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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Death row inmate seeking neuro test loses fight for transport there 

The divided Supreme Court ruling has justices in the dissent worried about the extension of a narrow doctrine governing appeals.

WASHINGTON (CN) — Split 5-4, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a death row inmate trying to gather evidence that will prove a neurological condition. 

The inmate in question, Raymond Twyford, has been fighting his conviction and the prospect of capital punishment for 30 years despite waiving his Miranda rights and confessing to the aggravated murder of Richard Frank. Frank was shot in the head and back while on a deer hunting trip in rural Ohio; his body was mutilated and then dumped into a pond. 

Tim Shoop, the warden of the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, meanwhile has resisted Twyford’s demand that the prison transport him to the Ohio State University Medical Center for neurological testing. A federal judge granted Twyford’s transportation request, but the order was stayed during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Sixth Circuit then affirmed the ruling, prompting the warden to seek a Supreme Court reversal. 

Undergirding the appeal is the All Writs Act, which allows federal courts to issue orders when “necessary or appropriate.” What the court determined Tuesday is that Twyford’s transport order was not necessary and appropriate to aid in the resolution of his habeas case.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act restricts federal courts’ power to grant habeas relief. Relevant here, AEDPA allows just two scenarios in which federal courts can consider or develop new evidence that an inmate failed to present in state court. Those exceptions are if the claim is new and previously unavailable, or if it relies on a factual predicate not previously available,

“We have made clear that a petitioner cannot use that Act to circumvent statutory requirements or otherwise binding procedural rules,” the Bush appointee said. “AEDPA provides the governing rules for federal habeas proceedings, and our precedents explain that a district court must consider that statute’s requirements before facilitating the development of new evidence.” 

Roberts said an order looking for new evidence would not be necessary or appropriate if it allowed a prisoner to search for new evidence without proof it would undermine their conviction. 

“A writ that enables a prisoner to gather evidence that would not be admissible would ‘needlessly prolong’ resolution of the federal habeas case, and frustrate the ‘State’s interest[] in finality,’” Roberts wrote. 

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in dissent, however, that the majority used a “terse” footnote to extend the collateral order doctrine — which is a narrow exception to the final-judgment rule forcing parties to wait for final judgment before starting appeals — to a new class of cases when deciding the case. 

“We did not take this case to extend Cohen,” the Trump appointee wrote. “And this Court has repeatedly ‘admoni[shed]’ other courts to keep ‘the class of collaterally appealable orders … ‘narrow and selective.’’ If anything, this call for caution ‘has acquired special force in recent years with the enactment of legislation designating rulemaking ... as the preferred means for determining whether and when prejudgment orders should be immediately appealable.’”

In another dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer — joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan — said the court’s ruling went too far in deciding the merits of the case before a lower court got the chance to.  

Twyford‘s lawyer, David O’Neil with Debevoise & Plimpton, did not respond to a request for comment on the ruling, nor did Benjamin Flowers, Ohio’s solicitor general.

Follow @KelseyReichmann
Categories / Civil Rights, Criminal, Law, Uncategorized

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