Greetings, Court fans!
The Court issued another per curiam decision this week, as well as an order list. The decision came in Wong v. Belmontes (08-1263), a death penalty case, making its second trip to the Court. Belmontes killed McConnell by striking her on the head 15 to 20 times with a steel bar. He stole her stereo, sold it for $100, and used the money to buy beer and drugs for the night. (Anyone guess where this is heading?) Belmontes was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The Ninth Circuit initially granted Belmontes’ petition for habeas corpus relief on the basis of instructional error in the sentencing phase, but the Court reversed in 2006. On remand, the Ninth Circuit again granted habeas relief, this time finding that Belmontes’ counsel, John Schick, provided ineffective assistance in the sentencing phase of his trial by failing to put on sufficient mitigating evidence and that this ineffective assistance was prejudicial to Belmontes. The Court once again reversed, concluding that even if Belmontes’ counsel was ineffective (a conclusion undercut in every way by the Court’s analysis), there was no prejudice to Belmontes.
During the sentencing phase, Schick decided to put on only a limited mitigation case out of concern that if he presented additional evidence, he would “open the door” to the State’s presentation of evidence that Belmontes previously had murdered another individual. The Court found that all of the evidence the Ninth Circuit criticized Schick for not introducing fell into two categories: (1) cummulative evidence very similar to evidence that Schick already had introduced; and (2) evidence that may have opened the door to the State’s evidence regarding the second murder. Additional evidence that merely duplicated evidence already before the jury was highly unlikely to make any difference in the jury’s sentencing decision. Going further and putting on additional types of mitigating evidence risked opening the door to the worst type of aggravating evidence possible. Given that the additional good evidence would come in along with evidence of the worst kind, there was no likelihood that introduction of this evidence would have resulted in a different sentence for Belmontes. Therefore, Belmontes could not establish prejudice. Justice Stevens concurred separately to note his ongoing disagreement with the Court’s 2006 decision on instructional error (but even he didn’t throw the Ninth Circuit a bone here).
The Court also granted cert in one case, Magwood v. Culliver (09-158), which will address whether, “[w]hen a person is resentenced after having obtained habeas relief from an earlier sentence, [] a claim in a federal habeas petition challenging that new sentencing judgment [is] a ‘second or successive’ claim under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b) if the petitioner could have challenged his previously imposed (but now vacated) sentence on the same constitutional grounds.”
And the Court asked the SG to weigh in with its views on Holy See v. John Doe (09-1), which will address whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s tort exception confers jurisdiction over the Vatican in lawsuits premised on sexual abuse of minors by American priests, where the tortious abuse did not fall within the scope of employment, but where state law extends vicarious liability based upon non-tortious precursor conduct that does fall within the scope of employment.
That should be it for this week. Until the next, thanks for reading!
Kim
From the Appellate and Complex Legal Issues Practice Group at Wiggin and Dana
For more information, contact Kim Rinehart or any other member of the Practice Group at 203-498-4400