Arizona
High court told jurors were misled in Arizona death row case
Arizona Supreme Courtroom denies resentencing for loss of life row inmate
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for a person on Arizona’s loss of life row advised the U.S. Supreme Courtroom on Tuesday that jurors within the case had been wrongly advised that the one method to make sure the person would by no means stroll free was to condemn him to loss of life.
The person, John Montenegro Cruz, argued that the jury ought to have been knowledgeable he could be ineligible for parole if spared from loss of life. Cruz says Arizona has been defying the Supreme Courtroom on the problem.
Cruz’s lawyer, Neal Katyal, says efforts to inform the jury that Cruz was not parole-eligible had been rejected. Arizona says Cruz did not make the exact requests he wanted to below Supreme Courtroom precedent.
Not less than one juror has mentioned that had she recognized {that a} “life sentence with out parole” was an alternative choice to loss of life, she “would have voted for that possibility.”
The case is essential not just for Cruz, but additionally for different inmates on loss of life row in Arizona who’re in the identical scenario.
Cruz was convicted of the 2003 homicide of Tucson police officer Patrick Hardesty. Hardesty and one other officer had been investigating a hit-and-run accident that led them to Cruz, who tried to flee and shot Hardesty 5 occasions.
A 1994 Supreme Courtroom case, Simmons v. South Carolina, says that in sure loss of life penalty circumstances, jurors should be advised that selecting a life sentence means life with out the potential of parole. That’s required when prosecutors argue that the defendant will pose a menace to society sooner or later.
In a 2016 case, Lynch v. Arizona, the Supreme Courtroom advised Arizona instantly that it wanted to adjust to Simmons. However Cruz says Arizona has continued to defy the excessive court docket.
“It sounds such as you’re thumbing your nostril at us,” Justice Elena Kagan advised lawyer Joseph Kanefield, who argued for Arizona.
The case is just not essentially one that may divide the court docket between its six conservative and three liberal justices.
Along with Kagan, the court docket’s two different liberal justices, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, instructed Cruz ought to get a brand new penalty section of his trial the place it’s clear to jurors that he’s ineligible for parole if he’s not sentenced to loss of life.
However conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett additionally at one level instructed sympathy for Cruz’s view, saying Arizona’s argument “simply looks like hair-splitting.” Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch instructed they might vote for the state.
The case is John Montenegro Cruz v. State of Arizona, 21-846.