Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument in Case that Threatens Meaningful Federal Review for Prisoners Denied Competent Lawyers

The United States Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment on December 8, 2021 in a case that will have seri­ous impli­ca­tions for the right to fed­er­al court review of wrong­ful con­vic­tions and death sen­tences. Arizona has asked the Supreme Court to reverse fed­er­al appel­late court rul­ings in favor of Barry Jones and David Ramirez. The Court seemed skep­ti­cal of Arizona​’s argu­ment that even though the state pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive coun­sel to rep­re­sent pris­on­ers in state courts, fed­er­al courts must ignore evi­dence devel­oped by com­pe­tent coun­sel in fed­er­al habeas corpus proceedings. 

Jones’ and Ramirez’s fed­er­al habeas coun­sel uncov­ered evi­dence of Jones’ inno­cence and of Ramirez’s child­hood abuse and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Federal habeas attor­neys argue that incom­pe­tent tri­al coun­sel pre­vent­ed this com­pelling evi­dence from being dis­cov­ered and pre­sent­ed at Jones’ and Ramirez’s tri­als. Because of the inef­fec­tive­ness of Jones’ and Ramirez’s state post-con­vic­tion coun­sel, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied the Supreme Court’s 2012 opin­ion in Martinez. v. Ryan to allow the new­ly devel­oped evi­dence to be con­sid­ered in deter­min­ing the inef­fec­tive assis­tance of tri­al coun­sel claims. As a result of the Ninth Circuit’s rul­ings, Jones was grant­ed a new tri­al and Ramirez was grant­ed an evi­den­tiary hear­ing in a fed­er­al district court.

At oral argu­ment, Arizona claimed that the appel­late court erred because Martinez does not allow the con­sid­er­a­tion of new evi­dence when decid­ing the mer­its of Ramirez’s and Jones’ claims. 

“I think there’s a faulty assump­tion that Martinez some­how guar­an­tees the right to have the claim heard in fed­er­al habeas in dis­trict court. That’s wrong,” said Brunn Roysden, rep­re­sent­ing Arizona. ​“Even in a state where inef­fec­tive assis­tance of tri­al coun­sel is brought in direct appeal, if there’s one lev­el of post-con­vic­tion review and that post-con­vic­tion review coun­sel does not pur­sue those claims, then as a mat­ter of inde­pen­dent and ade­quate state law the fed­er­al court can’t hear it.”

Ramirez and Jones argued that Arizona’s posi­tion would effec­tive­ly over­rule Martinez and deny pris­on­ers mean­ing­ful access to the fed­er­al courts after their state court pro­ceed­ings already have been com­pro­mised by poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion. ​“There is a right to have tri­al coun­sel here, and there was nev­er a fair tri­al for Mr. Ramirez or for Mr. Jones,” said Robert Loeb, rep­re­sent­ing Ramirez and Jones. 

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, one of the two Martinez dis­senters, asked ques­tions crit­i­cal of Ramirez and Jones’ posi­tion. However, Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts ques­tioned the state’s posi­tion. Justice Thomas, who also dis­sent­ed in Martinez, not­ed that ​“It seems rather odd that … we will excuse a default under Martinez, but not allow the pris­on­er to make his under­ly­ing claim or devel­op his evidence.”

Justice Kavanaugh said that the case was close because of statu­to­ry inter­pre­ta­tion ques­tions. But the jus­tice pressed Arizona on how the state’s posi­tion might ​“gut” Martinez. ​“What’s the point of Martinez?” asked Kavanaugh. ​“The Court obvi­ous­ly care­ful­ly craft­ed an opin­ion to give you the right to raise an inef­fec­tive assis­tance claim, to make sure it’s con­sid­ered at least once, and this would real­ly gut that in a lot of cases.”

Chief Justice Roberts pressed Arizona along sim­i­lar lines, say­ing ​“if you do get the right to raise the claim for the first time, because your coun­sel was incom­pe­tent before, sure­ly you have the right to get the evi­dence that’s nec­es­sary to sup­port your claim.”

Before the argu­ments, legal experts had high­light­ed the impor­tance of the case for crim­i­nal defen­dants nation­wide. Christina Swarns, Executive Director of the Innocence Project, wrote in a New York Times op ed that ​“Arizona’s posi­tion would grave­ly erode the foun­da­tion of [the crim­i­nal legal] sys­tem, fur­ther harm­ing those who have already suf­fered the dev­as­tat­ing and unjust con­se­quences of incom­pe­tent lawyer­ing.” Law pro­fes­sors Alexis Hoag and Leah Litman rec­og­nized the poten­tial­ly wide-rang­ing impact of the Court’s deci­sion. Hoag sum­ma­rized the val­ues at stake, writ­ing that ​“In the sim­plest of terms, Shinn v. Ramirez and Jones presents the Court with the ques­tion of whether a state can prop­er­ly put a per­son to death with­out allow­ing that per­son a fair tri­al.” Litman wrote that ​“While the for­mal issues in the cas­es are high­ly tech­ni­cal, they both are of immense prac­ti­cal impor­tance to the enforce­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and the fun­da­men­tal fair­ness of the crim­i­nal legal system.”