Ruling limits inmates’ challenges based on bad legal help

WASHINGTON » Ruling against two Arizona death row inmates, the Supreme Court on Monday sharply cut back on prisoners’ ability to challenge their convictions in federal court by arguing that their lawyers had been ineffective in state court proceedings.

The 6-3 decision split along ideological lines. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said that a federal court considering a habeas corpus petition “may not conduct an evidentiary hearing or otherwise consider evidence beyond the state-court record based on ineffective assistance of state post-conviction counsel.”

He based his decision on language in a 1996 federal law limiting habeas corpus petitions, on the judicial system’s interest in finality and on state sovereignty.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority “all but overrules two recent precedents that recognized a critical exception to the general rule that federal courts may not consider claims on habeas review that were not raised in state court.”

She added: “Two men whose trial attorneys did not provide even the bare minimum level of representation required by the Constitution may be executed because forces outside of their control prevented them from vindicating their constitutional right to counsel.”

One of the men, David Ramirez, fatally stabbed his girlfriend, Mary Ann Gortarez, and her 15-yearold daughter, Candie. Ramirez was convicted and sentenced to death in state court.

In later proceedings in federal court, his lawyers argued that his trial lawyer had failed to investigate or present evidence about his intellectual and developmental disabilities that might have prompted the jury to show leniency.

The other inmate, Barry Lee Jones, was convicted of causing the death of his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter, Rachel Gray. Sotomayor wrote that “Jones’ trial counsel failed to undertake even a cursory investigation and, as a result, did not uncover readily available medical evidence that could have shown that Rachel sustained her injuries when she was not in Jones’ care.”

In a pair of decisions about a decade ago — Martinez vs. Ryan in 2012 and Trevino vs. Thaler in 2013 — the Supreme Court allowed some federal challenges to state convictions to proceed when lawyers in the state courts had been ineffective at trial and in postconviction challenges.

On Monday, however, Thomas in his writing said that those decisions did not contemplate elaborate hearings in federal court to consider new evidence.