The court said in an opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor that a convicted murderer was wrongly denied a chance to raise due process concerns in an appeal of his death sentence. Arizona justices made such a "novel and unforeseeable" interpretation of the state's rule governing post-conviction appeals that the door opened for federal courts to correct that decision, she wrote.
Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred.
Supreme Court precedent says it can review state court decisions on questions of state procedure only in the "rarest of situations": when its ruling is unforeseeable, unsupported and implicates federal constitutional rights, Justice Sotomayor wrote.
The majority said that bar was met when Arizona determined a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision — Lynch v. Arizona
, which reversed Arizona precedent on jury instructions in death penalty cases — did not constitute a "significant change in the law" that would trigger another chance at appeal for John Montenegro Cruz under the state's Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g)."Under these unusual circumstances, the Arizona Supreme Court's application of Rule 32.1(g) to Lynch was so novel and unfounded that it does not constitute an adequate state procedural ground," Justice Sotomayor wrote for the majority.
Dissenting justices said in an opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett that even if the Arizona Supreme Court wrongly interpreted its own precedent, making that call is "not within our bailiwick," and that the state court should have gotten deference.
Cruz was convicted of murder in 2005 for killing a Tucson police officer and sentenced to death. According to the opinion, the trial judge refused multiple attempts by his lawyers to inform the jury Cruz would not be eligible for parole if sentenced to life — which Cruz believed would be a mitigating factor for jurors who might not have sentenced him to die. Several jurors said publicly after the sentencing they wanted to vote for life without parole, but were not given that option by the trial judge.
Cruz argued his due process rights were violated under the U.S. Supreme Court's 1994 ruling in Simmons v. South Carolina
, which established a right to inform jurors that a capital defendant was not eligible for parole if sentenced to life in prison. In the 2016 Lynch case, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that Simmons applies in Arizona and that the state high court had been wrong not to apply it at trial and in death penalty appeals.The majority said it would be hard to imagine a "clearer break from the past" than when Arizona refused to recognize the Lynch decision as a transformative change in the law. The state's Rule 32 allows criminal defendants to seek post-conviction relief if "there has been a significant change in the law that, if applicable to the defendant's case, would probably overturn the defendant's judgment or sentence."
It does not matter that the Lynch decision did not change the Simmons precedent nor other federal law, the high court said in its majority opinion. What matters is Lynch changed the way Arizona courts interpreted Simmons and that it overruled previously binding precedent so that capital defendants could inform jurors of their ineligibility for parole, the court said.
Justice Sotomayor also wrote the ruling does not prevent the state from fleshing out its own criminal procedure rules. It does prevent the Arizona Supreme Court from interpreting the rule in a new and unforeseeable way that isn't supported by previous state law, she said.
In dissent, Justice Barrett wrote the Arizona rulings did not meet the "extraordinarily high" bar to determine a state court's application of its own rules is not adequate to support its judgment. Her opinion was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.
"When, as here, the argument is based on the state court's inconsistent or novel application of its law, the bar is met only by a decision so blatantly disingenuous that it reveals hostility to federal rights or those asserting them," Justice Barrett said. "Given the respect we owe state courts, that is not a conclusion we should be quick to draw— and ordinarily, we are not quick to draw it."
Cruz's case will now return to the Arizona Supreme Court, which could consider whether his due process rights were violated under Simmons or refer that question to a lower court.
The decision is expected to impact six other capital defendants from Arizona who have pending a joint petition to the U.S. Supreme Court that argues they were wrongly denied the chance to tell jurors they would not be eligible for parole before juries sentenced them to die. About two dozen others sentenced to death in Arizona before the Lynch decision have appeals pending that could be impacted by the Cruz ruling.
The Arizona Attorney General's office said through a spokesperson Wednesday it is still reviewing the decision and declined further comment. Counsel for Cruz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cruz is represented by Cary Sandman of the Federal Public Defender Office, and Neal K. Katyal, Katherine B. Wellington, William E. Havemann, Natalie J. Salmanowitz and Dana A. Raphael of Hogan Lovells.
Arizona is represented by the state attorney general's office.
The case is Cruz v. Arizona, case number 21-846, in the Supreme Court of the United States.
--Editing by Lakshna Mehta.