Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of June 292020

NEWS (7/​2/​20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court denied relief to death-row pris­on­er Leroy Pooler, apply­ing two recent deci­sions that retroac­tive­ly rescind­ed case prece­dent that could have over­turned his death sentence. 

The court ruled that it would not apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Hall v. Florida to Pooler’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim, leav­ing in place a pri­or state court deci­sion that had used an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly nar­row stan­dard to reject his claim. The court also ruled that Pooler was not enti­tled to relief from a non-unan­i­mous death sen­tenc­ing ver­dict, say­ing the jury had unan­i­mous­ly found him to be eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty when it con­vict­ed him of a sec­ond crime whose exis­tence estab­lished an aggra­vat­ing circumstance.


NEWS (7/​1/​20) — Texas: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued three death penal­ty deci­sions on July 1, remand­ing two cas­es for fur­ther pro­ceed­ings and deny­ing relief in a third. 

The court remand­ed Mark Robertsons case to the Dallas tri­al court, direct­ing it to obtain a full record of Robertson’s tri­al to deter­mine whether pros­e­cu­tors and his lawyer col­lud­ed to exclude Black jurors from serv­ing in his case. It also remand­ed Larry Estradas case to a Harris County tri­al court to prop­er­ly review his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim, which the state courts had pre­vi­ous­ly reject­ed, apply­ing uncon­sti­tu­tion­al cri­te­ria for deter­min­ing intel­lec­tu­al disability.

The court affirmed a Rusk County post-con­vic­tion court’s denial of relief to Blaine Milam on his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim and his claim that the pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly false bite mark evi­dence against him. 


NEWS (7/​1/​20) — Tennessee: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled against Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Stephen Hugueleys men­tal com­pe­ten­cy claim and upheld the dis­missal of his habeas cor­pus petition. 

The court reject­ed Hugueley’s argu­ment that he was men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent when the Tennessee state courts per­mit­ted him to with­draw his post-con­vic­tion peti­tion and that the pro­ce­dures Tennessee employed to find him com­pe­tent vio­lat­ed the Eighth Amendment. The court ruled that, because Hugueley had waived state court review of his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence, he could not lat­er attempt to raise those same issues in fed­er­al habeas cor­pus proceedings.


NEWS (6/​30/​20) — Pennsylvania: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Leeton Thomas, who had received a notice of exe­cu­tion pre­ma­ture­ly sched­ul­ing his exe­cu­tion for July 28

The Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections was required by the terms of Pennsylvania’s 1995 auto­mat­ic death war­rant statute to set an exe­cu­tion date for Thomas despite the fact that he had nev­er been afford­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to seek either state or fed­er­al post-con­vic­tion review of his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. More than 400 death war­rants have been issued under the law, not one of which has been car­ried out.