Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard Magwood v. Patterson, an Alabama death penalty case. The transcript is in Adobe .pdf format.
Today's New York Times reports, "Court Weighs Timing of Death Row Appeal." It's written by Adam Liptak.
As is his custom, Justice John Paul Stevens did not ask a question on Wednesday until the lawyer before him had almost finished his argument. When Justice Stevens did speak up, it was in a seeming effort to guide his colleagues on the Supreme Court toward what he considered to be the central argument advanced by the death row inmate in the case.
“Let me just ask,” Justice Stevens said, “is this the case in which the claim is he’s ineligible for the death penalty?”
Corey L. Maze, Alabama’s solicitor general, said that was so.
“The merits of the claim have never been decided?” Justice Stevens went on.
Mr. Maze said no, adding that the question should be left unresolved and that the inmate should be executed because his lawyers had raised the issue too late.
The other justices had been focused solely on that procedural question, and it was not clear whether Justice Stevens’s attempt to reorient their thinking had had any effect.
The inmate, Billy Joe Magwood, shot and killed an Alabama sheriff in 1979. At the time, Alabama law allowed defendants to be sentenced to death only if they had committed murders in connection with at least one of several listed “aggravating circumstances.”
Though Mr. Magwood’s crime did not fit any of those circumstances, he was sentenced to death in 1981. In 1985, a federal judge ordered Mr. Magwood resentenced for unrelated reasons, and he was again sentenced to death the next year.
Over the years, Mr. Magwood’s lawyers have challenged his sentence on various grounds, but it was not until 1997 that they raised the question of whether his was a capital crime under Alabama law in the first place.
A 1996 federal law, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, imposes strict limits on successive federal habeas corpus petitions. Under the law, a second petition challenging Mr. Magwood’s original 1981 death sentence would almost certainly be barred.
But Jeffrey L. Fisher, a lawyer for Mr. Magwood, said his client was challenging his 1986 resentencing for the first time.
“You can’t waive something by failing to raise it in a different case,” he said. “This is an entirely different case.”
"Court to decide if man can fight death sentence," is the AP report by Jesse Holland, via Google News.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday questioned whether an Alabama death row inmate can challenge his second death sentence with an argument state officials said he didn't use when he was first sentenced to die for shooting a county sheriff.
Lawyers for Billy Joe Magwood want to argue that Alabama law was changed to make Magwood's crime a capital offense after it had already been committed.
Defendants aren't allowed to appeal using arguments that could have been brought in the original case, but Magwood's lawyers say that since he was sentenced to die a second time, he should be able to use a new argument in his second round of appeals.
"If it's the second time around, then it's just barred," Justice Anthony Kennedy said.
"Well, it shouldn't be barred. Because it's a new judgment, the defendant should be able to get relief the second time around," said Jeffrey L. Fisher, Magwood's lawyer.
Magwood, 58, has been on Death Row since 1981 for the shooting death of Coffee County Sheriff Neil Grantham in 1979. He got that death sentence thrown out, but then was resentenced to death.
A federal judge overturned the new death sentence after Magwood complained that state law was changed to make his crime a capital offense after it had already been committed. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reinstated the death penalty, saying Magwood should have complained about the change in Alabama state law in his first round of appeals.
The Birmingham News has, "Some U.S. Supreme Court justices express reservations as Alabama Death Row inmate seeks new appeals opportunity," by Mary Orndorff.
Earlier coverage begins here.
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