The Supreme Court made it harder for prison inmates to get out of prison, barring federal courts from holding hearings or considering new evidence of claims that their attorneys did not provide them with adequate legal representation after convictions in state court.
The majority of the Supreme Court's conservatives voted in favor of two death row inmates in Arizona. They challenged the legality of their imprisonments.
The court's three liberal justices all dissented from the majority opinion.
The opinion says that Arizona's federal district court was wrong in considering new evidence presented by the inmates, David Ramirez and Barry Lee Jones, to support claims that their defense lawyers had given ineffective assistance of counsel.
Federal courts can only consider evidence presented in the state court record.
She said the majority opinion will have a devastating outcome.
The gravity of the state systems is overstated by the court, according to the author.
Two men may be executed because their trial attorneys didn't give them the level of representation required by the Constitution. She wrote that it was hard to imagine a more extreme malfunctio than the deprivation of a right.
Ramirez was convicted of killing his girlfriend and her daughter. Police found evidence that Ramirez raped the daughter, and he confessed to doing so, according to Thomas.
Ramirez argued in his petition that his trial lawyer failed to perform a completemitigation investigation and that he should not be sentenced to death.
Jones was found guilty of killing the 4-year-old daughter of his girlfriend and sexually abusing the child.
Jones' new lawyer alleged that his trial attorney failed to investigate evidence that could have shown that the child sustained injuries that led to her death while not in his care. The new lawyer argued that the original post-conviction attorney, who lacked minimum qualifications for lawyers appointed in capital cases, failed to investigate the ineffective assistance from Jones at trial.
The claims of ineffective assistance of counsel were not allowed in federal court because they had not been properly presented in state court after they were convicted.
The district judge in Ramirez's case allowed him to supplement the state court record with evidence not presented in state court to excuse the procedural default.
In Jones' case, the federal judge held a lengthy hearing to consider evidence that his lawyer had provided ineffective assistance to his bid for post-conviction relief in state court.
In its appeal of rulings in federal courts, the state of Arizona asked the Supreme Court to step in. The state argued that the federal law does not allow a federal court to order the development of the state-court record.
The ruling was agreed to by Thomas.
A federal habeas court can't consider evidence beyond the state-court record if the state postconviction counsel isn't effective.
Thomas wrote thatserial relitigation of final convictions undermines the finality that is essential to both the retributive and deterrent functions of criminal law.
In her dissent, she noted that the constitution guarantees the right to effective assistance of counsel at trial.
The foundation for the criminal justice system is recognized by the court as a bedrock principle.
The authority of the federal courts to safeguard that right is hamstrung by the Court.
Many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment will not have a chance to argue their case.
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