|
 Sotomayor made her comments about Alabama in an unusual dissent
after she and Justice Stephen Breyer were the only two justices who
voted to hear an appeal from a death row inmate who was convicted of
killing a Montgomery, Ala., police officer. It takes the votes of
four of the nine justices to hear a case.
Alabama, Delaware and Florida are the only states that allow trial
judges to override jury sentencing decisions in capital-punishment
cases. And since 2000, Alabama accounts for 26 of the 27 defendants
who have been sentenced to death despite a jury's vote for life in
prison, Sotomayor said. The other case was in Delaware. In that
case, the state Supreme Court changed the trial judge's death
sentence to a life prison term.
No Florida court has sought to sentence a defendant to death in the
face of a jury vote for life in prison since 1999, Sotomayor said.
The Supreme Court upheld the Alabama override law in 1995 in an
opinion joined by Breyer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Eighteen
years later, Sotomayor said, "the time has come for us to reconsider
that decision."
Not only has the practice become rare outside Alabama since 1995,
but the Supreme Court also has limited the discretion of judges to
add to a defendant's punishment beyond what juries have decided, she
said.
And the 59-year-old New Yorker said she also is troubled by the
apparent reason for judges' actions in Alabama, where she said crime
is no more heinous and juries no more lenient than elsewhere.
"Alabama judges, who are elected in partisan proceedings, appear to
have succumbed to electoral pressures," she wrote. Sotomayor noted
that one judge who has overridden jury votes six times also has run
campaign ads voicing support for capital punishment.
The high court in recent years has highlighted what it views as
shortcomings in the Alabama legal system.
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In 2012, the justices ordered a new hearing for death row inmate
Cory Maples after they found Maples was abandoned by his appellate
lawyers. Ginsburg's opinion for the court also criticized Alabama
for using inexperienced lawyers and paying them poorly to represent
defendants in death-penalty cases.
A few months later, the justices ruled in another Alabama case that
people who were younger than 18 when they committed a crime could
not receive mandatory sentences of life in prison with no chance of
parole.
In Monday's case, the court rejected an appeal from defendant Mario
Woodward, who was convicted of shooting Montgomery officer Keith
Houts several times during a traffic stop on Sept. 26, 2006. Houts
died two days later.
The jury voted 8-4 to send Woodward to prison for life. The trial
judge sentenced him to death instead.
Since 1982, Woodward is among 95 defendants sentenced to death in
Alabama despite a jury's vote for life in prison, Sotomayor said. In
12 instances, the jury vote for a life term was unanimous.
Of those 95 people, at least 30 have since had their death sentences
lifted. At least another 38 remain on death row, according to the
state Department of Corrections website.
Ten of the 95 have been executed, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center database of all U.S. executions.
[Associated
Press; MARK SHERMAN]
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