The Supreme Court on Thursday overturned an appeals court ruling giving Danny Lee Jones of Arizona a new sentencing hearing, finding that attorney errors did not warrant a second shot at avoiding the death penalty, reports Courthouse News Service. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had ruled that Jones demonstrated ineffective assistance of counsel during his sentencing phase. Jones was convicted of the 1992 murders of Robert Weaver and his seven-year-old daughter Tisha, as well as the attempted murder of Weaver’s grandmother Katherine Gumina. At sentencing, Jones’ attorney Lee Novak did not present evidence he had that Jones had received treatment for mood disorders, attempted suicide five years before the murders, spent time in a mental institution, and suffered neurochemical deficiencies.
The state argued that the Ninth Circuit improperly weighed the aggravating and mitigating factors in violation of a previous Supreme Court ruling known as Strickland. Writing for a high court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the Ninth Circuit had " downplayed the serious aggravating factors ... and overstated the strength of mitigating evidence." In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court's majority should have sent the case back to lower courts but instead "unnecessarily goes further and engages in the reweighing [of evidence] itself."