On March 21, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from death-row inmate Cory Maples (pic­tured), who is fac­ing exe­cu­tion because of a missed fil­ing dead­line in his state appeal. Copies of an Alabama court rul­ing in his case were sent to the New York law firm han­dling his appeals pro bono but were returned unopened to the court because the attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Maples had left the firm. Maples him­self was not informed of the Alabama rul­ing or the fact that his attor­neys had left. By the time the mail­room mix-up was dis­cov­ered, Maples’s time to appeal had expired. Gregory Garre, Maples’ new attor­ney, is argu­ing that Maples should not be penal­ized for miss­ing the dead­line because Maples was blame­less, the government’s actions were a con­tribut­ing fac­tor, and his lawyers had effec­tive­ly stopped rep­re­sent­ing him. The state main­tains that Maples should be denied a hear­ing because his case is no dif­fer­ent from ​“count­less attor­neys [who] have missed fil­ing dead­lines over the years.” A third attor­ney, who was act­ing as local coun­sel in Alabama but who played no part in Maples’ actu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, did receive the Alabama rul­ing but ignored it. The case is Maples v. Thomas, No. 10 – 63.

Maples’ new attor­neys have tried to chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence in fed­er­al court, cit­ing the ​“gross inef­fec­tive­ness” of his inex­pe­ri­enced tri­al lawyers, but have been rebuffed because of the late fil­ing in state court. In 2006, the Supreme Court con­sid­ered how hard the gov­ern­ment must try to ensure that notice of a severe action was actu­al­ly received. The case, Jones v. Flowers, con­sid­ered the sale of a home for unpaid tax­es. According the court rul­ing, if a let­ter is returned unopened, offi­cials must try hard­er to reach the own­er. Writing for the major­i­ty, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr wrote, ​“This is espe­cial­ly true when, as here, the sub­ject mat­ter of the let­ter con­cerns such an impor­tant and irre­versible prospect as the loss of a house.”

(A. Liptak, ​“Court to Hear Case Stalled by Mistake in Mailroom,” New York Times, March 21, 2011). See Representation, Arbitrariness, and U.S. Supreme Court.

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