Newly Constituted Pennsylvania Supreme Court Upholds Grant of New Trial in Death Penalty Case

On July 19, the new­ly con­sti­tut­ed Pennsylvania Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to uphold a tri­al court’s order grant­i­ng a new tri­al to Philadelphia death row pris­on­er, Christopher Williams.

The court deter­mined that Williams’ tri­al and appel­late coun­sel had been inef­fec­tive by fail­ing to inves­ti­gate and present expert foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny on blood flow and gun­shot wounds that would have demon­strat­ed that the ver­sion of the mur­ders pre­sent­ed by the pros­e­cu­tion’s lead wit­ness was incom­pat­i­ble with the phys­i­cal evi­dence. The court also ruled that the tri­al judge had improp­er­ly pre­vent­ed defense lawyers from cross-exam­in­ing the state’s expert wit­ness­es on key matters. 

The case was the first time the new court was faced with a low­er court judg­ment grant­i­ng a cap­i­tal defen­dant a new tri­al. A sur­vey of Pennsylvania cap­i­tal post-con­vic­tion appeals by the Death Penalty Information Center, updat­ed through July 25, 2016, found that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has issued orders affirm­ing or deny­ing post-con­vic­tion requests for new tri­als by cap­i­tal defen­dants 257 times since the Commonwealth enact­ed its cur­rent death penal­ty statute in 1978. This deci­sion was only the third time in this peri­od that the court had ordered or affirmed the grant of a new tri­al. By con­trast, the court had pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed more than 99% of the time to uphold cap­i­tal con­vic­tions. It had over­turned 12 of the last 13 low­er court rul­ings it had con­sid­ered since April 2006 that had grant­ed death-row pris­on­ers new tri­als. The sole excep­tion had been the case of Ronald Champney, in which the court split 3 – 3, with one vacan­cy on the court caused by the con­vic­tion of a jus­tice for pub­lic cor­rup­tion. The tie vote upheld the deci­sion of the tri­al court in that case.

In November 2015, Pennsylvania elect­ed three new jus­tices to the court, fill­ing the posi­tions for­mer­ly held by avid death penal­ty sup­port­ers who had been forced to resign as a result of ​“porn­gate” (a far-reach­ing email scan­dal involv­ing the dis­sem­i­na­tion of porno­graph­ic, misog­y­nis­tic, racist, and oth­er offen­sive emails on pub­lic com­put­ers), ethics vio­la­tions, or crim­i­nal con­vic­tions. A fourth lead­ing death penal­ty pro­po­nent, for­mer Chief Justice Ronald Castille — who was the sub­ject of the U.S. Supreme Court’s judi­cial bias rul­ing in Terrance Williams v. Pennsylvania—left the court at the end of 2014 after reach­ing the state’s manda­to­ry retirement age.