John Montenegro Cruz, who was sentenced in 2005, had told the court its precedent extending that right to Arizona inmates applies retroactively to people like him who are challenging their sentences.
Granting certification on Monday, however, the high court said it will only decide whether the Arizona Supreme Court was right in denying Cruz a chance to challenge his sentence based on state law.
In a petition for certification filed in November, Cruz accused Arizona of ignoring U.S. Supreme Court precedent in cases where the lives of several state prisoners are on the line.
"The Arizona Supreme Court's refusal to follow the same approach here creates a square conflict on an important issue of federal law in a case with life-or-death stakes for Cruz, for six other defendants whose Simmons claims the Arizona Supreme Court has likewise rejected, and for the nearly two dozen defendants with Lynch claims pending on collateral review in Arizona."
Cruz v. Arizona is the latest case this term in which the Supreme Court decided to weigh in on aspects of the habeas corpus process, which allows prisoners to challenge their imprisonment, convictions or sentences on constitutional grounds.
In December, the high court heard oral arguments in Shinn v. Ramirez, another case out of Arizona, in which two capital defendants convicted of murder in separate cases have used the habeas process to claim they should get off of death row, saying their counsel representation was so ineffective that it violated their Sixth Amendment rights to a fair trial. One of the prisoners, Barry Lee Jones, has continued to maintain his innocence.
Neal K. Katyal of Hogan Lovells, who is representing Cruz pro bono, told Law360 in an email he was glad the court agreed to hear the case but declined to discuss it because it's pending.
"We are gratified that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the case and look forward to the court's hearing later this year," Katyal said. Cary Sandman, a federal public defender who has represented Cruz in federal habeas proceedings since 2013, issued a nearly identical statement.
In 1994, the Supreme Court held in Simmons v. South Carolina
that when a capital defendant's future dangerousness is at issue, due process entitles the defendant to inform the jury that they will be ineligible for parole if not sentenced to death.Since that decision, Arizona has refused to apply the principle. But in 2016 in Lynch v. Arizona
, the Supreme Court said the Simmons rule applied in the state.Cruz's conviction was finalized after Simmons but more than a decade before Lynch.
He was sentenced to death after a state jury convicted him of murdering a police officer. During the proceedings, a trial judge repeatedly denied him his right under Simmons to inform the jury that he was ineligible for parole.
In 2017, following the Lynch decision, Cruz challenged his sentence in a process called collateral review, often referred to as a state habeas corpus, saying the ruling applied to him. He asked a state court to be resentenced.
But on June 4 last year, the Arizona Supreme Court concluded the Lynch decision should not apply to cases pending on collateral review such as Cruz's.
In particular, the state's high court said the Lynch ruling didn't constitute "a significant change in the law that, if applicable to the defendant's case, would probably overturn the defendant's judgment or sentence," as required by Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g).
The U.S. Supreme Court will now decide whether that reasoning was sound.
In his petition, Cruz said Arizona's state courts have disregarded the Supreme Court's guidance on jury instructions in the Simmons decision for years, forcing the court to reverse an Arizona Supreme Court ruling in the Lynch case, holding that "Simmons applies in Arizona no less than elsewhere."
Then the state ignored the Lynch decision, too, the petition says.
"This should have been an easy case," Cruz said in the petition. "The Arizona Supreme Court nonetheless refused to apply Lynch. Its decision flouts the supremacy clause, misconstrues federal retroactivity, and underscores the Arizona Supreme Court's continued hostility to Simmons."
The petition also points to Texas, Mississippi, Florida and California, all of which have applied settled federal law to collateral review proceedings in state court.
Counsel for Arizona did not reply to a request for comment on the case.
Cruz is represented by Neal K. Katyal of Hogan Lovells.
Arizona is represented by Jeffrey Lee Sparks of the Arizona Attorney General's Office.
The case is John Montenegro Cruz v. Arizona, case number 21-846, in the Supreme Court of the United States.
--Editing by Dave Trumbore.