Decision backs death sentences

BOISE – One thing is certain with Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling which upheld the execution sentences for 14 inmates on Idaho’s death row.

It will not end the legal arguments over their death sentences, lawyers on both sides said.

The Supreme Court closed off appeals for more than 100 death row inmates Thursday, blunting the effect of an earlier ruling that judges cannot determine by themselves whether a convicted killer should die.

By a 5-4 vote, the court refused to make its 2002 ruling, which stipulated that juries impose death sentences, retroactive to condemned inmates who had already exhausted all their direct state appeals. The ruling means at least four states – Idaho, Arizona, Montana and Nebraska – will not have to hold new sentencing hearings or allow death sentences to be reduced to life in prison.

“The victims’ families will not have to go through the trauma of resentencing proceedings,” Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden said.

But Marty Durand of the American Civil Liberties Union disputed the Supreme Court decision, arguing that it denies legal protections to some that have been deemed the rights of others.

“It is fundamentally unfair and counter to the principle of justice that some people have a constitutional right to a jury trial and others do not,” Durand said.

Deputy Attorney General LaMont Anderson and State Appellate Public Defender Molly Huskey both said defense attorneys will continue to press the retroactive sentencing issue because the court was so divided in the 5-4 decision.

“Lawyers will continue to press every conceivable issue in a death penalty case, including those that are frivolous,” said Anderson, who heads the death penalty division in the attorney general’s office.

But Huskey said such a close decision fails to produce the kind of clear majority that gives lawyers on both sides confidence there will be no change anytime soon.

“It certainly represents the difficulty and complexity of trying to unravel death penalty convictions,” she said. “Defense attorneys will continue to pursue this.”

Thursday’s ruling affects the case of Richard Albert Leavitt, whose death sentence was overturned only last week by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It will result in reversal of the appellate decision, probably through a petition for reconsideration. Leavitt, 45, was convicted of the 1984 stabbing death and sexual mutilation of Danette Jean Elg.

The Idaho Legislature revised the state law after the court’s initial decision to include juries in capital murder sentencings, but the process has yet to be used.

There are also six murders on Idaho’s death row not affected by Thursday’s decision. They are still arguing their cases in state appellate court and will be covered by the requirement that juries be involved in capital murder sentencing.