Supreme Court Reinstates Review of Arizona Murderer’s Case

The U.S. Supreme Court today vacated an Arizona Supreme Court decision denying a murderer’s challenge to his death sentence. At the time the high court took up the case, CJLF considered filing an amicus brief in support of the state but decided we really couldn’t support the Arizona court’s decision. I am not at all surprised at the outcome but a bit surprised the state got four votes.

John Cruz is guilty and deserves his sentence. He shot and killed Tucson Police Officer Patrick Hardesty in the performance of his duty. Appallingly, Justice Sotomayor’s opinion for the Court has only one sentence on the crime and does not even mention Officer Hardesty by name.

In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Simmons v. South Carolina that under some circumstances the jury must be informed that the defendant will not be eligible for parole if they sentence him to life in prison rather than death, if that is indeed the state law. The Arizona Supreme Court held that Arizona law did not trigger the Simmons rule, so the opinion did not apply in that state, and it reaffirmed that holding several times. That was the controlling precedent at the time Cruz filed his first petition challenging his sentence.

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court summarily overruled that precedent in Lynch v. Arizona, holding that Simmons did indeed apply to Arizona. Whether that decision was right or wrong, it was the controlling precedent at the time Cruz filed his second petition.

Arizona law provides that second petitions are allowed only under limited circumstances, one of which is if “there has been a significant change in the law that, if applicable to the defendant’s case, would probably overturn the defendant’s judgment or sentence.”

Is the U.S. Supreme Court’s overruling of an Arizona Supreme Court precedent squarely on point “a significant change in the law”? Of course it is. Given the Arizona court’s own precedents interpreting this rule, I thought its evasion on this one was indefensible.

Cruz asked the high court to take this case on the question of “whether this Court’s decision in Lynch applied a settled rule of federal law that must be applied to cases pending on collateral review in Arizona.” The Court rewrote the Question Presented to “whether the Arizona Supreme Court’s holding that Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g) precluded post-conviction relief is an adequate and independent state-law ground for the judgment.”

That was a clue. The U.S. Supreme Court only has jurisdiction to review state court decisions on federal questions, and a state-law basis for the ruling generally precludes jurisdiction. However, to prevent subterfuge the Supreme Court has developed the doctrine that an “inadequate” state ground does not preclude review. A sharp departure from precedent on state procedural rules is the typical example for this rarely invoked rule. Justice Barrett’s dissent is essentially on the ground that this rare exception should be rarer still.

I do not like the result in this case. Perhaps the sentence can be salvaged on different grounds. But the decision is correct on the narrow point actually decided here.

The case is Cruz v. Arizona, No. 21-846. It will eventually be reported in 598 U.S.