Three Texas Death Penalty Cases Overturned by U.S. Supreme Court
In three 5-4 decisions, each with Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito dissenting, the U.S. Supreme Court today overturned three Texas death penalty cases. In each of the cases, the defendant had been convicted through the use of jury instructions which automatically imposed a death sentence if the jury returned affirmative answers to “special issue” questions relating to the whether the murder had been deliberate and whether the defendant posed a danger to society. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this instruction scheme unconstitutional where the jury had no ability to consider evidence of mitigation. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 392 (1989)(Penry I). Today’s decisions reveal the difficulty the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the Fifth Circuit have in interpreting and properly applying Penry I and its progeny.
Smith v. Texas, is the second time the Court overturned the death penalty imposed on Smith. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had reinstated the death penalty after applying a state law harmless error analysis. The lower court found that Smith had not preserved his jury instruction issue, and accordingly, had to show egregious error to prevail. The U.S. Supreme Court held the lower had misinterpreted the Supreme Court’s previous ruling, which had found the juror instructions used in his trial unconstitutional, which error had not been cured by other instructions. The court made clear that Smith is entitled to relief under federal law.
The other two cases, both federal habeus cases, also resulted in findings that the lower court misapplied Penry I and subsequent cases. In Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman and Brewer v. Quarterman, the court rejected the Fifth Circuit’s test for Penry claims which required the defendant to have presented “constitutionally relevant” mitigating evidence, which had to be that the defendant suffered uniquely severe permanent handicap to which the criminal act could be attributed