Linda Greenhouse, former Supreme Court writer for the New York Times, recently wrote about the reversal of a death sentence by the U. S. Supreme Court. The Court overturned George Porter Jr.'s death sentence because of the inadequate representation he received and the powerful mitigating evidence in Mr. Porter's life that his attorney failed to investigate and present to the jury considering his client's life. The Court's opinion noted, "Our nation has a long tradition of according leniency to veterans in recognition of their service, especially for those who fought on the front lines as Porter did." Ms. Greenhouse's article contrasted this ruling with one handed down last month in the case of Robert J. Van Hook, who also claimed inadequate counsel. In his case, the Court overtuned a federal appeals court's grant of relief, concluding that Van Hook's lawyer made "professionally reasonable" decisions regarding his case. Van Hook was also a military veteran, and like Porter, was also a product of a violent and abusive childhood.
Greenwood writes, "Setting the Porter and the Van Hook cases side by side, what strikes me is how similarly horrific the two men’s childhoods were - indeed, how common such childhoods were among the hundreds of death-row inmates… It is fanciful to suppose that each of these defendants had lawyers who made the effort to dig up the details and offer these sorry life stories to the jurors who would weigh their fate. I don’t make that observation to excuse the crimes of those on death row, but only to underscore the anomaly of the mercy the court bestowed…on one of that number." Read the full article below.
On February 22, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear, and then summarily reversed, a federal appeals court decision that would have given a Texas defendant a new trial based on improper jury selection. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had ruled that Anthony Haynes should be retried or released because a prospective juror was improperly excluded based on the juror's race. Two different judges had presided over the jury selection; one actually observed the juror's demeanor during questioning, and the second listened to the prosecution's explanation for excluding this juror. The Fifth Circuit said that the second judge's decision was not entitled to special deference because he had not observed the actual juror. But the U.S. Supreme Court, in a per curiam decision, held that the lower court had misinterpreted its prior rulings, and deference should have been accorded to the judge's decision. The high court's ruling did not exclude a review of the juror's exclusion under the proper standard.
A new book by David Oshinsky entitled "Capital Punishment on Trial: Furman v. Georgia and the Death Penalty in Modern America" takes a closer look at the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that stopped the death penalty in 1972. The author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who is the holder of the Jack S. Blanton Chair at the University of Texas and a visiting professor at New York University, discusses the debates and controversy surrounding the case of Furman v. Georgia, including a focus on the issues of racial prejudice and arbitrariness. Austin Sarat called the book "A meticulously researched and elegantly written account by a masterful storyteller.... Filled with striking insights." The book will be published by University Press of Kansas on April 14, 2010.
On January 20, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence for Holly Wood for the 1993 shooting of his former girlfriend in Alabama, despite the fact that the attorney working on the penalty phase of the case failed to investigate or tell the jury about Wood's borderline mental retardation. A federal District Court had overturned his death sentence because of the inadequate performance of the inexperienced lawyer, although other lawyers working on the case had seen a report on Wood's mental status and did not use it. There was ample other evidence indicating Wood had an IQ of less than 70 and had been classified as mentally retarded that was not pursued by any of the attorneys. The Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, agreed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that Wood failed to show that the lawyers were constitutionally ineffective. The Court stated, "[T]he state court’s conclusion that Wood’s counsel made a strategic decision not to pursue or present evidence of his mental deficiencies was not an unreasonable determination of the facts." Justice John Paul Stevens, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, noted, "There is a world of difference between a decision not to introduce evidence at the guilt phase of a trial and a failure to investigate mitigating evidence that might be admissible at the penalty phase… the only reasonable factual conclusion I can draw from this record is that counsel’s decision to do so was the result of inattention and neglect."
On January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 
New evidence in the Troy Davis case in Georgia has recently emerged, further implicating another suspect in the murder of off-duty police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. In 1991, Davis was sentenced to death for officer MacPhail's murder. Davis became the primary suspect after Sylvester "Redd" Coles told the police about Davis's presence at the crime scene. During his 1991 trial, nine prosecution eyewitnesses testified against Davis. All but two of the witnesses (one of whom is Coles) have recanted their testimony. The new testimony was provided by Quiana Glover, who was at a friend's house when she said Coles admitted to killing MacPhail. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted her affidavit as stating that Coles knew the murder was being falsely attributed to Davis instead of himself. In August 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an historic order, continuing Davis's stay of execution and instructing a federal District Court judge in Savannah to hold an evidentiary hearing to decide whether Davis's new evidence clearly establishes his innocence.
Franklin E. Zimring is a distinguished professor of law and scholar at the Berkeley School of Law who has followed the development of the modern death penalty over many decades. Writing recently in the National Law Journal, Prof. Zimring said the recent action by the American Law Institute to withdraw the death penalty provisions from its Model Penal Code deprives the punishment of any legal legitimacy. "[T]he institute has pulled the intellectual rug out from under the current system of deciding between life and death," he wrote. Recalling that when the Supreme Court stopped the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, he noted many states turned to the Model Penal Code to fashion new death penalty laws that the Court would accept. But that model has now been discredited. "Now that the creators of the modern system of death penalty sentencing have disowned that system, there is no support for distinguishing the current death penalty lottery from the lawless system that Furman condemned. The apparatus that the Supreme Court rushed to embrace in 1976 has been exposed as a conspicuous failure."
James Tyrone Woodson's death sentence was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 because the jury had not been allowed to consider any mitigating factors in his life or about his peripheral role in the crime. The Court not only rejected Woodson's death sentence, but held that a mandatory death penalty system was unconstitutional. Woodson had been convicted in 1974 of first-degree murder, which was automatically punishable by the death penalty under North Carolina law. Woodson had been in a car during the robbery and murder, and he maintained that he was threatened to assist with the robbery. Woodson and 120 other death row inmates' lives were spared because of the Supreme Court ruling. He eventually became eligible for parole and was released in 1993. Since his release, Woodson has led a crime-free life. He used to be the kitchen manager at the Raleigh Rescue Mission. He now has a job in Raleigh and preaches at Wake Correctional Center. "You have to want to change. Nobody can make you change," he said recently about his work helping others. He continued, "There's a choice in the matter in life itself. Do you want to live? Do you want to be helpful to another individual because you've been helped?"