The following pending petitions involve issues of interest to capital habeas litigators:
Cool v. Jackson, 24-695 (cert. petition filed Dec. 4, 2024)
(case below: 111 F.4th 689 (6th Cir.))
Question presented:
This Court’s precedent in Lockett, Eddings, and Skipper require that state courts admit and consider all relevant mitigating evidence that a death-eligible convict wants to present. And when the state courts fail to do so, this Court has remanded for them to fix the error. The question is:
Has this Court clearly required state courts to reopen the mitigation evidence in every death-penalty remand, even if the error did not affect the defendant’s opportunity to submit mitigation evidence?
Click here to view the warden's certiorari petition.
Shockley v. Vandergriff, 24-517 (cert. petition filed Nov. 4, 2024)
(case below: 8th Cir. unpublished)
Question presented:
The federal courts of appeals are deeply divided 5 to 4 over whether a state prisoner has the right to appeal the denial of his federal habeas petition if at least one circuit judge votes to grant appellate review. This capital case petition seeks plenary review of the following question to resolve that entrenched circuit split or, alternatively, an order granting a certificate of appealability so petitioner may appeal the denial of his substantial Strickland v. Washington claims to the Eighth Circuit:
Did the Court of Appeals err in denying petitioner’s application, over dissent, to appeal the denial of his Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel claims?
Click here to view the certiorari petition.
Glossip v. Oklahoma, 22-6500 (cert. petition filed Jan. 3, 2023)
(case below: unpublished (Okla.Crim.App.))
Questions presented:
Petitioner, Richard Glossip, faces execution on February 16, 2023 for a conviction premised on the State’s theory that he hired Justin Sneed, who is the undisputed actual killer, to kill the owner of a motel where Mr. Glossip was the manager. Sneed’s testimony was the only evidence of any agreement, and his testimony, for which he received assurance he would not face a death sentence, was critical to this case where, as one federal judge put it, “the evidence of guilt was not overwhelming.”
At Mr. Glossip’s first trial, his attorney failed to undertake even rudimentary efforts in his defense, resulting in a full reversal. Chief among the failings was a failure to impeach Sneed with evidence he had been coached to implicate Glossip, whom the interviewing detective brought up six times before Sneed implicated him in the murder.
At retrial, Mr. Sneed was impeached to some extent about having been led to identify Mr. Glossip and about inconsistencies in his account of the murder.
Recently, in post-conviction proceedings, Mr. Glossip learned that prior to the retrial, Sneed had expressed his desire to “recant” and that immediately prior to meeting with Sneed during the second trial, the prosecutor wrote in a memo that the “biggest problem” with the case would be if Sneed repeated his initial statement to police and that she needed to “get to him” before he testified.
This petition presents the following questions:
1. Whether a court may require a defendant to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable fact finder would have returned a guilty verdict to obtain relief for a violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).
2. Whether suppressed impeachment evidence of the State’s key witness is per se non-material under Brady v. Maryland because that witness’s credibility had been otherwise impeached at trial.
Click here to view the certiorari petition. The case has been rescheduled for conference multiple time. On May 5, 2023, the Supreme Court granted Glossip's application for stay of execution pending disposition of this petition, and the petition filed in 22-7466.