this week’s “edition”
Two Monday morning opinions from the Supreme Court dominate this edition. The first is the per curiam decision in Bobby v. Robert J. Van Hook, No. 09-144. The Court in Van Hook engages it so-called “error correction mode.” Specifically, the Court holds the Sixth Circuit trial counsel Van Hook, for purposes of the Sixth Amendment, did an adequate job. Getting to that conclusion the Court takes two tacts. The first is that the Sixth Circuit panel relied too heavily on the ABA Guidelines from 2003 about what the standards for trial counsel are in a case that preceded at trial those standards by by well over a decade. Secondly, and clearly more important to the Court, is that the Sixth Circuit gave improper weight to the decisions by trial counsel to forego certain unfruitful investigations and that the prejudice suffered by Van Hook, if any, was negligible. Whether Van Hook serves as a prelude to a decision in the argued case Wood v. Allen or serves as its foil remains to be seen..
The other is the concurrence from denial of a stay in John Allen Muhammad v. Kelly The issue in the Muhammad concurrence written by Justice Stevens is his long running opposition to the practice of setting execution dates less than 90 days from the denial of federal habeas corpus relief by a Court of Appeals. Curiously, joining the concurrence are both Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor.
Two opinions from the lower courts are also noted. In the first, from the aforementioned Sixth Circuit, comes Gary Van Johnson v. Mitchell. In Johnson the panel holds that trial counsel missed rather easily obtained mitigation information that could have spared his client a death sentence. “To hold in this case that serious consideration of such evidence could not have “change[d] the calculation the jury previously made when weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of the murder,” [ ] is — in our judgment — to ignore reality.”
The other noted lower court opinion is Ricky Dale Newman v. State. In Newman the Arkansas Supreme Court reinvests jurisdiction in the circuit court for writ of error coram nobis (postconviction) proceedings. Specifically, Newman claimed that the State suppressed a “trove” of highly favorable evidence “and that, had this evidence been disclosed, there is a reasonable probability that the jury would not have convicted him.” The Court remands as a threshold showing has been made for a Brady violations.
DPIC notes that the Tennessee Law Review recently published a compilation of articles and essays from its colloquium, “The Past, Present, and Future of the Death Penalty,” held in February 2009. Contributors focused on issues that have influenced capital punishment throughout the course of history.
Please note that in a few days from now will mark the 12th anniversary of the email edition of Capital Defense Weekly. As has been done from time to time during those 12 years I’m changing the day of the week the email goes out. For the foreseeable future, we’ll post a link Sunday nights to where a working draft can be found and the final edition will go out Monday nights. Thanks as always for reading. – k
November 10th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Finally the entire court says enough already to the inept 6th circuit. Maybe if they did this to the 9th a few times we would see the DP in CA carried out more than once every 5 years. Nice to see TX and VA back at it. The number of executions are at a 3 year high. Given the articles last year from liberal reporters that executions are at an all-time low and dropping – maybe we’ll see a few articles come december that the trend is reversed?? Dont hold your breath – watch the media spin it as a cost issue…just wait and see. Oh, a pre-good bye to John Allen Muhammad and Mr Valle tonite. Good riddance.