The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit opinion in Murdaugh v. Ryan is available in Adobe .pdf format.
Courthouse News Service posts, "Death Penalty Vacated for Horrific AZ Murder," by Tim Hull. Michael Murdaugh is the inmate.
A Phoenix judge sentenced Murdaugh to death in 2001, and the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed his convictions and sentence on appeal. In a subsequent habeas petition, Murdaugh claimed, among other things, that the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 ruling in Ring v. Arizona gave him the right to have a jury decide "the presence or absence of the aggravating factors required by Arizona law for imposition of the death penalty."
A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit agreed on Friday, vacating Murdaugh's death sentence and remanding the case for a new sentencing hearing.
"We conclude that the absence of a jury at the sentencing stage had a 'substantial and injurious effect or influence' on Murdaugh's sentence of death," Judge Dorothy Nelson wrote for the San Francisco-based appeals court.
"The expert reports, though not drafted for the purpose of mitigation, provided some details about Murdaugh's chronic drug use, which a jury might have found established drug impairment," Nelson added. "Because a jury could have found that a preponderance of the evidence supported the (G)(1) mitigating factor, and voted for leniency on that basis, the Ring error was prejudicial. We must grant the habeas petition."
More on Ring v. Arizona, via Oyez.
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