U.S. Supreme Court Reverses Arizona Ruling That Barred Death Row Appeal

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion in Cruz v. Arizona on February 22, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court held that John Cruz should have been able to inform his sen­tenc­ing jury that if he were spared a death sen­tence, he nev­er would have been eli­gi­ble for parole. The Court said that its hold­ing was in direct line with its pre­vi­ous deci­sions in Simmons v. South Carolina and Lynch v. Arizona, which estab­lished this right and its spe­cif­ic applic­a­bil­i­ty to Arizona. This rul­ing not only allows Cruz to renew his appeal for a new penal­ty tri­al, but it could affect near­ly 30 oth­er cap­i­tal defen­dants in Arizona who were also sen­tenced to death under the state’s unconstitutional process.

In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Simmons v. South Carolina that when future dan­ger­ous­ness is at issue in cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing, a defen­dant has a right to inform the jury that a life sen­tence means life with­out parole, assum­ing that is the effect in the state. Despite this rul­ing, Arizona con­sis­tent­ly denied defen­dants the right to so inform the jury, argu­ing that life-sen­tenced pris­on­ers might receive clemen­cy. In Lynch v. Arizona (2016), the U.S. Supreme Court explic­it­ly reject­ed this inter­pre­ta­tion of Simmons.

When Cruz renewed his appeal based on Lynch, he was blocked on state pro­ce­dur­al grounds, with the state argu­ing that Lynch did not apply retroac­tive­ly to Cruz because the rule of Simmons was already well estab­lished at the time of Cruz’s tri­al. Justice Sotomayor, writ­ing for the major­i­ty, not­ed the irony in the state’s posi­tion because Arizona was mis­ap­ply­ing the law it claimed was ​“clear­ly established.” 

Sotomayor called the state’s log­ic a ​“catch-22,” not­ing that Arizona was requir­ing Cruz and sim­i­lar­ly sit­u­at­ed peti­tion­ers to prove that Lynch was both a ​“sig­nif­i­cant change in the law,” and at the same time was an appli­ca­tion of ​“set­tled” fed­er­al law to sat­is­fy retroactivity requirements. 

The Court, with Justices Roberts, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Jackson con­cur­ring, reversed the Arizona Supreme Court and remand­ed the case for fur­ther action. The four dis­sent­ing Justices argued that the majority’s rul­ing was an improp­er inter­fer­ence with state law.