On October 20, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Chappell v. Ayala (No. 13 – 1428), a death penal­ty case from California in which all the black and Hispanic poten­tial jurors were struck from the defen­dan­t’s tri­al. Hector Ayala was con­vict­ed in 1989 of three mur­ders in San Diego. At his tri­al, Ayala’s attor­neys argued that the pros­e­cu­tor was improp­er­ly strik­ing jurors on the basis of race. The judge reviewed the pros­e­cu­tor’s expla­na­tion for the strikes with­out defense attor­neys present, say­ing it was nec­es­sary to pro­tect the pros­e­cu­tor’s tri­al strat­e­gy, and con­clud­ed the strikes were not racial­ly moti­vat­ed. The California Supreme Court found that any poten­tial con­sti­tu­tion­al error relat­ed to the racial make­up of the jury or the sub­se­quent closed review was harm­less, reject­ing Ayala’s appeal. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit grant­ed Ayala relief and ordered California to retry him. The 9th Circuit held that the con­sti­tu­tion­al issues could be reviewed with­out def­er­ence to the state court opin­ion because no rul­ing based on fed­er­al law had been made against Ayala, and that the errors made at tri­al had an inju­ri­ous effect on the jury’s ver­dict. The Supreme Court will con­sid­er whether more def­er­ence was due the state court’s deci­sion and whether the 9th Circuit used the cor­rect stan­dard in deter­min­ing that the tri­al errors were harmful.

The case will be argued lat­er in the Court’s term. Hector Alaya is a cit­i­zen of Mexico, but was not afford­ed his rights under the Vienna Conventiion on Consular Relations to seek help from his embassy at the time of his arrest.

(B. Leonard, ​“New Death-Penalty Case Picked Up by Supremes,” Courthouse News Service, October 20, 2014; see also Scotusblog). See U.S. Supreme Court and Race.

Citation Guide