Supreme Court rules against death row inmates

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled along ideological lines Monday against two Arizona death row inmates who had argued that their lawyers did a poor job representing them in state court. The ruling will make it harder for certain inmates sentenced to death or long terms in prison who believe their lawyers failed them to bring challenges on those grounds.

The ruling involves cases brought to federal court after state court review. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court’s six-justice conservative majority that the proper role for federal courts in these cases is a limited one and that federal courts are generally barred from taking in new evidence of ineffective assistance of counsel that could help prisoners. He wrote that “federal courts must afford unwavering respect to the centrality” of state criminal trials.

In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her colleagues’ decision “perverse” and “illogical.” She said it “hamstrings the federal courts’ authority to safeguard” a defendant’s right to an effective lawyer, a right guaranteed by the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment. Sotomayor said the decision “will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel.”

Sotomayor was joined by fellow liberals Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, who is retiring this summer.

The case before the court involved Barry Lee Jones, who was convicted in the death of his girlfriend’s 4-yearold daughter, who died after a beating ruptured her small intestine. It also involved David Martinez Ramirez, who was convicted of using scissors to fatally stab his girlfriend in the neck and fatally stabbing her 15-year-old daughter with a box cutter.

In both cases the men argued they were failed by lawyers who handled their state court trials and then by lawyers, called postconviction counsel, that handled a state review of their cases after appeals failed. The postconviction lawyers allegedly erred by not arguing the counsel was ineffective.