After Supreme Court Denies Them Relief, Pennsylvania Death-Row Prisoners Resentenced to Life

Two for­mer Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­ers, whose death sen­tences were over­turned by fed­er­al courts after the United States Supreme Court had ruled against them, have been resen­tenced to life without parole. 

On February 28, 2018, Scott Blystone (pic­tured) was resen­tenced to life by the Fayette County Court of Common Pleas in south­west­ern Pennsylvania, 34 years after being sen­tenced to death and 27 years after the U.S. Supreme Court heard his case. Two days lat­er, on March 2, Joseph Kindler was also resen­tenced to life after the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office agreed to drop the death penal­ty in his case. Nearly 35 years had passed since Kindler had been sen­tenced to death and eight since the Supreme Court had ruled against him. 

Blystone’s case was the first from Pennsylvania to chal­lenge the state’s law requir­ing the jury to sen­tence a defen­dant to death if it finds any aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance present, but no mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances. Blystone had been rep­re­sent­ed by a part-time pub­lic defend­er who had been prac­tic­ing law for less than a year and had nev­er tried a homi­cide case. The lawyer pre­sent­ed no defense at the guilt stage of tri­al and had no evi­dence to present in the penal­ty phase except for tes­ti­mo­ny from Blystone’s par­ents. When Blystone refused to have his par­ents take the stand to beg for his life, the lawyer pre­sent­ed no case in mit­i­ga­tion. Even then, the jury asked the court whether it had to impose the death penal­ty if it found no mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. The court answered in the affir­ma­tive, and the jury sen­tenced Blystone to death. 

In 1990, a divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court upheld Pennsylvania’s death-penal­ty statute by a 5 – 4 vote. The fed­er­al dis­trict court sub­se­quent­ly over­turned Blystone’s death sen­tence because of his lawyer’s fail­ure to inves­ti­gate and present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence of Blystone’s brain dam­age, men­tal health diag­noses, and extreme men­tal and emo­tion­al dis­tur­bance at the time of the murder. 

Kindler also over­turned his death sen­tence in the fed­er­al courts, after the Pennsylvania state courts had refused to con­sid­er Kindler’s con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges to his con­vic­tion and sen­tence because he had escaped to Canada. The fed­er­al courts found mul­ti­ple con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions in Kindler’s case, includ­ing that his lawyer had failed to inves­ti­gate and present avail­able mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence and that the jury had been giv­en an instruc­tion that uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly lim­it­ed its abil­i­ty to con­sid­er the mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence that had been presented. 

In a unan­i­mous U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in 2009 deal­ing with fed­er­al review of state pro­ce­dur­al rules, the Court over­turned the grant of a new penal­ty hear­ing and sent the case back to the fed­er­al court of appeals. The appeals court again ruled in Kindler’s favor, and this time the Supreme Court let that decision stand. 

Six Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­ers have had their cas­es argued in the U.S. Supreme Court since the Commonwealth re-enact­ed the death penal­ty in 1974. Five — Blystone, Kindler, Ronald Rompilla, David Sattazahn, and Terrance Williams—have since been resen­tenced to life with­out parole, and a sixth, George Banks, has been found incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. Dating back to when the Supreme Court over­turned the con­vic­tion of Aaron ​“Treetop” Turner, an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled African-American man whom Philadelphia police coerced into con­fess­ing to a mur­der in 1946, no Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er whose case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court has been exe­cut­ed. After five sep­a­rate tri­als and appeals, Turner was exonerated.