By Leela Bronner
WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Supreme Court this week reversed a decision made by the Ninth Circuit to reconsider the sentencing of Danny Lee Jones, who was sentenced to death for murder decades ago.
According to the Supreme Court’s filing, “Jones was convicted of the premeditated first-degree murders of Robert and Tisha Weaver and the attempted premeditated murder of Robert’s grandmother Katherine Gumina” 32 years ago.
At the time, Arizona law required trial courts to “impose a sentence of death” if it found “one or more” statutorily enumerated “aggravating circumstances” and “no mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency,” according to the Supreme Court file.
The Supreme Court’s report also detailed the aggravating circumstances, which were that “Jones committed multiple homicides, he was motivated by pecuniary gain, and the murders were ‘especially heinous, cruel or depraved.’”
The trial court also found the murder of Tisha, who was seven years old at the time of her death, counted as an additional aggravating circumstance.
The ruling detailed Jones’ mitigating circumstances as well, which include “long-term substance abuse, drug and alcohol impairment at the time of the murders, head trauma, and childhood abuse.”
Dr. Jack Potts, a court-appointed forensic psychiatrist, testified he thought that the mitigating factors he identified, including major mental illness, should warrant leniency. He also believed Jones felt “remorse and responsibility” and had the “potential for rehabilitation,” the Supreme Court noted.
Ultimately, the file showed the trial court decided “these mitigating circumstances were “not sufficiently substantial to outweigh the aggravating circumstances” and Jones was sentenced to death.
Years later, this Supreme Court overruling has come about after the Ninth Circuit granted habeas relief to Jones, who asserted “his defense counsel was ineffective,” arguing “his attorney should have retained an independent neuropsychologist, rather than relying on Dr. Potts” and “trial counsel failed to make a timely request for neurological or neuropsychological testing,” all claims rejected by the state courts.
While the Arizona Supreme Court and the District Courts also both rejected such appeals by Jones, the Supreme Court reported the Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court’s conclusion that “Jones could not show prejudice because the additional information he presented” ‘barely. . . alter(ed) the sentencing profile presented to the sentencing judge.’”
After the Court “vacated that judgment and remanded for the Ninth Circuit to determine whether, in light of Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U. S. 170, it had been proper to consider the new evidence presented at the federal evidentiary hearing,” the Ninth court granted habeas relief again.
The U.S. Supreme Court recounted, “The panel held that it was permissible to consider the new evidence and concluded that there was a ‘reasonable probability’…Jones would not have received a death sentence” if that evidence had been presented at sentencing.
According to the Supreme Court file, the state of Arizona sought en banc review as they felt that the panel’s “opinion made no mention of the aggravating factors, and it did not consider the State’s rebuttal evidence.”
While the Ninth Circuit denied the state’s petition, “the panel amended its opinion to mention the aggravating circumstances and to rebuke the District Court for “weigh(ing) the testimony of experts against each other.”
However, the file then presents how 10 judges dissented from the denial of en banc review. One dissent “asserted that the Ninth Circuit panel flouted Strickland by crediting “questionable, weak, and cumulative mitigation evidence” as “enough to overcome . . . weight(y) . . . aggravating circumstances.”
Other judges argued “the panel should have deferred to the state postconviction review court on the Strickland prejudice inquiry” and that the panel’s errors could enable “courts to improperly grant sentencing relief to capital defendants who have been convicted of the most horrific crimes,” cited the ruling.
The Supreme Court’s opinion, delivered by Justice Alito, held The Ninth Circuit’s interpretation and application of Strickland was in error.
And the opinion said that Strickland v. Washington established the accused “must show that counsel provided a ‘deficient’ performance that ‘prejudiced’ him,” which may be shown “only if ‘there is a reasonable probability that, absent [counsel’s] errors, the sentencer . . . would have concluded that the balance of aggravating and mitigating circumstances did not warrant death’ and if there is ‘a reasonable probability’ that is ‘sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.’”
Alito stated that “the Ninth Circuit departed from these well-established rules in at least three ways,” including failing to adequately take the aggravating circumstances into account, applying “a strange Circuit rule that prohibits a court in a Strickland case from assessing the relative strength of expert witness testimony.”
The justice also held “that the District Court erred by attaching diminished persuasive value to Jones’s mental health conditions.”
The U.S. Supreme Court, accordingly, disagreed with the Ninth Circuit over its interpretation of Eddings v. Oklahoma, stating “Eddings held that a sentencer may not ‘refuse to consider . . . any relevant mitigating evidence.’”
Jones also made the argument that “a habeas petitioner is entitled to relief whenever he or she ‘presents substantial evidence of the kind that a reasonable sentencer might deem relevant to the defendant’s moral culpability.’”
The Supreme Court saw this as at odds with the “established understanding of prejudice under Strickland, which requires a ‘reasonable probability’ of a different result.”
The Supreme Court additionally found, “Most of the mitigating evidence Jones presented at the federal evidentiary hearing was not new, and what was new would not carry much weight in Arizona courts. Conversely, the aggravating factors present here are extremely weighty. As a result, there is no reasonable probability that the evidence on which Jones relies would have altered the outcome at sentencing.”
The Supreme Court reported that the new evidence that Jones presented included evidence that he suffers from various mental illnesses, but he was not able to “establish a causal connection between his alleged mental illness and his conduct on the night of the murders.”
Jones also provided further evidence that he suffers from “cognitive impairment caused by physical trauma” and a history of substance abuse and childhood abuse, but this was seen by the Court as only corroborating testimony that had already been heard and credited in the original trial.
The Supreme Court ultimately found “the weakness of Jones’s mitigating evidence contrasts sharply with the strength of the aggravating circumstances” and that “Jones has no reasonable probability of escaping the death penalty.”
The court concluded “the Ninth Circuit all but ignored the strong aggravating circumstances in this case” and that “the Strickland prejudice analysis conducted by the Supreme Court does not support resentencing here,” which led them to “reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson dissented to the majority’s decision. Jackson saw that “the Ninth Circuit’s analysis satisfied its obligations under Strickland v. Washington.” Jackson also said, “We can hardly fault the Ninth Circuit for using the same approach that this Court itself has previously used.”
Jackson argued that “the majority’s real critique does not appear to relate to the Ninth Circuit’s methodology. Rather, it merely takes issue with the weight that the Ninth Circuit assigned to each of the relevant facts.”
