Supreme Court Looks at Death Penalty

Apr 23, 2002

By ANNE GEARAN, 

WASHINGTON  - The Supreme Court waded deeper into the death penalty debate Monday with a case that could overturn 800 death sentences nationally and another case seeking extra appeals for the condemned.

Death sentences in nine states could be affected by the court's ruling in the case of Timothy Stuart Ring, convicted of killing of an armored car driver during a robbery eight years ago.

The court is expected to decide by summer whether a defendant's constitutional right to a jury trial means that only a jury can make the crucial determinations that result in a death sentence. Currently, although juries are responsible for deciding guilt or innocence, judges decide the sentence in Arizona and eight other states.

 The case, said Ring's lawyer Andrew Hurwitz, raises "the basic constitutional principle ... that before you're handed over to the state, for the state to impose whatever punishment it can, that a jury of your peers is afforded to you."

 Ring's is the fourth death penalty case the court has reviewed in the current term. None of the cases attacks the essential constitutionality of capital punishment, which is imposed in 38 states.

 The court signaled its continued interest in the mechanics of the death penalty by agreeing to hear the appeal of Tennessee death row inmate Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman, whose case has been championed by activists.

 The case, which the court will hear next fall, could have far-reaching effects if the justices decide to loosen the rules for when condemned inmates can get new evidence before a judge.

 Justices had blocked Abdur'Rahman's execution earlier this month and will now decide whether he can pursue appeals on new developments.

 Other courts had ruled that it was too late for Abdur'Rahman to bring up new allegations that the state didn't turn over evidence as it should have, had made misleading statements and had improperly prepared witnesses.

 His case returns the court to a subject that has troubled some of the justices: whether poor people facing a possible death sentence are getting good legal help.

 One of his government-provided trial lawyers admitted that he did little to prepare for the trial or the sentencing. It was the attorney's first capital case.

 His lawyers also relied on information from prosecutors that blood was found on Abdur'Rahman's clothing. The spots were paint.

 Last year, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (news - web sites) said it may be time to impose minimum standards for lawyers who handle death penalty cases. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (news - web sites) said that in all the eleventh-hour requests for Supreme Court reprieves, she had not seen one in which the inmate had been well-represented at trial.

 The court partially addressed the question of ill-prepared death penalty lawyers in a ruling last month that upheld a death sentence for a Virginia man whose lawyer had represented the victim in an unrelated case.

 O'Connor was the deciding vote as the court ruled 5-4 that the alleged conflict of interest was not enough to show that Walter Mickens was deprived of his right to an effective lawyer.

 The court has not yet ruled in another case testing when death row inmates can make new claims that their original lawyer was inadequate.

 The court's most watched death penalty case this year tests whether it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. The court had previously found the practice acceptable. Its latest ruling is also expected by summer.

 The issue in Ring's case is whether a judge alone can determine the aggravating factors, such as the heinous nature of a murder or whether it was committed for monetary gain, necessary in some states for a death sentence. 

After the jury in Ring's trial was dismissed, the judge heard testimony at a sentencing hearing from an accomplice who said Ring planned the robbery and murdered the guard. The judge then determined that the aggravating factors warranted death.

 The Arizona Supreme Court rejected Ring's constitutional challenge last year. The state has 128 people on death row.

 Idaho and Montana have systems like Arizona's, where a single judge decides the sentence. Idaho has 21 people on death row, and Montana has six.

 In four states, juries recommend life or death. A judge makes the final call in those states: Florida, with 386 people on death row; Alabama with 188; Indiana with 39 and Delaware with 19. 

In Colorado, with six people on death row, and Nebraska, with seven, a panel of judges makes the sentencing decision.

 Nationwide, there are about 3,700 people on death row

fApril 22, 2002

CASE AT SUPREME COURT: Timothy Ring was sentenced to death by an Arizona judge � not a jury. The high court will decide whether this violated his right to be tried by a jury of his peers.

Can judges alone set death penalty?

The Supreme Court considers whether a post-jury decision violates a defendant's rights.

By Warren Richey 

WASHINGTON � An Arizona man, Timothy Ring, is convicted by a 12-member jury in the shooting death of an armored-car driver during a robbery.

Under Arizona law, the maximum penalty he faces from the jury verdict is life in prison. But state law also empowers Mr. Ring's trial judge to impose a death sentence in certain circumstances.

At Ring's sentencing hearing, the judge hears incriminating testimony from a co-conspirator � testimony never heard by the jury at trial. The judge decides to sentence Ring to death.

Does the sentencing hearing amount to a second trial conducted in violation of the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to be tried by a jury of his peers? That is the question the US Supreme Court takes up this morning in a potential landmark case that could dramatically shift the way criminal sentences are meted out in courts nationwide.

 At stake are 776 death sentences issued in Arizona and eight states that have similar sentencing procedures. They are Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Montana, and Nebraska. Also at stake are potentially thousands of other criminal sentences in non-death-penalty cases where punishments were enhanced beyond statutory levels by judges who based their decision on details of the crime never presented to the trial jury. The Supreme Court justices, in fact, are expected to also decide two drug cases this term that raise this question.

 "We are not talking about letting people out of prison. We are talking about letting people be resentenced," says Jeffrey Green, a Washington lawyer who is following the issue closely.

 Death-penalty supporters are critical of the court for entertaining Ring's appeal. "Is the Supreme Court going to be continually changing the rules on capital punishment so that it is not possible to ever have a stable system?" asks Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif. "This is an issue the Supreme Court decided squarely many years ago. It would be a betrayal of the people for them to flip [on this issue] at this late stage."

 Earlier rulings

 The Supreme Court last examined and upheld Arizona's capital-punishment sentencing scheme in 1990. The court ruled that the Sixth Amendment did not require that every finding of fact supporting a death sentence must be made by a jury rather than a judge.

 But that was before the high court's ruling in a 2000 case called Apprendi v. New Jersey, in which a five-justice majority struck down a hate-crime statute that permitted a judge at sentencing to enhance a defendant's punishment beyond the maximum prison sentence authorized by the jury's verdict at trial.

 "The Constitution requires that any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum, must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt," wrote Justice John Paul Stevens for the majority in the Apprendi case.

 At the time of the decision, the majority said its ruling would not apply to death-penalty cases. But Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in a dissent, said the case was a blueprint to overturn Arizona's capital-punishment sentencing system.

 That disagreement two years ago has now taken the form of Ring v. Arizona.

 In most states, death-penalty cases are carried out in a two-stage process, with a jury first determining guilt and then the same jury later deciding whether the defendant should be put to death or face a lesser sentence like life in prison based on aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

 But in Arizona and the eight other states, a judge plays the key role in making the final determination of life or death.

 The Sixth Amendment affords criminal defendants a right to a trial by jury in which key elements of the crime must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. But under both federal and state sentencing guidelines � and some death-penalty sentencing procedures � judges are afforded the power to enhance a sentence if they determine at a sentencing hearing that certain factors played a role in the crime.

 In Ring's case, the trial judge sentenced Ring to death after hearing the uncorroborated testimony (at the sentencing hearing) of an alleged co-conspirator who identified Ring as both the triggerman and leader of the deadly robbery.

 The co-conspirator did not testify at Ring's trial because he did not agree to cooperate with prosecutors until after Ring's conviction.

 In a detailed examination of Ring's case, the Arizona Supreme Court found that there was not enough evidence presented at Ring's trial to justify a death sentence. "For all we know from the trial evidence, [Ring] did not participate in, plan, or even expect the killing," the court said in its ruling.

 But the court upheld Ring's death sentence, because it said the co-conspirator had provided enough extra evidence to justify capital punishment.

 Against the status quo

 Lawyers for Ring say his death sentence should be thrown out and Arizona's entire system of sentencing in death-penalty cases declared unconstitutional.

 "Under Arizona law [Ring's] death sentence was not possible by virtue of the jury verdict alone, but instead was imposed because of factual findings made entirely by the trial judge," writes Andrew Hurwitz, a Phoenix lawyer representing Ring, in his brief to the Supreme Court justices.

 If the jury verdict in Ring's case stood alone, his sentence would have been life in prison, not death, Mr. Hurwitz says.

 Lawyers for the state counter that Ring's jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and that the punishment for that crime ranges from life in prison to death.

 The trial judge did not impose a sentence in excess of the maximum allowed by law, says Kent Cattani of the Arizona Attorney General's Office in his brief to the court. "The prescribed statutory maximum for the crime Ring committed is death," he writes.

 Mr. Cattani adds that Ring was aware from the start that he might receive the death penalty.

 In the Apprendi case, however, the defendant learned at sentencing that his punishment had been increased beyond the maximum. "In contrast, the state charged Ring with, and convicted him of, a class one felony," Cattani writes. "He was on notice from the date of his indictment that he faced a possible death sentence."

 A decision in the case is expected by late June.

CASE AT SUPREME COURT: Timothy Ring was sentenced to death by an Arizona judge � not a jury. The high court will decide whether this violated his right to be tried by a jury of his peers.