U.S. Supreme Court Notebook

Supreme Court rejects Alabama death row appeal


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is freeing Alabama to try again to execute a convicted killer who has been on death row for more than 30 years.

The justices on Tuesday turned down an appeal from inmate Tommy Arthur. In November, the court blocked Arthur’s execution as he waited in a holding cell outside the state’s execution chamber.

Chief Justice John Roberts voted to halt the execution, but said Arthur’s appeal “does not merit the court’s review.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer said they would have heard Arthur’s appeal.

The effect of Tuesday’s action is to allow the state to try again to put Arthur to death by lethal injection.

Arthur has maintained his innocence in the murder-for-hire killing of Troy Wicker in Wicker’s home in Muscle Shoals.

Arthur argued in his appeal to the high court that it is virtually impossible to challenge Alabama’s lethal injection procedures because state law requires inmates to identify an alternate source of execution drugs and a detailed plan for carrying out the execution.

His appeal centered on the state’s requirement that condemned inmates challenging their method of execution name a feasible alternate method.

Sotomayor said in an 18-page opinion that Arthur had presented considerable evidence that Alabama’s lethal injection procedures “will result in intolerable and needless agony” and had suggested a firing squad as an alternative.

She noted that the court has twice said in death penalty cases that it has never ruled that a state’s execution method violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

“We should not be proud of this history. Nor should we rely on it to excuse our current inaction,” Sotomayor wrote, joined by Breyer.
 

2 Texas death row inmates lose at U.S. Supreme Court
 

HOUSTON (AP) — Two men on death row for separate slayings in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have lost appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justices have, without comment Monday, refused to review the cases of 52-year-old Joseph Lave and 54-year-old Juan Segundo.

Lave was condemned for the November 1992 robbery at a suburban Dallas sporting goods store where two employees — Justin Marquart and Frederick Banzhaf — were fatally bludgeoned with a hammer and nearly decapitated.

Segundo was arrested nearly 19 years after an 11-year-old Fort Worth girl was raped and strangled in her home in 1986. A DNA match in a national database in 2005 tied Segundo to the slaying of Vanessa Villa.

Neither man has an execution date.

 

Justices reject appeal from  death row inmate


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has turned away an appeal from a South Carolina death row inmate who pleaded guilty to killing an off-duty police officer during a multistate crime spree in 2004.

The justices on Tuesday left in place a lower court ruling that rejected Mikal Dean Mahdi’s claims that his lawyer didn’t do enough to present evidence of his troubled childhood.

Mahdi said his lawyer relied on a single expert witness instead of calling family members and others to offer more details about Mahdi’s years growing up with an abusive father.

Prosecutors said that during his crime spree Mahdi killed a North Carolina convenience store clerk, carjacked a sport-utility vehicle in South Carolina and later killed Orangeburg Public Safety Capt. James Myers on Myers’ farm.

 

High court rejects appeal from ex-NYC councilman
 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has declined to disturb the conviction of former New York City councilman Daniel Halloran on bribery and fraud charges.

The justices on Tuesday rejected Halloran’s appeal of his 2014 conviction for trying to help another politician buy a spot on the 2013 mayoral ballot.

Halloran argued that there was not enough evidence to convict him. A federal appeals court rejected those arguments last year and upheld his 10-year prison sentence.

The Queens Republican was found guilty based on evidence that he helped Democratic state Sen. Malcolm Smith bribe GOP leaders for their approval to let Smith run for mayor as a Republican.

 

Justices reject appeal of tea party groups over IRS review
 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a nonprofit group that wanted to sue individual IRS officials for targeting tea party groups that applied for tax-exempt status.

The justices on Tuesday left in place an appeals court ruling that said the group could not sue former IRS official Lois Lerner and others for their roles in singling out certain applications for extra, sometimes burdensome scrutiny.

An inspector general’s had report found no evidence of a political conspiracy, but blamed the agency for poor management.

The group True the Vote says the IRS subjected it to unwarranted delays while processing its application for tax-exempt status. It sought damages for a violation of First Amendment rights.

The group’s lawsuit against the agency itself is still pending in a lower court.