Justices rule for death-row inmate (April 28, 2009)

The Supreme Court ruled today that federal courts can consider issues that state courts have dismissed on state procedural grounds.

The case concerns Gary Cone, who has argued that he was high on drugs when he murdered an elderly Tennessee couple in their home in 1980.

At trial, the prosecution denied that there was any evidence Cone had used drugs. He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death.

It was shown later that the district attorney’s files contained evidence confirming Cone’s extensive drug problem, and Cone maintains that such evidence should have been released to the defense in the discovery phase. The FBI also had files showing evidence of Cone’s drug use.

However, when Cone requested a new trial and tried to present this new evidence to the Tennessee courts on appeal, the courts ruled that he had made the claim of withheld evidence earlier and lost. Hence, his present claim was dismissed as duplicative, rather than being reviewed on the basis of the new evidence he was presenting.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied Cone’s habeas petition on the grounds that the matter had been resolved under state procedural law.

The Sixth Circuit denied a rehearing of the case en banc but seven judges dissented.

On April 28, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the appeals court decision in a 7-2 ruling by Justice John Paul Stevens.

“The state courts’ rejection of Cone’s Brady claim does not rest on a ground that bars federal review,” Stevens wrote. “Neither of the State’s asserted justifications for such a bar — that the claim was decided by the State Supreme Court on direct review or that Cone had waived it by never properly raising it in state court—provides an independent and adequate state ground for denying review of Cone’s federal claim.”

Justice Clarence Thomas penned the dissent.

“Cone has not come close to demonstrating that there is a ‘reasonable probability’ that the withheld evidence, analyzed individually or cumulatively, would have changed the result of his sentencing,” wrote Thomas, who was joined by Justice Antonin Scalia.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented in part and concurred in part.

This was the third time that the justices reviewed aspects of Cone’s case. In its two earlier decisions, the court reversed Sixth Circuit rulings that had favored Cone.

Question presented: Whether a federal habeas claim is “procedurally defaulted” because it has been presented twice to the state courts, and whether a federal habeas court is powerless to recognize that a state court erred in holding that state law precludes reviewing a claim.