LISTEN: Special Presentation - U.S. Supreme Court Oral Arguments, McKinney v. Arizona

In this special, "AZ Law" presents this week's oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the McKinney v. Arizona case.

We have written about this interesting death penalty case before. In Wednesday's oral arguments, former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal argued on behalf of convicted murderer James McKinney. Arizona's Solicitor General, O.H. Skinner, argued for the State of Arizona.



Here is how the Court describes the facts of the case and the questions presented:

Facts of the case

By way of relevant background, James McKinney’s childhood was “horrific” due to poverty, physical and emotional abuse—all detailed in the court filings. Around age 11, he began drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, and he dropped out of school in the seventh grade. He repeatedly tried to run away from home and was placed in juvenile detention.

In 1991, when McKinney was 23, he and his half-brother Michael Hedlund committed two burglaries that resulted in two deaths. The state of Arizona tried McKinney and Hedlund before dual juries. McKinney’s jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder (without specifying whether it reached that verdict by finding premeditation or by finding felony murder), and Hedlund’s jury found him guilty of one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder.

At McKinney’s capital sentencing hearing (before a judge), a psychologist testified that he had diagnosed McKinney with PTSD “resulting from the horrific childhood McKinney had suffered.” The psychologist further testified that witnessing violence could trigger McKinney’s childhood trauma and produce “diminished capacity.” The trial judge credited the psychologist’s testimony, but under Arizona law at the time, the judge was prohibited from considering non-statutory mitigating evidence that the judge found to be unconnected to the crime. Because McKinney’s PTSD was not connected to the burglaries, the judge could not consider it mitigating evidence and thus sentenced him to death.

The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed McKinney’s death sentence on appeal. In 2003, McKinney filed a habeas petition in federal court. The district court denied relief, and a panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed. The Ninth Circuit granted rehearing en banc and held that the Arizona courts had violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104 (1982), by refusing to consider McKinney’s PTSD. In Eddings, the Court held that a sentencer in a death penalty case may not refuse consider any relevant mitigating evidence. A violation of Eddings, the Ninth Circuit held, required resentencing. Thus, the Ninth Circuit remanded to the federal district court to either correct the constitutional error or vacate the sentence and impose a lesser sentence. Arizona moved for independent review of McKinney’s sentence by the Arizona Supreme Court; McKinney opposed the motion on the ground that he was entitled to resentencing by a jury under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002), which held that juries, rather than judges, must make the findings necessary to impose the death penalty. The Arizona Supreme Court disagreed, finding that McKinney was not entitled to resentencing by a jury because his case was ‘final’ before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Ring.

Question

1. Was the Arizona Supreme Court required to apply current law, rather than the law as it existed at the time a defendant’s conviction became final, when weighing mitigating and aggravating evidence to determine whether a death sentence is warranted?
2. Does the correction of error under Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104 (1982), require resentencing?

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