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Polybius

(15,238 posts)
Wed Dec 8, 2021, 01:40 PM Dec 2021

US supreme court to hear case that could have dire consequences for death row inmates

Source: The Guardian

The US supreme court will hear arguments from two Arizona death row inmates on Wednesday in a case that could have devastating consequences for prisoners attempting to prove their innocence before they are sent to the execution chamber.

State officials in Arizona are asking the nation’s highest court to bar the two condemned prisoners – one with a strong claim of innocence, the other with a history of intellectual disability and family abuse – from presenting evidence in federal court that could save their lives.

The Arizona officials argue the prisoners should not be allowed to put forward the evidence because they failed to do so in state court at an earlier stage in their legal proceedings.

But the prisoners protest they had no chance of seeking redress at state level because the lawyers they were assigned by Arizona were so woefully incompetent at trial that they failed to uncover crucial evidence that could have spared them from death row. After conviction, they were assigned a second set of lawyers who were equally ineffective and who as a result made no challenge to the gross mishandling of their defense at trial.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/08/us-supreme-court-arizona-death-penalty-case

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US supreme court to hear case that could have dire consequences for death row inmates (Original Post) Polybius Dec 2021 OP
This is a republican world Smackdown2019 Dec 2021 #1
This is inhumane, a blatant attempt to stack the deck against inmates. crickets Dec 2021 #2
Next up for them: public stonings nattyice Dec 2021 #3

Smackdown2019

(1,169 posts)
1. This is a republican world
Wed Dec 8, 2021, 02:28 PM
Dec 2021

Noticed the states that support judgements over the truth? They are conservative states! They rather fry an innocent person, rather admit they had the wrong individual.

Republicans believe truth will not set you free. .....

That is why they LIE!

crickets

(25,896 posts)
2. This is inhumane, a blatant attempt to stack the deck against inmates.
Wed Dec 8, 2021, 04:13 PM
Dec 2021
In 2012 the supreme court ruled in Martinez v Ryan that prisoners should be allowed to present claims in federal court that they had ineffective lawyers at trial and post-conviction stages of their cases. That precedent has never been questioned by an appeals court or by any justice on the supreme court.

Now Arizona Republicans are trying to impose a new impediment. Prisoners can present claims that their lawyers were ineffective as Martinez requires, but they can’t produce any evidence to back up those claims.

“Obviously, presenting a claim with no evidence at all isn’t much of a claim,” Litman said.


How can you bar someone from defending their claim with evidence? That makes no sense.
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