Court weighs death row

WASHINGTON— Seven years before Thomas Sims defended Sammie Stokes in a South Carolina death-penalty trial, he had prosecuted Stokes for assaulting his ex-wife.

The trial record shows Sims never told the judge in the murder case about that earlier prosecution, not even when the ex-wife took the stand against his client to recount the assault.

Stokes’ case is one of two the Supreme Court is weighing in which deathrow inmates are raising questions about the actions of their lawyers. In the other, James Tyler of Louisiana pleaded not guilty to the murder charge against him, but his lawyer conceded Tyler’s guilt and did nothing to poke holes in eyewitness accounts that helped convict Tyler. The justices have yet to decide whether to hear either case, but word could come Monday.

The high court has taken up many cases that involve the Constitution’s guarantee of a competent lawyer to a criminal de- fendant, but these cases pose different issues for the justices.

Rights

In the one from Louisiana, the question is whether Tyler’s rights were violated when the lawyer overrode his objections and put up no defense to the charge against him, choosing instead to focus on trying to avoid a death sentence. In the South Carolina case, the issue is whether Sims had a conflict of interest that prevented him from effectively representing his client.

Sims never told the judge in Stokes’ murder trial in 1999 of his prior involvement in prosecuting Stokes, or that the earlier case relied in large part on the testimony of Stokes’ ex-wife, Audrey Smith, according to Stokes’ current lawyers.

When prosecutors called Smith to testify in the sentencing phase of the trial, Sims pulled his punches, the lawyers wrote in their Supreme Court filing.

“Faced with the wit- ness whose cause and credibility he previously championed, Sims ignored multiple significant exaggerations and inconsistencies in Smith’s testimony,” they wrote.

Core principle

Keir Weyble, Stokes’ lead lawyer, pointed to a high court ruling from June in which the court said a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice should have stepped aside from a case in which he had personally approved the prosecution 30 years earlier. “The core principle is the same,” Weyble said.

Sims, in private practice in Orangeburg, South Carolina, rejected the idea that he did anything wrong.

“It’s easy to sit 16 years later and say what someone didn’t do 16 years before. I fought for Sammie and I wanted him to live out his life,” Sims said.

Sims said he and Stokes discussed the matter and that Stokes said he wanted Sims to remain as his lawyer.