Death penalty case granted
on Mar 28, 2005 at 10:03 am
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to rule on the application of the “harmless error” doctrine to death penalty cases. The agreement to hear Brown v . Sanders (docket 04-980) was the only grant on the orders list. The case will be heard in the Term beginning in October.
At issue is California’s death penalty law, under which “special circumstances” must be found during the guilt phase in order to make the accused eligible for a death sentence.
The Court limited its grant to two of the three questions raised in the appeal by California prison officials, in a challenge to a Ninth Circuit decision. These are the questions to be heard:
“Is the California death penalty statute a ‘weighing statute’ for which the state court is required to determine that the presence of an invalid special circumstance was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt as to the jury’s determination of penalty?”
“If an affirmative answer to the first question was dictated by precedent, was it necessary for the state supreme court to specifically use the phrases ‘harmless error’ or ‘reasonable doubt’ in determining that there was no ‘reasonable possibility’ that the invalid special circumstance affected the jury’s sentence selection?”
Among the cases the Court declined to hear Monday were these:
Wasden v. Planned Parenthood of Idaho (04-703), a state appeal challenging a Ninth Circuit decision nullifying Idaho’s parental consent law for minors seeking abortions. The Circuit Court found the law’s medical emergency exception invalid.
Arkansas v. Jolly (04-806), a state appeal seeking clarification of the constitutional doctrine to be applied to an excessive delay between a guilty verdict and the imposition of sentence.
Troy Publishing v. Norton (04-979), testing whether the media have a First Amendment right, while engaged in neutral news reporting, to repeat a public official’s defamatory statements.
Virginia Department of State Police v. Washington Post, et al. (04-999), an appeal by state officials testing the scope of the right of news organizations and the public to access to sealed court documents.
The Court continued to dispose of pending cases under the federal Sentencing Guidelines, sending 25 cases back to lower courts under the Booker/Fanfan decision.
