U.S. Supreme Court
Cert Granted to Death Row Inmate Who Claims Shoddy Legal Work
Posted May 12, 2008, 11:24 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by a Virginia death row inmate who contends the federal courts improperly weighed his claim that his lawyer did a poor job representing him at sentencing.
At issue is the level of deference that federal courts should give to state courts considering inmates’ evidence of ineffective assistance, the Associated Press reports. The issue has split the federal appeals courts.
The defendant, Edward Nathaniel Bell, was convicted of murdering a police officer. He faults his lawyer for presenting no mitigating evidence against the death penalty, including evidence he was physically abused and given drugs and alcohol as a toddler, his cert petition says (PDF posted by SCOTUSblog).
A federal court had found that Bell’s lawyer rendered ineffective assistance but it found no prejudice, the cert petition says. The Richmond, Va.-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. It noted that the Virginia Supreme Court had ruled Bell suffered no prejudice, and said the ruling was not unreasonable.
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