Barbara Leonard posts, "Man on Death Row Loses Chance for Clean Slate," at Courthouse News Service. The case is Wetzel v. Lambert; the opinion is available in Adobe .pdf format.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday dashed an order to free or retry a death-row inmate convicted of double homicide more than 30 years ago.
"Any retrial here would take place three decades after the crime, posing the most daunting difficulties for the prosecution," the six-page decision states (emphasis in original). "That burden should not be imposed unless each ground supporting the state court decision is examined and found to be unreasonable under AEDPA [the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996].
James Lambert had nearly won his freedom last year based on evidence that may have exonerated him at trial.
In 1984, Lambert was sentenced to death for murdering two people while robbing a Philadelphia business called Prince's Lounge.
Admitted accomplice Bernard Jackson testified against Lambert and also identified Bruce Reese as a participant to the crime. But Lambert recently discovered a 1982 document in which Jackson identifies a third man named Lawrence Woodlock as a co-defendant, presumably to the robbery he committed with Lambert and Reese.
Lambert said prosecutors never disclosed the "police activity sheet" that contained this information in violation of Supreme Court precedent in Brady v. Maryland, which held that it is a violation of due process for prosecutors to suppress evidence that favor the defendant.
And:
In a three-page dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer rejected the idea that the police notation was ambiguous.
"The notation clearly refers to this case, not to some other case," according to the dissent, which Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan joined. "It sets forth the file number of this investigation, the investigators of this crime, the victims of this murder, and the potential witnesses of these events. It does not refer specifically to any other robbery. The notation says that "[a] [p]hoto display was shown to ... [witnesses in this case],' and it specifies that the '[p]hoto display contained a Lawrence Woodlock.' In this context, the words must refer to a display that included persons potentially involved in this robbery. That being so, the most natural reading of the statement, 'Mr. Woodlock is named as co-defendant by Bernard Jackson,' is that it too refers to this murder and not to some other crime."
Breyer also disagreed that the federal appeals court "overlooked" the ambiguity issue, noting that the state courts never made any such determinations.
"If the trial court expressed any view about ambiguity, it thought that the police notation was not ambiguous," he added.
While the Supreme Court majority pointed out that the state high court used the word "speculative," Breyer said the context shows "that the court used that word to refer to Lambert's claim that the notation showed that he was innocent."
The ABA Criminal Justice Section posted this summary:
Summary: The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had granted Lambert, who was convicted of capital murder in 1984, habeas relief; the court held that the failure to disclose a police activity sheet violated Lambert’s rights under Brady v. Maryland. In a per curiam opinion, the Court vacated the judgment of the Third Circuit and remanded the case for further proceedings on the grounds that the Third Circuit had failed to address the state court’s determination that the notations on the activity sheet were “not exculpatory or impeaching” but instead “entirely ambiguous.” Justice Breyer filed a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice Ginsberg and Justice Kagan.
The responsibility of the state to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense was articulated in the 1963 Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland; moreon that ruling via Oyez.
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