On March 24, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear argu­ments in Jennings v. Stephens (No. 13 – 7211), a Texas death penal­ty case involv­ing inef­fec­tive­ness of coun­sel. In his request for fed­er­al relief from his death sen­tence, Robert Jennings cit­ed three instances in which his tri­al lawyers failed to ade­quate­ly rep­re­sent him. A U.S. District Court grant­ed him relief on two of those claims (includ­ing fail­ure to present evi­dence of his men­tal prob­lems), while deny­ing the third (his own lawyers told the jury they agreed he was eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty). Texas appealed the District Court’s grant of relief on the first two claims to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which then held they could not con­sid­er Jennings’ third claim of inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion because his lawyers failed to file for­mal appeal papers on that claim. Jennings’ attor­neys main­tain that no such fil­ing was required since the Fifth Circuit was already review­ing the gen­er­al issue of inef­fec­tive­ness of coun­sel at the state’s request. The case may be set for argu­ment in the fall.

(L. Denniston, ​“Arbitration with pub­lic spec­ta­tors? Maybe…,” SCOTUSblog, March 24, 2014; D. C. Weiss, ​“Did pro­ce­dur­al mis­step bar defen­dant from rais­ing lawyer’s cap­i­tal con­ces­sion? SCOTUS to decide,” ABA Journal, March 24, 2014). See U.S. Supreme Court and Representation.

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