Cone v. Bell

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor Gary Cone, a Tennessess death row inmate.  Prosecutors had withheld information that should have been turned over to Cone's lawyers.  The Court's opinion is here.  The Scotus Wiki page for Cone v. Bell is here.

SCOTUS Blog has this initial post.

The Court has released the opinion in Cone v. Bell (07-1114). The decision below, which held for the state, is vacated and remanded in a 7-2 opinion by Justice Stevens available here. The Chief Justice filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Justice Alito filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.  Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Scalia.

AP has filed, "Court rules for Tenn. death row inmate," via Google News.

The Supreme Court has thrown out a death sentence for a Tennessee death row inmate who was deprived of key evidence at his trial.

The justices on Tuesday set aside the death sentence given to Gary Bradford Cone, who was convicted of beating an elderly couple to death in 1980.

Prosecutors belittled Cone's claims that he was a drug addict who suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome following military service in Vietnam. But it was later revealed that they withheld information that could substantiate Cone's claims.

Cone has never had a hearing that considered the concealed evidence and whether it justified converting his sentence from death to life in prison, his lawyer, Thomas Goldstein, told the justices during arguments in December.

"While we agree that the withheld documents were not material to the question whether Cone committed murder with the requisite mental state, the lower courts failed to adequately consider whether that same evidence was material to Cone's sentence," said Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion for the court.

Cone was convicted of beating to death Shipley Todd, 93, and his wife, Cleopatra, 79, in their home in Memphis in 1980. At his trial, he put on an insanity defense, arguing that he was a drug addict who suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome following military service in Vietnam.

The prosecutor scoffed at Cone's claims, calling them "baloney." A jury sentenced him to death.

It turned out, however, that the prosecutor withheld information that could substantiate Cone's claims, including police and FBI communications identifying Cone as a drug user and as an addict, and witness statements describing his behavior as "weird" and "wild-eyed."

Cone first gained access to some of the information through an open-records request, rather than the usual path of the prosecution providing potentially exculpatory material to the defense.

The case was vacated and remanded to the federal trial courts.

Coverage of the December oral argument is here, with a link to earlier coverage.