Supreme Court hobbles challenges by inmates based on poor legal representation

[ZiprHead]

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that state prisoners have no constitutional right to present new evidence in federal court to support their claims that they were represented at trial and on appeal in state courts by unqualified or otherwise deficient lawyers. The vote was 6-to-3, along ideological lines.

In 2012 the court ruled that when a state court "substantially" interferes with a defendant's constitutional right to be represented by counsel, the defendant, with a new lawyer, may appeal to federal court to show that he was denied his right to effective counsel. Back then, the majority was 7-to-2, with Justice Clarence Thomas in dissent. On Monday Thomas wrote the majority decision hollowing out that 2012 ruling on behalf of the court's new six-justice conservative super majority.

He said that federal courts may not hear "new evidence" obtained after conviction to show how deficient the trial or appellate lawyer in state court was. To allow such evidence to be presented in federal court, he said, "encourages prisoners to sandbag state courts," depriving the states of "the finality that is essential to both the retributive and deterrent function of criminal law."

She pointed to one of the cases before the court as illustrative. The defendant, Barry Jones, was sentenced to death for the brutal sexual assault and killing of a 4-year-old girl. But his court-appointed trial court lawyer did not investigate the facts of the case. Arizona law does not allow the first post-conviction appeal to raise the question of ineffective assistance of counsel, and on the second appeal, the appellate lawyer did not raise the question either. Only when federal public defenders were brought into the case for a federal court hearing, did they examine the medical evidence, and consult experts who later testified that the injuries inflicted on the child occurred not when the prosecution claimed, but at a time when Jones was nowhere near the child and could not have inflicted them. The federal judge hearing the case found that both the defense lawyer at trial, and the appellate lawyer in state court had provided ineffective assistance of counsel. A unanimous panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals agreed, meaning that if the decision had held, the state would have had to retry Jones or release him.

As the Innocence Project's Swarns sees things, Arizona has not raised the pay scale for court appointed lawyers in some 30 years. The lawyers have inadequate resources to investigate and hire experts, and the courts often waive the lawyer qualification requirements in order to get lawyers in the door to represent those who cannot afford a lawyer on appeal.

"We know at the Innocence Project, based on 30 years of representing innocent people who have been wrongly convicted, that ineffective assistance of counsel is one of the leading causes of wrongful conviction in this country," she said.

For defendant, Jones, who contends he is innocent, and for Ramirez, their only recourse now to avoid execution is an appeal to the governor of Arizona for clemency. They have run the course of their appeals and come up short. So too will many others.

"He said that federal courts may not hear "new evidence" obtained after conviction to show how deficient the trial or appellate lawyer in state court was. To allow such evidence to be presented in federal court, he said, "encourages prisoners to sandbag state courts," depriving the states of "the finality that is essential to both the retributive and deterrent function of criminal law."

Hmm. Wondering where that is in the constitution.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Sandbag the State Courts? Why in the flying fuck would a defendant want to do that instead of having such info presented in trial to get acquitted?!

To make matters worse, this guy could get executed, when the FEDERAL APPEALS COURT ruled he must be retried. I mean WTF?!

What's next? Revisiting SCOTUS rulings and saying Palko speaks to them, States can retry people for the same crime?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Justice Sotomayor was a tad upset and raises several things, but the particularly disturbing aspect on this finding is that precedence is dead.

The debate between Thomas and Sotomayor in Shinn has reverberations beyond the cases of Barry Lee Jones and David Martinez Ramirez. Sotomayor argued that the majority opinion “tellingly” relied on dissents in Martinez and Trevino to support its reasoning. While the conservative majority’s explicit overruling of precedent has recently captured the public’s attention (albeit through a leaked draft), the practice of citing dissents to “hollow out” past precedents has garnered less scrutiny. But Sotomayor’s opinion subtly emphasized the danger that practice poses for the legitimacy of the court’s decision-making. Noting that the court in this case “resuscitates” an argument “that previously was relegated to a dissent,” Sotomayor contended that the argument “is just as unavailing now that it has captured a majority.”

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What is really worrying here is that the conservatives are penning a decision that views the finality of Justice more important than Justice itself.

 

[Trausti]

I dunno. Maybe NPR is being purposely misleading. *shocking* The jurisdiction of the federal district courts is set by statute. Congress passed an act that explicitly prohibits district courts from conducting evidentiary hearings for habeas corpus applications by state prisoners; unless there is change in law or new evidence that could not be discovered with due diligence. The district court is to presume the state court judgment is correct. The earlier Martinez case did not involve this part of the statute. It’s kind of important to understanding the Court’s opinion and why Roberts and Alito voted with the majority in both cases. Yet, NPR chooses to misinform its audience.

 

[zorq]

What is really worrying here is that the conservatives are penning a decision that views the finality of Justice more important than Justice itself.

Echoes of Bush v Gore.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Sandbag the State Courts? Why in the flying fuck would a defendant want to do that instead of having such info presented in trial to get acquitted?!

To make matters worse, this guy could get executed, when the FEDERAL APPEALS COURT ruled he must be retried. I mean WTF?!

What's next? Revisiting SCOTUS rulings and saying Palko speaks to them, States can retry people for the same crime?

Retrials are permitted when someone is found guilty. That doesn't cause double jeopardy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What is really worrying here is that the conservatives are penning a decision that views the finality of Justice more important than Justice itself.

He was accused. He must be guilty!

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Sandbag the State Courts? Why in the flying fuck would a defendant want to do that instead of having such info presented in trial to get acquitted?!

To make matters worse, this guy could get executed, when the FEDERAL APPEALS COURT ruled he must be retried. I mean WTF?!

What's next? Revisiting SCOTUS rulings and saying Palko speaks to them, States can retry people for the same crime?

Retrials are permitted when someone is found guilty. That doesn't cause double jeopardy.

Not the point I was making. I was talking about SCOTUS just putting precedence in the shredder.

 

[Trausti]

Sandbag the State Courts? Why in the flying fuck would a defendant want to do that instead of having such info presented in trial to get acquitted?!

To make matters worse, this guy could get executed, when the FEDERAL APPEALS COURT ruled he must be retried. I mean WTF?!

What's next? Revisiting SCOTUS rulings and saying Palko speaks to them, States can retry people for the same crime?

Retrials are permitted when someone is found guilty. That doesn't cause double jeopardy.

Not the point I was making. I was talking about SCOTUS just putting precedence in the shredder.

That didn’t happen here. The right to assert ineffective assistance of post-conviction counsel to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel remains. The reporting on this opinion is shit.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Sandbag the State Courts? Why in the flying fuck would a defendant want to do that instead of having such info presented in trial to get acquitted?!

To make matters worse, this guy could get executed, when the FEDERAL APPEALS COURT ruled he must be retried. I mean WTF?!

What's next? Revisiting SCOTUS rulings and saying Palko speaks to them, States can retry people for the same crime?

Retrials are permitted when someone is found guilty. That doesn't cause double jeopardy.

Not the point I was making. I was talking about SCOTUS just putting precedence in the shredder.

That didn’t happen here. The right to assert ineffective assistance of post-conviction counsel to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel remains. The reporting on this opinion is shit.

You are correct that your reporting on this case is shit.

 

[Trausti]

Sandbag the State Courts? Why in the flying fuck would a defendant want to do that instead of having such info presented in trial to get acquitted?!

To make matters worse, this guy could get executed, when the FEDERAL APPEALS COURT ruled he must be retried. I mean WTF?!

What's next? Revisiting SCOTUS rulings and saying Palko speaks to them, States can retry people for the same crime?

Retrials are permitted when someone is found guilty. That doesn't cause double jeopardy.

Not the point I was making. I was talking about SCOTUS just putting precedence in the shredder.

That didn’t happen here. The right to assert ineffective assistance of post-conviction counsel to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel remains. The reporting on this opinion is shit.

You are correct that your reporting on this case is shit.

Read the the two opinions FFS. And ask why NPR did not mention the federal statute prohibiting district courts from conducting evidentiary hearings.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Sandbag the State Courts? Why in the flying fuck would a defendant want to do that instead of having such info presented in trial to get acquitted?!

To make matters worse, this guy could get executed, when the FEDERAL APPEALS COURT ruled he must be retried. I mean WTF?!

What's next? Revisiting SCOTUS rulings and saying Palko speaks to them, States can retry people for the same crime?

Retrials are permitted when someone is found guilty. That doesn't cause double jeopardy.

Not the point I was making. I was talking about SCOTUS just putting precedence in the shredder.

That didn’t happen here. The right to assert ineffective assistance of post-conviction counsel to raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel remains. The reporting on this opinion is shit.

It can only be raised at the state level. Which means if the state does a poor enough job of funding public defenders there can be no appeal based on those public defenders being useless.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Read the the two opinions FFS. And ask why NPR did not mention the federal statute prohibiting district courts from conducting evidentiary hearings.

The point is that this causes a catch-22. Tell the public defenders they get 1 hour per case and nothing can be done about that.

 

[Trausti]

Read the the two opinions FFS. And ask why NPR did not mention the federal statute prohibiting district courts from conducting evidentiary hearings.

The point is that this causes a catch-22. Tell the public defenders they get 1 hour per case and nothing can be done about that.

No, no. Understand that the right to counsel applies at the trial stage. There in no right to counsel for appeals. Martinez said there is a limited right to counsel on appeal for the purpose of raising ineffective assistance of counsel at trial - as the claim can only be raised in a post-conviction setting. This would allow the district to review a habeas corpus application for ineffective assistance of counsel even though the prisoner’s appellate attorney failed to raise it. This new 6-3 decision does not change that. The new decision concerns a federal statute that clearly prohibits district courts from conducting evidentiary hearings. The NPR article inexplicably does not mention this.

 

[Toni]

Just stopping by to remind everyone; Elections matter.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Just stopping by to remind everyone; Elections mattered.

FIFY

 

[ZiprHead]

Read the the two opinions FFS. And ask why NPR did not mention the federal statute prohibiting district courts from conducting evidentiary hearings.

The point is that this causes a catch-22. Tell the public defenders they get 1 hour per case and nothing can be done about that.

No, no. Understand that the right to counsel applies at the trial stage. There in no right to counsel for appeals. Martinez said there is a limited right to counsel on appeal for the purpose of raising ineffective assistance of counsel at trial - as the claim can only be raised in a post-conviction setting. This would allow the district to review a habeas corpus application for ineffective assistance of counsel even though the prisoner’s appellate attorney failed to raise it. This new 6-3 decision does not change that. The new decision concerns a federal statute that clearly prohibits district courts from conducting evidentiary hearings. The NPR article inexplicably does not mention this.

So procedure matters more than justice.

 

[Toni]

Just stopping by to remind everyone; Elections mattered.

FIFY

They STILL matter.

 

[Trausti]

Read the the two opinions FFS. And ask why NPR did not mention the federal statute prohibiting district courts from conducting evidentiary hearings.

The point is that this causes a catch-22. Tell the public defenders they get 1 hour per case and nothing can be done about that.

No, no. Understand that the right to counsel applies at the trial stage. There in no right to counsel for appeals. Martinez said there is a limited right to counsel on appeal for the purpose of raising ineffective assistance of counsel at trial - as the claim can only be raised in a post-conviction setting. This would allow the district to review a habeas corpus application for ineffective assistance of counsel even though the prisoner’s appellate attorney failed to raise it. This new 6-3 decision does not change that. The new decision concerns a federal statute that clearly prohibits district courts from conducting evidentiary hearings. The NPR article inexplicably does not mention this.

So procedure matters more than justice.

Da fuck. Congress sets district court jurisdiction. Congress said district courts are not to retry the state case.