The transcript of the oral argument is available in Adobe .pdf format. The SCOTUS Blog case file is here.
Adam Liptak deftly writes about legal reasoning and logic and the case in, "High Court Weighs Death Row Inmate’s DNA Query," in the New York Times.
In the course of an hourlong argument at the Supreme Court on Wednesday about a death row inmate’s quest to test DNA evidence, the justices asked neither of the questions that people without legal training might have thought crucial: Why won’t Texas prosecutors consent to the testing? And could the results show that the inmate, Henry W. Skinner, is innocent of the triple murder that sent him to death row?
The justices focused instead on whether Mr. Skinner had located a path through a thicket of legal doctrines meant to limit postconviction challenges.
Last year, in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, No.08-6, the court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that inmates have no freestanding right under the Constitution’s due process clause to test evidence that could prove their innocence in states without laws on DNA testing. The court and Congress have, moreover, severely limited habeas corpus challenges to convictions and sentences.
Mr. Skinner chose a third route, suing under a federal civil rights law known as Section 1983 and saying a Texas law that allows DNA testing in only some circumstances violated his rights.
That position required Mr. Skinner’s lawyer, Robert C. Owen, to maintain that his client’s goal, at least for now, was not to challenge his conviction or death sentence, as such challenges would have to be brought through a habeas petition, but simply to test the evidence.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was skeptical. “In the real world,” he said, “a prisoner who wants access to DNA evidence is interested in overturning his conviction.”
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wondered whether the Supreme Court erred in staying Mr. Skinner’s execution in March, less than hour before he was to be put to death, in light of his position that he was not currently challenging his death sentence.
“You are telling us that your attack doesn’t go to the sentence,” Justice Kennedy told Mr. Owen. “I don’t see why we don’t just lift the stay, under your view of the case.”
The AP report is, "Convict's appeal in DNA case gets high court focus," by Mark Sherman, via the Washington Post.
A man's life may have been on the line at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, but it was hard to tell that by listening to the argument.
The court is considering the case of Texas death row inmate Hank Skinner, who was an hour away from a lethal injection when the justices stepped into the case.
Skinner says he did not kill his girlfriend and her two sons 17 years ago. Skinner says considerable evidence that was not tested at the time of his trial, on the advice of his lawyer, could help exonerate him.
If the court rules against him, Skinner probably will be put to death without the material ever being tested despite a Texas state law intended to allow defendants to do DNA testing on evidence that was not performed before their convictions.
But neither Skinner's guilt nor the DNA evidence itself is the central issue in the legal case before the Supreme Court.
Instead, the court is deciding whether Skinner can use a federal civil rights law to try to persuade a federal judge to order the prosecutor to turn over two knives, fingernail clippings from Skinner's girlfriend and other evidence found at the crime scene that has never been tested. Should Skinner and his new defense team prevail on all those steps, they would then have DNA tests done on the material.
So the justices engaged in a highly technical argument without referring to the murders or the evidence and made only a couple of mentions of why the case matters.
"What he wants is the DNA," Justice Stephen Breyer said. "He thinks it's going to be exculpatory. He doesn't know that till he gets it."
Skinner narrowly avoided execution after state courts ruled against him and lower federal courts dismissed his claims. In March, he was spared lethal injection an hour before he was to go to the death chamber when the justices decided they wanted time to look at his appeal.
Robert Barnes writes the Post's own coverage, "Supreme Court hears Texas death row inmate's appeal over DNA evidence."
Supreme Court justices asked an hour's worth of questions Wednesday about Henry Skinner's request that a Texas district attorney turn over all existing DNA evidence in the triple murder that sent Skinner to death row.
But they never got around to the bottom line that Skinner would like to propose.
"Turn over the evidence and test it, and let the chips fall where they may," Skinner told CNN in a recent interview. "If I'm innocent I go home. If I'm guilty, I die.
"What's so hard about that?"
Skinner has never been to a Supreme Court oral argument. The justices and the two lawyers representing Skinner and district attorney Lynn Switzer batted around a half-dozen Supreme Court precedents and several other questions - the difference between a civil rights claim and using federal habeas law to attack a wrongful conviction, the respect owed state courts when the justices are interpreting state statutes and even the definition of the word "necessarily."
They never came particularly close to the question of whether DNA evidence that might prove a person guilty or innocent should always be available to the convicted.
That's partly because the court already has answered that question. In a 2009 decision involving an Alaska man who was convicted of kidnapping and rape, the court ruled 5 to 4 that prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA evidence. Even though it acknowledged that such testing had an "unparalleled ability" to separate the guilty from the innocent, the majority said decisions on when prisoners have the right to such testing are best left to state legislatures and Congress.
In constructing such a large roadblock to prisoner claims, though, the justices left a small opening: for civil rights claims, if the prisoner could show that he was denied due process to obtaining evidence that could lead to his exoneration.
That is the path Skinner is asking the court to open for him.
The Los Angeles Times carries, "Supreme Court struggles with DNA testing issue," by David Savage.
"We are seeking access to evidence that has never been tested," said Robert Owen, a Texas law professor representing Skinner.
Students from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism investigated Skinner's case and found evidence that pointed to Busby's uncle as the possible killer. She had left the New Year's Eve party after he had made "crude sexual advances" to her. Skinner was seen dead drunk on a couch next to where she was killed.
Last year, Skinner sued in a last minute bid to have the DNA tested, but he lost in the lower courts.
During Wednesday's arguments, the justices sounded split and uncertain how to proceed. Several of them noted that the high court has frowned upon opening the door to whole new appeals at the end of a long case.
"How do you get around Osborne?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Just last year, the court in a 5-4 decision ruled against William Osborne, an Alaska rapist who unsuccessfully sought DNA evidence to rebut his conviction.
Owen argued that the Texas DNA law was particularly unfair because it offered hope of DNA testing but denied it to Skinner.
Meanwhile, the lawyer defending the district attorney was hard pressed to explain why the extra testing should be denied. "This is an attack on the criminal proceeding," said Gregory Coleman, a lawyer from Austin.
"Supreme Court Hears Texas Death Penalty DNA Case," is Brandi Grissom's report for the Texas Tribune.
Coleman, Switzer's attorney, argued in his brief that Skinner’s request must be a habeas proceeding because it ultimately seeks to undo his death sentence. Under Texas post-conviction DNA testing law, he argued, Skinner cannot reject testing at his original trial — a legal strategy meant to protect the defendant at the time — and then later claim he was deprived of a right to analyze the evidence. (Skinner has claimed that his original trial lawyer declined the tests against his wishes.) Allowing a federal court to reverse state court denials of the DNA testing would make the federal courts the overseers of state DNA laws — a situation that Congress has been careful to avoid, Coleman argued, by allowing states to decide their own post-conviction DNA testing laws. Skinner should not be able to sue Switzer to get the DNA, he said, because the DA is simply carrying out the law passed by the Texas Legislature.
In the courtroom, Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether the high court ought to intervene in the Texas courts’ interpretation of state DNA testing laws. “It's up to them how they want to interpret it. We don't reinterpret state statutes because the state Supreme Court interpreted it strangely,” he told Skinner’s attorney. And the justices pressed attorneys on both sides to specify what criteria ought to be used to differentiate a habeas corpus case from a "1983" civil rights case if the eventual result of both is to alter the conviction. The question in the Skinner case presents something of a Catch-22, Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out. “He thinks [the DNA is] going to be exculpatory. He doesn’t know that until he gets it,” Breyer said. “Getting the DNA does not necessarily spell speedier release; it all depends on what that DNA shows.”
The attorneys general of nearly two-dozen states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado, submitted a brief supporting Gray County DA Switzer in the Skinner case. They argue that if the court were to allow Skinner to seek a federal court’s approval for DNA testing, it would undermine post-conviction DNA laws in 48 states. “Sound principles of federalism and judicial restraint demand that this Court reject Skinner’s invitation,” the attorneys general wrote. A ruling in Skinner’s favor, they said, would also invite hundreds of inmates to file similar litigation, overtaxing scarce state funds. But Owen said that was unlikely to happen: In states that do allow civil rights lawsuits for those seeking DNA evidence, he argued, inmates have not flooded the courts with lawsuits. “It’s going to be a safety valve for highly unusual cases like our case,” he said.
Skinner’s daughter, Natalie Skinner, and his wife, Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner, were among the observers at the proceedings Wednesday. Outside the court, Natalie, with tears in her eyes, remembered the relief she felt in March when the court spared her father’s life at the last minute and agreed to take up his case. “I’m just happy for the opportunity,” she said. “But it’s not about how I feel. It’s about the legal issues of the case.”
PBS' NewsHour coverage, "Can Death Row Inmates Get New DNA Tests?," features analysis by Marcia Coyle of National Law Journal.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, this case has been -- and there are a lot of Texas death row cases, as we know, but this one has attracted a lot of attention. Just in the last few months, you had "TIME' magazine write a big essay about it, Politics Daily.
Why has this case attracted attention?
MARCIA COYLE: Well, I think, first of all, Margaret, it goes back almost a decade, when a group of students from the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University, who have been very successful in helping to exonerate Illinois death row inmates, took on Skinner's claims of innocence.
They went down to Texas, investigated. When they came back, they weren't convinced that he was guilty and they weren't convinced he was innocent. But they did raise the question about all this other evidence that was never tested.
Newspapers started writing about it. The anti-death penalty and civil rights community that has worked very hard to get states to enact DNA testing laws also saw this case as very important.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, at the time he was convicted, Texas, like most states, didn't even have a law governing at what point a -- someone already convicted can get access to DNA evidence.
"High court hears arguments on 'retrying' with new DNA testing," by Bill Mears at CNN.
"Supreme Court Weighs Giving Convict Access to DNA Evidence," by Russell Goldman and Gina Sunseri for ABC News.
"Supreme Court Looks at DNA Testing Case," by Avery Fellow for Courthouse News Service.
In the next post I'm going to single out SCOTUS Blog for it's excellent coverage.
Earlier coverage begins with this post. More on Osborne, via Oyez.
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