Christopher Price is on death row in Alabama for the murder of a church minister in 1991. His current attorneys have asked the courts to enforce the ruling of Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark 1963 decision guaranteeing the right to counsel for all defendants. According to Price's appeal, his trial attorney failed to provide even a rudimentary defense during a penalty trial that lasted only 30 minutes. The attorney neglected to "investigate his background for potential mitigation evidence," to "speak prior to trial with his family members, friends and schoolteachers," and to "retain a mental health expert despite [the attorney's] previous acknowledgment that a mental health report was essential to presenting a mitigation case." The brief continued, "The only mitigation witness that trial counsel called was Petitioner's mother, Judy Files. Trial counsel had not previously interviewed Mrs. Files, nor had she prepared Mrs. Files to testify. Even more critically, trial counsel was unaware that Mrs. Files had physically and mentally abused Petitioner throughout his life and had allowed several men with whom she had romantic relationships to routinely physically, sexually, and emotionally abuse Petitioner as well." The lower courts have held that even if the attorney's performance was deficient, it was not enough to warrant relief. On March 4, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Price's case.
In a forthcoming article in the Washington and Lee Law Review, Ty Alper (pictured), Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, examines how recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions may affect the ability of defendants to raise claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. Although the right to effective counsel is constitutionally guaranteed, most defendants, especially those charged with non-capital crimes, do not have adequate opportunities during appeals to raise claims of ineffective counsel, in part because such a claim requires the aid of counsel. Alper argues that the recent Supreme Court cases Martinez v. Ryan (2012) and Maples v. Thomas (2012) "portend a legal landscape in which it is possible to obtain a remedy for a Sixth Amendment violation without extending the right to counsel to postconviction cases in their entirety." He concludes that "If...the Court eventually adopts a rule that actually ensures states provide counsel to investigate and raise ineffectiveness claims (as opposed to merely creating tentative incentives for them to do so), capital defendants will benefit from the increased ability to establish cause for procedural default in federal court. But the real sea change will be with respect to the many more noncapital defendants who will be able to surface violations of Gideon in a way that has never before been possible."
On May 23, lawyers for Georgia death row inmate Warren Hill (pictured) petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent his execution, citing strong evidence that Hill has an intellectual disability. Three mental health experts who testified in 2000 that Hill did not have an intellectual disability have now changed their mind about the inmate’s mental health. According to the petition, “all seven mental health experts who have ever evaluated Hill, both the State’s and Hill’s, now unanimously agree that he is mentally retarded.” In Georgia, capital defendants are required to prove “mental retardation” beyond a reasonable doubt. It is the only state in the country that sets such a high burden of proof for such claims. Lawyers for Warren Hill claim that Hill’s execution will violate the Court’s ruling in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), which prohibits the execution of individuals with intellectual disabilities. In the petition to the Court, the lawyers urged, “Every court to which Mr. Hill has petitioned in an effort to present this new and compelling evidence has denied him an opportunity to prove the merits of his claim. The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Parole has likewise refused to reopen proceedings in light of this evidence. This Court accordingly is Mr. Hill’s last and only hope to avoid an execution that is flat-out prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.”
On May 28, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5-4) in Trevino v. Thaler that a death row inmate in Texas can raise claims of ineffective counsel for the first time in federal court if they were unable to raise the claim in state appeals. The Court decided that its ruling in Martinez v. Ryan (2012), which provided such a right in an Arizona case, applies to this case in Texas because the “state procedural framework, by reason of its design and operation, makes it highly unlikely in a typical case that a defendant will have a meaningful opportunity to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel on direct appeal.” In Martinez v. Ryan, the Supreme Court ruled that “procedural default will not bar a federal habeas court from hearing a substantial claim of ineffective assistance at trial if, in the initial-review collateral proceeding, there was no counsel or counsel in that proceeding was ineffective.”
DPIC is proud to present its latest podcast, featuring award-winning author John Bessler discussing the historical roots of the death penalty and the current problem of arbitrariness in its application. Bessler is a law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and author of Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders' Eighth Amendment. Prof. Bessler shares his expertise on the surprising resistance to capital punishment among some of the nation's founders and explores major Supreme Court decisions on this issue. He explains why the death penalty is open to constitutional challenge because its application is influenced by race, geography, and quality of representation. Click 
The Texas Tribune recently published a six-part series examining the plight of mentally ill defendants in the Texas criminal justice system. The series focused particularly on death penalty cases, including that of 