Supreme Court ruling weakens protections to defendants sentenced to death
source: Equal Justice Initiative
first published: 11 June 2024
Image Credit: Sura Nualpradid at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In a 6-3 decision on May 30, the Supreme Court deviated from its own precedent and practice to uphold an Arizona man’s death sentence despite a federal appellate court ruling that his trial lawyer was ineffective in violation of the Sixth Amendment.
Danny Jones was accused of killing three people during an attempted theft in 1992. Arizona prosecutors sought the death penalty. Mr. Jones, who said his drug use led to the offense, could not afford to hire an attorney. A public defender who had been an attorney for only about three years and had never been a lead attorney on a capital case was assigned to represent him.
A long line of precedent flowing from the Court’s 1986 decision in Strickland v. Washington establishes that defense attorneys have a constitutional duty to investigate and present evidence of mitigating circumstances to the sentencer in a capital case.
But Mr. Jones’s lawyer did not investigate potential mitigation evidence until after the jury had already convicted him of capital murder.
He never hired a mental health expert and failed to request neurological or neuropsychological testing until the day of the sentencing hearing, even though he knew that Mr. Jones was “oxygen-deprived at birth and had a lithium deficiency—a condition linked to serious psychiatric disorders” and that “he was medicated for mood disorders, had attempted suicide and had been admitted to a mental hospital,”
Courthouse News reports.
Mr. Jones was sentenced to death. On appeal, he argued that he had been denied his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed and reversed his death sentence, finding that the public defender’s performance was deficient and there was a reasonable probability that Mr. Jones would not have been sentenced to death if his lawyer had presented available evidence about his mental health.
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