty Deters Crime

Florida is scheduled to execute James Robertson at noon on Tuesday, October 13, at Florida State Prison. His execution remains scheduled despite the withdrawal of William Lee Thompson’s death warrant, which had called for a 2nd execution that evening. If completed, this will be Florida’s 17th execution of 2026. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) and partners will be holding a series of vigils and demonstrations across the state.

Christa Pike's Survival Wasn't a Miracle. That's What Should Scare Us.

What happened in Tennessee's execution chamber is one of the most common failures in medicine Christa Pike is awake. A week after Tennessee strapped her to a gurney and gave her two doses of pentobarbital , she is off the ventilator and speaking from a hospital bed, still shackled to it. Her lawyers call her recovery " medically unprecedented. " Legal scholars say she is the first person in American history to survive a lethal injection after the drug was actually given. I understand the impulse to make such claims. I consulted for Pike's legal team, but I have also spent three decades in operating rooms and intensive care units (ICUs), and I want to resist the word "unprecedented" and the word "miracle" that hovers just behind it.

Christa Pike: 4 Major Questions As She Returns to Death Row

As Christa Pike returns to death row after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, several questions remain about her case and what comes next. Pike, 50, was discharged from hospital and moved back to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said on Saturday. She was hospitalized after surviving 2 doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital as Tennessee attempted to execute her on September 30. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at a Job Corps training program in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 18 at the time.

Florida executes James Robertson

STARKE, Fla. — A Florida prisoner who said he killed his cellmate specifically to get on death row was executed Tuesday, nearly 18 years after the attack. James Robertson, 63, declined to offer any last words before receiving a three-drug injection and was pronounced dead about 10 minutes later. It was a stark contrast to the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee two weeks ago, where she was rushed to the hospital after surviving two lethal doses of pentobarbital.

USA | Firing squad execution to be livestreamed, Pentagon says

The public will be able to watch the execution of a former US Army major by firing squad, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said. A Defense Department official told the BBC the execution of Nidal Hasan, who shot dead 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, would be livestreamed. It is believed it would be the first public execution in the US in almost a century. The decision to livestream it is "unprecedented in the modern era" and "on uncertain legal terrain", said John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death.

Saudi Arabia executes two Bangladeshis over 'immoral act' inside mosque

Saudi Arabia has carried out the death penalty on two Bangladeshi nationals in Mecca. The country's Interior Ministry announced this in a statement on Wednesday. According to the report, they were sentenced over allegations of involvement in immoral acts inside a mosque in Mecca. The information was reported by Ajel News, citing the Saudi Interior Ministry's statement. The two Bangladeshis executed were a man and a woman, Nazrul Islam Abdul Basir and Sithi Akhter. The “immoral acts” referred to illicit heterosexual intercourse, not homosexual activity.

What Tennessee wants to do next to Christa Pike is beyond grim

Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive. If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again. As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.

Tennessee | Republicans legislature to investigate other execution methods after failed lethal injections

Republican leaders in Tennessee’s legislature say they will investigate the reliability of lethal injection as an execution method after the state failed to execute two death row inmates in the span of five months. Gov. Bill Lee stopped the May execution of Tony Carruthers after a physician unsuccessfully attempted to insert intravenous lines to begin the lethal injection process for over an hour. Death row inmate Christa Pike survived two failed rounds of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol on Sept. 30 before the execution was halted. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, is receiving medical care in a Nashville hospital.

Buffalo Tops shooter files last-minute bid to avoid death penalty

Payton Gendron, who is already serving life without parole for killing 10 Black people in a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022, is asking a federal judge to throw out the case that could send him to death row. Defense attorneys filed the motion Monday — a day before jury selection was scheduled to begin — seeking to dismiss Gendron’s federal indictment. They argued that Black residents are underrepresented in the jury pool for New York’s Western District, according to WIVB and WKBW.

Tennessee | Christa Pike’s lawyer says she has not regained consciousness since her failed execution

Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital in the four days since her failed execution in Tennessee, and her prognosis might not be known for days more, one of her lawyers said Sunday. Little has been released about Pike’s condition since Wednesday night’s execution attempt. She has since remained hospitalized under guard as doctors try to get the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital out of her system. When asked whether she ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike’s lawyer, said on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Not that I am aware of.”

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog