In a surprising decision and rebuke, the U.S. Supreme Court today vacated the death sentence for a man convicted for shooting and killing a Tucson police officer in 2003. The 5-4 decision stems from the initial sentencing, when the jury was improperly instructed its choice was between a death penalty and a life sentence with a possibility of parole.
But today’s Opinion (below) was based on more than just that sentence, and it was a strong rebuke to the way the Arizona Supreme Court determined this case and previous similarly-situated cases. In fact, it stems from a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court reversal of the Arizona court.
John Montenegro Cruz was running from two Tucson Police Department officers after he was purporting to get his ID from his car. He turned and shot five times at the officer chasing him on foot.
His death sentence was based on the one aggravating factor that the person he had killed was a law enforcement officer. The choice of death or life-with-possibility-of-parole was so difficult for some of the jurors that they had gone public with their dilemma within days of the sentencing.
Cruz’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was taken, pro bono, by former Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal.
Katyal tells Arizona’s Law that “we are very gratified by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision and believe Arizona must be far more careful in how the death penalty is administered.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the 5-4 majority opinion (joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Kavanaugh, Kagan and Jackson). She begins by noting that the entire Court had reversed Arizona in 2016 (Lynch) “after the Arizona Supreme Court repeated that mistake in a series of cases… and held that it was fundamental error to conclude that Simmons ‘did not apply’ in Arizona.”
She ended the 14-page Opinion exclaiming that the Arizona Supreme Court – in a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Bill Montgomery – “thus disregarded that Lynch overruled ‘previously binding case law’ in Arizona, the ‘archetype’ of a significant change in the law.”
Thus, the majority found, Cruz’s federal claim can be considered because the state Supreme Court applied its rule “in a manner that abruptly departed from and directly conflicted with its prior interpretations.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the dissent for the four Justices in the minority, and ended with a tepid defense. She noted that if she were on the Arizona Supreme Court, she might have agreed with Sotomayor. “But that call is not within our bailiwick. Our job is to determine whether the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision is defensible, and we owe the utmost deference to the state court in making that judgment. Cases of inadequacy are extremely rare, and this is not one.
The Arizona Supreme Court Opinion from 2021 is also published below.
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