On February 21 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a U.S. Court of Appeals deci­sion grant­i­ng a retri­al to James Lambert, who had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1984 in Pennsylvania. Lambert appealed his con­vic­tion, claim­ing that pros­e­cu­tors nev­er dis­closed evi­dence iden­ti­fy­ing an addi­tion­al co-defen­dant, in vio­la­tion of Brady v. Maryland. Lambert claimed this new evi­dence would have impeached the tes­ti­mo­ny that led to his con­vic­tion. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in favor of Lambert, order­ing him to be released or retried in four months. The Supreme Court held that ​“the var­i­ous nota­tions and state­ments which [Lambert] claims the com­mon­wealth should have dis­closed are en­tirely ambigu­ous.” The Court also not­ed, ​“Any retri­al here would take place three decades after the crime, pos­ing the most daunt­ing dif­fi­cul­ties for the prose­cution.… That bur­den should not be imposed unless each ground sup­port­ing the state court’s deci­sion had been exam­ined and found to be unrea­son­able under AEDPA [the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act].” The dis­sent, writ­ten by Justice Stephen Breyer and joined by Justices Ginsburg and Kagan, said the nota­tion about the co-defen­dant was not ambigu­ous, and not­ed, ​“if the Commonwealth was wrong, an inno­cent man has spent almost 30 years in prison under sen­tence of death for a crime he did not com­mit.” Read full opin­ion here.

(B. Leonard, Courthouse News Service, February 21, 2012; Wetzel v. Lambert, No. 11 – 38). See U.S. Supreme Court.

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