News and Developments 2006: U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court 2007

Posted: November 30, 2006
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Supreme Court and the Death Penalty
The U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing four death penalty cases in January 2007:

SCHRIRO V. LANDRIGAN, No. 05-1575

Texas Court Rejects Presidential Order in Death Penalty Case

Posted: November 16, 2006
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The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rebuffed President Bush's order that Texas courts review the cases of Mexican foreign nationals who were sentenced to death without the benefit of their rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.  Writing for the court, Judge Michael Keasler, stated: "We hold that the President has exceeded his constitutional authority by intruding into the independent powers of the judiciary."  Judge Sharon Keller concurred, writing: "this unprecedented, unnnecessary, and intrusive exercise of power over the Texas court system cannot be supported by the foreign policy authority conferred on him by the United States Constitution."

In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that 51 Mexican citizens who were on death row in the U.S. were entitled to a review of their convictions and sentences in light of the fact that they were not informed of their right to speak to their consular officials at the time of their arrest, as guaranteed under the Vienna Convention.  While one of these cases, that of Jose Ernesto Medellin, was making its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, President Bush issued a memorandum to the Justice Department ordering that state courts abide by the decision of the International Court.  The U.S. State Department also announced that, for future cases, the U.S. was withdrawing from the agreement that gave the International Court jurisdiction in the case of the 51 Mexican citizens.

Supreme Court Justices Raise Issue of Time on Death Row

Posted: November 14, 2006
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The U.S. Supreme Court upheld California's death penalty law in a 5-4 decision on Nov. 13 in Ayers v. Belmontes. The majority held that the state's law allowed the jury to consider all appropriate mitigating evidence. The decision reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which had overturned Belmontes death sentence. The dissent, consisting of Justices Stephens, Breyer, Ginsburg and Souter, however, disagreed, contending that the jury would have to disregard the judge's instructions in order to consider mitigating evidence about the defendant's future prospects for reform. The dissent argued for a more appropriate balancing of state's need for its law to be carried out with the defendant's right to have all the evidence that might save his life considered by the jury. The dissent stated that the state's need for an execution was greatly diminished by the fact that this case was now 25 years old, and, hence, the people would gain little by having an execution carried out now, whereas the defendant had everything to lose by an unfair decision:

Supreme Court Takes Two More Cases Regarding Texas' Faulty Jury Instructions

Posted: October 16, 2006
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On October 13, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two capital cases from Texas in which the defendant was sentenced to death after the jury was given instructions that the Court has since found unconstitutional. Unlike in most states where the jury considers a range of aggravating and mitigating circumstances about the crime and the defendant before choosing a sentence of life or death, in Texas the jury was (the law has since been modified) given a series of yes-or-no questions about the crime and the future dangerousness of the defendant. In prior cases, the Supreme Court has said that such a mechanism does not allow full consideration of a person's mental disabilities, which should be counted as a mitigating factor. In the cases recently accepted, the trial judges instructed the jury that they could simply answer "no" to one of the factual questions if they did not want to sentence the person to death, even though the proper answer based on the facts should be "yes." In both of the new cases taken by the Court, the defendants were sentenced to death using this "nullification" instruction, and their appeals were denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Texas Death Case a Second Time

Posted: October 13, 2006
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The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from Texas death row inmate LaRoyce Smith even though they had reviewed his case once before.  On October 6, 2006, the Court granted certiorari to decide whether the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had applied the wrong standard after the Supreme Court had sent Smith's case back to them earlier.

The dispute does not involve Smith's 1991 conviction for the murder of a Taco Bell manager in Dallas.  Rather the Supreme Court held (7-2) in 2004 that Texas' jury instructions did not allow the jury sufficient latitude to consider Smith's low IQ and other mitigating evidence.  But instead of giving Smith a new sentencing hearing, the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in March that the fault in the jury instructions was negligible because it did not cause "egregious harm" to Smith's right to a fair trial, and thus upheld Smith's death sentence.  Texas has changed the way the jury is instructed in capital cases, but the change was not in effect for Smith's sentencing.

Supreme Court Denies Stay of Execution to Clarence Hill, 5-4

Posted: September 20, 2006
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The U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution to Clarence Hill who is scheduled to be executed at 6 pm on September 20 in Florida.  Four Justices would have granted the stay.  Hill had raised a civil rights challenge to Florida's lethal injection law after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in June in his favor that such a challenge was proper.  However, the lower courts stated that his claim was filed too late and they denied him an evidentiary hearing on the merits of his lethal injection challenge.