With a 6-3 vote, the high court ruled David Martinez Ramirez and Barry Lee Jones, who were convicted of separate murders in the 1990s, were barred by federal law from introducing evidence that was not previously presented in state court, overturning two rulings by the Ninth Circuit.
In the majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged the high court's 2012 decision in Martinez v. Ryan
, which allows ineffective counsel claims to be heard in a federal court, but said prisoners cannot produce new evidence and must rely solely on what's in the state court record."The cases here demonstrate the improper burden imposed on the states when Martinez applies beyond its narrow scope, with the sprawling evidentiary hearing in Jones' case being particularly poignant," Justice Thomas says in the opinion, which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court's other conservative-leaning justices all joined.
A prisoner is "at fault" for not bringing up the effectiveness of the trial lawyer in state court, even when state post-conviction counsel is negligent, the opinion says.
Robert Loeb, a partner at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP who argued on behalf of Jones and Ramirez before the high court, called the opinion "wrong at every turn."
"We're devastated and saddened by the opinion," he said. "It's callous in its reading of the law here, and of course, much more concerned about the rush to implementing the death penalty than they are about due process, right to counsel, right to a fair hearing."
Loeb said Monday's decision "slammed the door" on state court prisoners whose first chance to claim they were poorly assisted by court-appointed lawyers is by filing a habeas corpus petition in federal court.
It's unclear what recourse Ramirez and Jones can pursue to avoid execution. No execution date has been set yet. Under Arizona state law, they will have a choice between lethal injection and a gas chamber.
Loeb said he won't speculate on the path forward for the prisoners, but that he and the federal defenders will do all they can to save their lives.
"Without this remedy, they have very, very limited options," Loeb said.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich welcomed the decision in a press release.
"The wheels of justice take time to turn, but they should not be stuck for decades," Brnovich said. "I applaud the Supreme Court's decision because it will help refocus society on achieving justice for victims, instead of on endless delays that allow convicted killers to dodge accountability for their heinous crimes."
The case involved a clash of competing interests in American law, with political undertones.
On the one side, the rights of defendants, in particular indigent ones, of receiving adequate counsel representation, and the ability to raise issues with attorneys who are perceived as ineffective to the point of violating the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
On the other, the urgency of states to protect the administration of criminal justice from the interference of federal courts, a tenet of federalism mirroring other aspects of American jurisprudence.
Eighteen states, including 15 whose state legislatures are fully controlled by Republicans and one, Oregon, fully controlled by Democrats, filed amicus briefs supporting Arizona.
The federal law at issue in the case, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, limited when state court defendants could seek relief in federal court. It was passed by Congress at a time when crime rates were much higher than they currently are across the country, and on the heels of the Oklahoma City bombing.
The purpose of the law, according to its proponents at the time, was to speed up the path bringing capital inmates to the death chamber and reduce the number of defendants who can challenge imprisonment, convictions or sentences through the federal habeas process.
Legal scholars say the law actually has increased the average time elapsing between a capital conviction and an execution.
The Martinez ruling, sometimes referred to as a "gateway" ruling because it opened a path for prisoners to challenge their state imprisonment in federal court, gave hope to numerous defendants who were convicted in state courts after having received unconstitutionally defective representation.
A year after Martinez, the Supreme Court applied the same rule to another death penalty case, Trevino v. Thaler
, in Texas.But on Monday, the court all but closed the gateway's main function: to permit the presentation of exculpatory, potentially life-saving evidence, that could not be brought in state court because of the incompetence of one or more attorneys.
The Supreme Court case also highlighted a pitfall in the American justice system where defendants with exculpatory evidence might be prevented from showing it to a judge because of procedural defaults.
Attorneys with the Federal Public Defender for the District of Arizona said they uncovered evidence that could have resulted in Ramirez and Jones avoiding capital punishment.
In the case of Jones, who has continued to maintain his innocence, federal defenders found new medical examiner opinions and other testimonial evidence that threw into doubt the theory and timeline of the events state prosecutors brought in his case. Jones' attorneys strongly believe he is innocent.
Ramirez never challenged his murder conviction, but records uncovered during federal habeas proceedings, including IQ scores showing he was grades behind his peers and statements that he was unable to eat with utensils, pointed to his mental disability, a factor that made him ineligible for the death penalty under the 2002 Supreme Court's ruling in Atkins v. Virginia. He also had a history of being abused and neglected by his mother.
The American Bar Association filed an amicus brief in September in support of the inmates, saying an evidentiary hearing was necessary to vindicate the defendants' right to effective counsel, a principle established by the Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington
and subsequent decisions."Without access to an evidentiary hearing in federal court, prisoners are no better off than they were in state court, with no meaningful opportunity to present their ineffective assistance claims," the brief says.
During oral arguments in December, Brunn Wall Roysden III of the Office of the Arizona Attorney General asked the justices to either eliminate the Martinez rule altogether or to severely limit its scope by barring prisoners from using evidence gathered during the federal habeas corpus phase.
Several justices appeared skeptical of that approach, questioning the usefulness of allowing hearings under the rule without the possibility of introducing new evidence. Justice Thomas called it "pretty worthless."
Chief Justice Roberts said Arizona's reasoning defied logic.
"It's a basic syllogism," he said then. "The idea is if you do get the right to raise the claim for the first time, because your counsel was incompetent before, surely you have the right to get the evidence that's necessary to support your claim."
Justice Brett Kavanaugh also expressed reservations about gutting a rule that was "obviously carefully crafted" to give defendants a chance to have their claims heard.
Loeb, who believed the questioning was a sign his arguments were getting traction with conservative members of the court, said he found it "somewhat shocking" that a majority of the justices solidified in Arizona's favor.
In particular, the decision by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh to join Justice Thomas caught him by surprise, he said.
Overall, the 6-3 vote shows the high court's strong support for the death penalty and lack of sympathy toward Sixth Amendment rights, he said.
"They're giving a hyper-stringent reading to the statute in a way that no court has previously read it just so states are not bothered with habeas claims from innocent defendants who are facing the death penalty," he said.
In the opinion, Justice Thomas acknowledged that holding hearings without admitting new evidence would be pointless.
"While we agree that any such Martinez hearing would serve no purpose, that is a reason to dispense with Martinez hearings altogether," not to run afoul of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, he said.
Loeb said the opinion was "fraught with irony" and exposed a double standard.
On the one hand, Loeb said, the high court held that Ramirez and Jones must be held accountable for the failures of incompetent lawyers appointed by the state.
On the other hand, the justices — they explained in a footnote — were forgiving Arizona's attorneys for not objecting to Ramirez's introduction of some evidence in the district court and before the Ninth Circuit panel.
"It is perverse that they are not holding the state accountable for the acts of their counsel, but the court at the same time is going to subject an innocent person to the death penalty, based on the failures of their incompetent counsel," Loeb said. "If someone was trying to mock the court for its callousness, they would write something like that footnote as a parody."
In a dissent joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court was ignoring the precedent set in Martinez and Trevino, and that the decision upsets the balance between states' interests and the constitutional rights of criminal defendants.
"The court's decision will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel," Justice Sotomayor wrote. "This decision is perverse."
Lee Kovarsky, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and one of the country's leading scholars of the death penalty and habeas corpus, told Law360 the decision in Shinn v. Ramirez shows the court doesn't adequately understand the way ineffective assistance of counsel claims are litigated.
"They seem to think that there are a lot of claims that you can litigate without introducing evidence in federal court," while in reality, that category of claims is small, he said.
The decision also injects uncertainty into the habeas corpus process, he said.
"I don't understand what happens if you show up in federal court with enough evidence of innocence to excuse forfeiture of the claim, but then aren't allowed to use that evidence of innocence to support judicial relief," he said.
Kovarsky said the decision shows the high court's intention to limit the federal courts' intervention in state court cases through habeas corpus.
"It's another sign that the Supreme Court is determined to disable federal habeas relief as a meaningful way of enforcing constitutional rights," he said. "This is a horrible day for the Sixth Amendment."
Ramirez and Jones are represented by Robert Loeb of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.
Arizona is represented by Brunn Wall Roysden III of the Office of the Arizona Attorney General.
The case is Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, case number 20-1009, in the Supreme Court of the United States.
--Editing by Emily Kokoll.