Court Reverses Judge Who Found Delays in State's Death Penalty 'Cruel and Unusual'

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court ruling that California's death penalty system is unconstitutional because of decades-long delays in the appeals process.

A three-judge panel said the July 2014 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney is precluded by U.S. Supreme Court precedents that limit the scope of death penalty appeals. (Full appeals ruling embedded below).

Carney had written that the state’s system of capital punishment results in sentences that “no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.” (Emphasis from text of the decision.)

Carney's ruling vacated the 1995 death sentence of Ernest Dewayne Jones, who had been convicted of raping and murdering his girlfriend's mother.

Carney agreed with Jones' lawyers that the administration of California's death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment. Carney noted that only 13 of the more than 900 people sentenced to death in California since the late 1970s have been put to death.

“For the random few for whom execution does become a reality,” he wrote, “they will have languished for so long on Death Row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose and will be arbitrary.”

In overturning Carney, appellate Judge Susan P. Graber wrote that "many agree with petitioner that California’s capital punishment system is dysfunctional and that the delay between sentencing and execution in California is extraordinary."

Nonetheless, Graber ruled that in setting aside Jones' death sentence because of systemic delays in carrying out the state's death penalty, Carney had violated a 1989 Supreme Court precedent that generally bars federal courts from announcing a new constitutional rule of law in death penalty cases. The panel essentially took a pass on examining the substance of Jones' claim.

In a concurring opinion, Judge Paul Watford wrote that he would reverse Carney, too -- but on different grounds. Watford said Jones had not exhausted his opportunities to challenge his sentence in state court, as required in most cases under federal habeas law.

Rory Little, professor at UC Hastings College of the Law, told KQED's Guy Marzorati that Jones' appeal is far from finished.

“The petitioner in this case will not be executed any time soon because he will presumably file a petition in the California Supreme Court," Little said. "And then the California Supreme Court will have to deal with this theory of arbitrariness and over long delays.”

He noted that the state's high court has already signaled it is "somewhat unreceptive" to the reasoning behind Carney's decision setting aside Jones' sentence.

"They wrote an opinion where they said, 'We are now aware of the Jones case from the federal district court, and even assuming all the facts are true as stated in that opinion, we don’t think it’s an Eighth Amendment problem."

Now, however, the state court will have to confront the issue directly. And if Jones loses there, with his state appeal exhausted he's likely to go back to federal court and try his argument there.

Neither Carney's ruling nor today's 9th Circuit opinion have any effect on two other cases -- one in state court, the other in federal court -- that challenge the state's lethal injection method of execution as cruel and unusual.

"I hate to call the litigation over the death penalty a three-ring circus," Little said, "but if you think of it as separate rings, this was in one ring and that method-of-execution litigation is a completely separate ring and is going to go along at its own pace, without regard to this case.”

KQED's Guy Marzorati contributed to this post.