Source: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/past/41/2012
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 18:14:35+00:00

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On October 29, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a death penalty case from Texas to determine whether inmates there can raise claims of inadequate trial representation in federal court if they were effectively prevented from raising such a claim in their state appeal by the further failure of their appellate lawyers. Lower courts considering this issue have held that an earlier Supreme Court ruling, Martinez v. Ryan (2012), which provided such a right in an Arizona case, does not apply in Texas because defendants have multiple opportunities to claim their lawyers failed them. The case is Trevino v. Thaler. Carlos Trevino's current lawyers argue that there was a great deal of mitigating evidence that the trial lawyers failed to find and present at trial. The case will probably be argued early next year.
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The latest edition of the educational text, The Death Penalty in a Nutshell by Victor Streib, is now available. Prof. Streib presents the substantive and procedural law of capital cases, along with its relevant history, jurisprudence and constitutional applications. Streib also addresses international issues, the complex role of defense counsel, the risk of systemic bias, and the potential execution of innocent defendants. This new edition provides an analysis of emerging trends in the death penalty, including that fewer states have the death penalty on their books, fewer capital offenders are being sentenced to death, and fewer yet are being executed. Victor Streib is currently the Ella and Ernest Fisher Professor of Law at the Ohio Northern University College of Law.
On October 23, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a last-minute federal appeals court stay-of-execution for John Ferguson. Ferguson had been scheduled to be executed earlier that day, but his lawyers filed a series of motions arguing he was mentally incompetent. In September, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed Ferguson’s death warrant for October 16, but allowed time for a mental competency examination. A series of stays and reversals shifted the date to October 18, then to October 23, or later. Mental health professionals have diagnosed Ferguson as paranoid schizophrenic with a long history of mental illness. Earlier, the ABA released a statement: "The American Bar Association is alarmed that Florida is poised to execute John Ferguson, a man diagnosed as severely mentally ill for more than 40 years, before the constitutionality of his execution is fully evaluated." The Court of Appeals will review whether the Florida Supreme made an unreasonable application of the law or determination of the facts in denying Ferguson's state appeal. Briefs must be filed by November 6. The U.S. Supreme Court had repeatedly denied prior requests for a stay.
On October 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider cases from Arizona and Ohio questioning whether death penalty appeals can continue if the defendant is mentally incompetent. Under the Court's prior rulings in Ford v. Wainwright (1986) and in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), capital defendants cannot be executed if they are incompetent or intellectually disabled (mentally retarded). In the upcoming cases, Ryan v. Gonzalez and Tibbals v. Carter, the Court will determine whether mentally incompetent inmates are entitled to a stay of federal habeas proceedings because they cannot assist their counsel. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Ninth and Sixth Circuits, respectively, held that the defendants' competency was necessary, thus staying the proceedings indefinitely. The states that asked the Court to review this question asserted that the appeals should go forward, since no new information will be considered. The American Psychiatric Association submitted an amicus brief recommending "that post-conviction proceedings initiated by a capital prisoner should be suspended when a mental disorder or disability prevents the prisoner from understanding his situation or communicating with his counsel, and when such communication would be necessary to the fair adjudication of that prisoner’s legal challenges to his conviction or sentence."

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