Supreme Court to hear death row appeal
Case could lead to resentencings for more than 100 inmates
PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Warren Wesley Summerlin had already spent about 20 years on Arizona's death row when an appeals court ruling out of California created an opportunity for him to escape the needle.
On Monday, Summerlin's case will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, whose decision could eventually mean that he and more than 100 other death row inmates in four states will receive new sentencing hearings.
Summerlin was found guilty in 1982 of murdering Brenna Bailey, a loan collection officer whose body was found in the trunk of her car a day after she visited Summerlin's home to talk to his wife about an overdue payment for a piano. A judge sentenced Summerlin to death.
In 2002, in a case involving another Arizona death row inmate, Timothy Stuart Ring, the Supreme Court said that it is up to juries, not judges, to decide whether the facts in a particular case support a death sentence.
Then, last year, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals went a step further and said the Ring ruling applies retroactively to long-ago cases like Summerlin's. The court overturned Summerlin's death sentence.
Now the Supreme Court will take up the issue of retroactivity.
Generally, changes in the law are not applied to cases already beyond the initial appeal stages. But Summerlin's lawyers want the Supreme Court to agree with the 9th Circuit that the Ring ruling was a substantive change in the law.
"It is not fair to allow some individuals facing the death penalty to be afforded the constitutional right to a jury trial and to deny the same guarantee to others who are also under a sentence of death," said Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender.
Arizona prosecutors contend that the Ring ruling was only a procedural change and that retroactivity is not required. Also, they said Summerlin's sentencing was fair and there is nothing to be gained by doing it over.
Because Summerlin's previous record was undisputed and there was clear evidence the murder was cruel and heinous, a jury would have decided the case the same way the judge did, Assistant Attorney General John P. Todd said.
"It's not fair to change the rules of a game unless it truly makes a difference," Todd said.
Arizona's appeal is supported by 16 other states, the Bush administration and victims' advocate groups, who say that applying Ring retroactively would eliminate any sense of resolution.
The Ring ruling forced changes in the death penalty laws of Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska and Colorado, because those states left it to judges to determine if a killer should be executed.
The Supreme Court's decision on retroactivity will affect the cases of at least 86 Arizona death row inmates, including Summerlin, 15 cases in Idaho, four in Montana and five in Nebraska, attorneys said.
Summerlin declined a request for an interview.
The judge who sentenced Summerlin to death later acknowledged he was addicted to marijuana and lost his job after a drug conviction. Also, Summerlin's first attorney had a sexual relationship with the prosecutor in the case, something that Summerlin did not find out until later, well after a deal fell through that would have kept him off death row.
Copyright 2004 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
