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PRESS RELEASE |
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PRESS RELEASE |
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Release Date: January 24, 2005
Contact: Michael Rushford
(916) 446-0345 |
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS RULES TO LIMIT FEDERAL REVIEW IN TWO STATE DEATH PENALTY APPEALSDecisions in Howell v. Mississippi and Bell v. Cone reject attempts to weaken limits Two Supreme Court decisions released today have clarified rules limiting federal review of state cases. In the case of Howell v. Mississippi, the court turned back a Mississippi man’s challenge to his conviction, finding that he had failed to follow federal rules requiring that he give state courts the first opportunity to review federal constitutional claims against his conviction and sentence. In Bell v. Cone, the high court announced that when the state courts have reviewed a murderer’s federal claims and reasonably concluded that they are not valid, the federal courts must respect the state court ruling even if they disagree with the result. “While both of the rules enforced today affect different points in the process, each will streamline the review of a murderer’s challenges to his conviction or sentence,” said Kent Scheidegger, Legal Director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. “In both of these cases, clearly guilty murderers were attempting to create exceptions which, if upheld by the Supreme Court, would have been a step backward, extending the time it takes to finalize cases,” he added. The Foundation filed a brief encouraging the Court’s decision in Howell v. Mississippi, and helped win an earlier Supreme Court decision in Bell v. Cone. Marlon Howell was convicted in 2000, on strong evidence of murder during the commission of a robbery, a death penalty offense. Following a Mississippi Supreme Court decision upholding his conviction and sentence, Howell appealed to the nation’s highest court claiming, for the first time, that the trial judge violated his federal constitutional rights by refusing to instruct the jury that it could choose to convict him of the lesser crimes of simple murder or manslaughter. Federal rules require that the state courts have the first opportunity to consider a defendant’s federal constitutional claims. After receiving argument on this point last November, the Court today rejected his direct appeal, finding that his claim was improperly presented. The ruling came in a “per curiam” opinion, meaning it represents the view of the court as a whole and is not signed by any one Justice. The case of Bell v. Cone involves the 1982 conviction and death sentence of habitual criminal Gary Cone for the brutal beating deaths of an elderly Memphis couple during a two-day crime spree. Evidence of Cone’s guilt was overwhelming. Over 20 years of post-conviction review in this case has involved mostly Cone’s attacks on the validity of his death sentence. In a decision in 2002, the Supreme Court rejected his claim that his death sentence was improper because his attorney had failed to properly represent him. The Court utilized arguments from the CJLF brief in that decision. In today’s decision, the Supreme Court rejected a federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that one of the aggravating circumstances qualifying him for a death sentence was too vague. The Sixth Circuit disagreed with an earlier ruling of the Tennessee Supreme Court upholding that finding. The Supreme Court’s opinion held that the federal court had failed to follow a federal law enacted in 1996. “As we have said before, [that law] dictates a ‘highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings, . . . , which demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt.’” “Typically, the greatest length of time between the jury’s decision to sentence a murderer to death and his actual execution is the years spent as the federal courts review claims which should have already been presented and considered by state courts,” said Scheidegger. “Both decisions today uphold rules which provide the state courts with an opportunity to review every claim, and restrict review by the lower federal courts to only the clearly unreasonable state court rulings,” he added. CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger is available
for comment at (916) 446-0345. |