Court rules for three Texas death row inmates
on Apr 25, 2007 at 10:03 am
In three rulings Wednesday on death penalty procedures in Texas, the Supreme Court kept up its continuing challenge to the way the two courts reviewing Texas capital cases handle that assignment — the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court for criminal cases, and the Fifth Circuit Court, the federal tribunal that hears habeas challenges by Texas prisoners.
In the state case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Court of Criminal Appeals wrongly put up a new legal barrier to a death row inmate’s challenge to jury instructions in his sentencing. The 5-4 decision came in the case of Smith v. Texas (05-11304), a case that had been before the Court once before.. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.
The Court reversed the state court ruling that reinstated the death sentence of a Dallas man, LaRoyce Lathair Smith; the state court applied a new harmless error standard under state law. That was a misinterpretation of what federal law required, the Court concluded.
In the federal habeas cases, the Court produced separate opinions in Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman (05-11284) and Brewer v. Quarterman (05-11287), both by 5-4 votes finding that the Fifth Circuit Court wrongly applied prior rulings on instructions to assure that capital juries give full consideration to any factor that might suggest a death sentence should not be imposed. The Court had heard those cases in a consolidated hearing, but the majority — led by Justice John Paul Stevens — wrote separatelyin deciding the two, while the dissenters filed opinions applying to both (one by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., one by Justice Antonin Scalia).
One case involved Jalil Abdul-Kabir, who changed his name from Ted Calvin Cole after adopting the Islamic faith; the other involved Brent Ray Brewer.
(A separate post on this blog will discuss these rulings further.)
