Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of December 14, 2020

NEWS (12/​18/​20) — Texas: The Texas Supreme Court has over­turned a rul­ing by the state’s comp­trol­ler that had denied death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown​’s appli­ca­tion for com­pen­sa­tion and direct­ed the comp­trol­ler to pay Brown the com­pen­sa­tion man­dat­ed by state law.

Brown was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2005. Following his exon­er­a­tion, he applied for com­pen­sa­tion under Texas’ Tim Cole Act, but his appli­ca­tion was denied because he had not been adju­di­cat­ed ​“actu­al­ly inno­cent” at the time charges against him were dis­missed. After the tri­al court reopened his case and declared Brown actu­al­ly inno­cent, Brown again applied for com­pen­sa­tion. The comp­trol­ler denied the appli­ca­tion again, this time assert­ing that the tri­al court had lacked juris­dic­tion to issue its dec­la­ra­tion of inno­cence. The Texas Supreme Court admon­ished the comp­trol­ler that it lacked author­i­ty to ques­tion the tri­al court’s rul­ing and said that the comp­trol­ler had only a min­is­te­r­i­al role in the com­pen­sa­tion process. The court returned the case to the comp­trol­ler to pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion to Brown.

NEWS (12/​17/​20) — Ohio: The Ohio Supreme Court has vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed on Damantae Graham for the shoot­ing death of a Kent State stu­dent dur­ing an apart­ment rob­bery and direct­ed that the tri­al court resen­tence Graham to life with­out parole. The court ruled that the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances found by the jury in the case did not out­weigh the mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors pre­sent­ed by Graham beyond a reasonable doubt.

Although the court reject­ed Graham’s claim that his death sen­tence was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because he was bare­ly 19 years old at the time of the offense, it held that the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances in his case — which relat­ed sole­ly to the cir­cum­stances of the offense — did not out­weigh beyond a rea­son­able doubt the ​“strong and com­pelling mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence regard­ing Graham’s his­to­ry and back­ground.” That evi­dence includ­ing Graham’s age, dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly, unsta­ble home envi­ron­ment, his­to­ry of men­tal-health issues, inad­e­quate­ly treat­ed drug depen­den­cy, pos­i­tive adjust­ment in a struc­tured envi­ron­ment, and expres­sion of sym­pa­thy to the victim’s family.

NEWS (12/​16/​20) — Alabama: The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has vacat­ed the death sen­tence of Lionel Francis, order­ing a life sen­tence after find­ing the evi­dence insuf­fi­cient to estab­lish any aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance that would have made Francis eli­gi­ble for the death penalty.

Alabama law requires proof of at least one aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance before a defen­dant can be sub­ject to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In Francis’ case, pros­e­cu­tors offered evi­dence of a sin­gle aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance, that the defen­dant had pre­vi­ous­ly been ​“con­vict­ed of anoth­er cap­i­tal offense or a felony involv­ing the use or threat of vio­lence to the per­son” and attempt­ed to prove it with evi­dence that he had been con­vict­ed in North Dakota of being an accom­plice to aggravated assault.

Prosecutors argued that the con­vic­tion qual­i­fied as proof of the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance because it con­sti­tut­ed a felony under Alabama law. The offense, how­ev­er, was a mis­de­meanor under North Dakota law. The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the state in which the con­vic­tion occurred deter­mines whether the offense was a felony or a mis­de­meanor. Accordingly, the court found the North Dakota con­vic­tion failed to estab­lish that Francis had been con­vict­ed of a felony, held that the evi­dence was insuf­fi­cient as a mat­ter of law to estab­lish any aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance, and direct­ed that the tri­al court resen­tence Francis to life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

NEWS (12/​14/​20) — Arizona: In an unsigned 6 – 3 opin­ion, the United States Supreme Court grant­ed Arizona’s peti­tion to review the deci­sion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that had over­turned George Kayer​’s death sen­tence, reversed the deci­sion, and rein­stat­ed Kayer’s death sen­tence. Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor dissented.

In over­turn­ing the Ninth Circuit’s deci­sion, the con­ser­v­a­tive bloc of the Court extend­ed its judge-made rule that fed­er­al courts must ascer­tain hypo­thet­i­cal­ly rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for a state court rul­ing when a state court fails to artic­u­late its rea­sons for reject­ing a state prisoner’s con­sti­tu­tion­al claims, extend­ing that rule to instances in which a state court set forth its rea­sons for reject­ing one prong of a con­sti­tu­tion­al claim but not another. 

In address­ing the Arizona courts’ fail­ure to pro­vide rea­sons for its view that Kayler did not suf­fer prej­u­dice from his lawyer’s fail­ure to present a range of avail­able mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence, the Court wrote: ​“Insofar as the state court offered its con­clu­sion on the prej­u­dice ques­tion with­out artic­u­lat­ing its rea­son­ing sup­port­ing that con­clu­sion, we ​‘must deter­mine what argu­ments or the­o­ries … could have sup­port­ed the state court’s’ deter­mi­na­tion that Kayer failed to show prej­u­dice.” The Court ruled that fair-mind­ed jurists could devise a hypo­thet­i­cal­ly rea­son­able basis to find that Kayer did not suf­fer prej­u­dice, and it reject­ed his ineffectiveness claim.