Supreme Court Rejects Alabama Death Row Prisoner’s Request for Resentencing

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 29, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

The Supreme Court recently overturned a lower court ruling that had vacated the sentence of an Alabama death row inmate after finding that he had received ineffective assistance of counsel during the sentencing process.

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant the right to effective assistance of counsel.

The June 10 ruling in the case of Marcus Bernard Williams came as a follow-up to the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision on May 30 in Thornell v. Jones. At issue in that case was whether a federal appellate court properly weighed the mitigating and aggravating evidence regarding the inmate before ruling that Arizona death row inmate Danny Lee Jones was prejudiced by ineffective counsel during sentencing.

In Thornell v. Jones, the majority of the Supreme Court found the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit misapplied the law. All three liberal justices dissented. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit for reconsideration.

The legal issue was whether the Ninth Circuit violated the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Strickland v. Washington. To make a claim for ineffective counsel, it must be shown that the defense attorney was objectively deficient and that there was a reasonable likelihood that a different outcome would have followed if a competent attorney had represented the accused person.

Strickland Deviations

The Ninth Circuit deviated from Strickland in three ways, Justice Samuel Alito wrote.

First, the appellate court failed to adequately take into account the “weighty aggravating circumstances” of the case.

Second, it applied a “strange” and “clearly unsound” circuit rule that prohibits a court in a Strickland case from assessing the relative strength of expert witness testimony.

Third, it found that the trial court erred in “attaching diminished persuasive value to Jones’s mental health conditions because it saw no link between those conditions and Jones’s conduct when he committed the three murders.”

If the defense counsel had acted properly and the Ninth Circuit had performed the analysis required by Strickland, “it would have had no choice but to affirm the decision of the District Court,” Justice Alito wrote.

In the case at hand, the Supreme Court granted the petition for certiorari, or review, in State of Alabama v. Williams, in an unsigned order. The court didn’t explain its decision. No justices dissented. At least four of the nine justices must vote to grant a petition for it to move forward.

At the same time, the court vacated the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit without holding oral arguments. Lawyers call this process GVR, or grant, vacate, remand.

The Supreme Court remanded the case to the 11th Circuit “for further consideration in light of Thornell v. Jones[.]”

The case goes back to 1996, when Mr. Williams murdered and posthumously raped his neighbor, Melanie Rowell, a 20-year-old single mother of two, according to Alabama’s petition. He later confessed.

To a jury in 1999, those crimes justified the death penalty.

‘Hypersexuality’

In 2023, the 11th Circuit held that Mr. Williams’s behavior reflected “hypersexuality,” for which he should be morally excused.

The divided appellate court majority found that if the jury had been made aware that Mr. Williams was a victim of sexual abuse who had become “very driven to be sexually active,” he wouldn’t have received the death penalty.

The 11th Circuit vacated his sentence in two steps.

In 2015, the court created an exception to the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996, finding that if a state court’s decision on the merits is later affirmed on a procedural ground, the final decision doesn’t count.

This “novel workaround violates AEDPA’s text, structure, and design,” the petition states.

Then, in 2023, the 11th Circuit found “Strickland prejudice” based on defense counsel’s failure to properly investigate and argue the “hypersexuality” theory of the crime. That court ignored Strickland and considered “only the ‘good’ and flat-out ignored the ‘bad,’” the petition states.

As in “the similarly flawed” Ninth Circuit decision in Thornell v. Jones, the 11th Circuit failed to consider all of the evidence when it evaluated the “new” evidence of mitigation and failed to properly reweigh the mitigation and aggravation evidence, which improperly lowered Strickland’s demanding standard.

On both occasions in which the 11th Circuit “touched this case, it committed grave legal error and deepened a divide among the circuit courts,” prompting the Supreme Court to accept the case, according to the document.

Alabama AG Welcomes Decision

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, lauded the Supreme Court for its new decision. He had argued that even if Mr. Williams had presented evidence of his “compulsive sexuality” at trial, the jury would not have changed its mind.

“Melanie’s family has waited decades to see justice done for this heinous crime. Williams’s backstory cannot excuse the brutal murder and rape of a young single mother as her toddlers slept in the next room,” Mr. Marshall said in a written statement.

“A jury would have easily seen through any desperate attempt by Williams to distract from his vicious crime with stories from his childhood. Marcus Williams’s crimes merit the ultimate punishment, and the Supreme Court’s decision today brings us one step closer to justice.”

Mr. Williams’s attorney, Leslie Smith of the federal defenders office in Montgomery, Alabama, didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment.