U.S. Supreme Court Rules that Arizona Man Unconstitutionally Sentenced to Death Is Not Entitled to Jury Resentencing

A divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that James McKinney (pic­tured), an Arizona death-row pris­on­er who was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death by a tri­al judge who did not con­sid­er mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence relat­ing to his severe Posttraumatic Stress Disorder from relent­less child­hood abuse, is not enti­tled to a jury tri­al to deter­mine his sen­tence. On February 25, 2020, in a 5 – 4 opin­ion authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court upheld the Arizona Supreme Court’s deci­sion to reweigh the aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in the case itself and to rein­state McKinney’s death sentence.

McKinney was sen­tenced to death in 1993 for two mur­ders com­mit­ted dur­ing the course of sep­a­rate bur­glar­ies. His tri­al judge found that McKinney had expe­ri­enced a hor­rif­ic child­hood that was ​“beyond the com­pre­hen­sion of most peo­ple.” Nonetheless, the tri­al court ignored that evi­dence, bound by Arizona Supreme Court rul­ings that a defendant’s evi­dence was required to have a direct causal con­nec­tion to the crime before it could be con­sid­ered mit­i­gat­ing. Weighing the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances against the remain­ing mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in the case, the court sen­tenced McKinney to death. 

In June 2002, in Ring v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Arizona’s death-sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures, say­ing they vio­lat­ed a cap­i­tal defendant’s right to have a jury deter­mine all facts nec­es­sary for a death sen­tence to be imposed. However, the Court declined to apply that rul­ing to cas­es like McKinney’s that had already com­plet­ed their ini­tial stage of appeal before Ring was decid­ed. Subsequently, in December 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit over­turned McKinney’s death sen­tence, apply­ing long-stand­ing Supreme Court caselaw that the ​“causal nexus” require­ment was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. When his case was returned to the state courts, McKinney argued that the right to a jury tri­al announced in Ring should apply to his resen­tenc­ing. Instead, the Arizona Supreme Court reweighed the aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence itself and rein­stat­ed McKinney’s death sentence. 

The Supreme Court’s five con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices agreed with Arizona’s approach. In his opin­ion for the Court, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the Court’s deci­sions on jury sen­tenc­ing in Ring and, more recent­ly, in Hurst v. Florida, had not affect­ed pri­or Supreme Court prece­dent that per­mit­ted state appel­late courts to cure con­sti­tu­tion­al errors in a case by reweigh­ing aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances. Kavanaugh fur­ther stat­ed that ​“a jury (as opposed to a judge) is not con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required to weigh the aggra­vat­ing and mitigating circumstances.” 

The major­i­ty also ruled that the state court’s inde­pen­dent reweigh­ing of the aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence did not reini­ti­ate the direct review process, was not a ​“resen­tenc­ing,” and there­fore did not enti­tle McKinney to the jury-tri­al safe­guards announced in Ring.

Justice Ginsburg, joined by the oth­er mod­er­ate and lib­er­al jus­tices, dis­sent­ed. Ginsburg not­ed that the Arizona Supreme Court’s reweigh­ing of McKinney’s aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence mir­rored that court’s prac­tice dur­ing its con­sid­er­a­tion of his ini­tial appeal. “[T]he Arizona Supreme Court,” she wrote, ​“was not con­duct­ing gar­den-vari­ety harm­less-error review of a low­er court deci­sion; it was rerun­ning direct review to cor­rect its own pri­or harm­ful error.” As a result, she and the oth­er dis­sent­ing jus­tices would have found McKinney enti­tled to a jury resentencing.

Legal and med­ical experts argued that an appel­late reweigh­ing of the evi­dence in McKinney’s case with­out con­sid­er­ing more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry of advance­ments in the under­stand­ing of the effects of child abuse and PTSD would result in an inher­ent­ly unre­li­able sen­tenc­ing ver­dict. Dr. Victoria Reynolds, a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist and foren­sic expert on PTSD and the impact of child­hood trau­ma, said “[c]hildhood mal­treat­ment is one of the most per­ni­cious forms of trau­ma a human can endure.” We now know, she said, that the effect of such child­hood ​“is every bit as destruc­tive, dis­rup­tive, and dis­abling in the lives of chil­dren as PTSD result­ing from combat exposure.” 

Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham crit­i­cized the court’s reliance on tes­ti­mo­ny about PTSD that did not reflect our cur­rent under­stand­ing of the effects of severe child­hood PTSD on adult behav­ior. ​“The court is reweigh­ing obso­lete evi­dence – the same mit­i­ga­tion pre­sent­ed today would be many times stronger,” he said. ​“By hav­ing the wrong enti­ty reweigh the wrong evi­dence, the court [has] guar­an­teed an unre­li­able and unfair sentencing outcome.”