New Mental Health Evidence in Federal Habeas Proceedings

Facts of the Case

Danny Lee Jones was convicted in Arizona of the 1992 murder of his social acquaintance Robert Weaver, the murder of Mr. Weaver’s seven-year-old daughter, and the attempted murder of Mr. Weaver’s grandmother via bludgeoning with a baseball bat. The putative motive for the crime was theft of Mr. Weaver’s gun collection, valued at $2,000.

As part of the sentencing process (after finding Mr. Jones guilty), the trial court held an aggravation-mitigation hearing to determine whether capital punishment would be imposed. The trial court found four aggravating circumstances: the murder was done for pecuniary gain; the defendant committed the murder in an “especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner;” convictions for multiple homicides; and one of the victims was under 15 years of age” (State v. Jones, 917 P.2d 200 (Ariz. 1996), p 207).

In favor of mitigation, the trial court identified four factors in Mr. Jones’s favor: “[he] suffers from long-term substance abuse; at the time of the offense, [he] was under the influence of alcohol and drugs;[he] had a chaotic and abusive childhood; and [his] substance abuse problem may have been caused by genetic factors and aggravated by head trauma” (State v. Jones, p 207–8).

The trial court then sentenced Mr. Jones to two consecutive death sentences for the two murders and life imprisonment, without the possibility of release or parole for 25 years, for the attempted murder conviction. After his convictions and sentence were upheld on direct appeal, Mr. Jones filed for collateral review, including a federal habeas case that was denied by a district court.

Mr. Jones’ unsuccessful habeas petition was based on trial counsel’s alleged ineffectiveness in failing to present mental health evidence during the original sentencing. The federal district court held an evidentiary hearing where six mental health witnesses testified, three for the defense and three for the government. The defense experts testified about potential mitigation evidence: cognitive impairment, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), new evidence of physical and sexual abuse when Mr. Jones was a minor, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a mood disorder, and substance use (alcohol, amphetamines, and cannabis). The district court found the evidence to be “inconclusive or cumulative” (Jones v. Ryan, 52 F.4th 1104 (9th Cir. 2022), p 1146) and ruled against Mr. Jones.

In 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court’s denial and granted the defendant a writ of habeas corpus, finding that defense “counsel failed to investigate [Mr.] Jones’s mental condition as a mitigating factor, and he failed to obtain a defense mental health expert. Counsel was in possession of medical records showing that [Mr.] Jones formerly attempted suicide at age twenty-two…[Mr.] Jones experienced extreme moods swings, but these swings stabilized when he had been medicated with lithium” (Ryan, p 1118). The government appealed the Ninth Circuit’s decision, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari in December 2023.

Ruling and Reasoning

Justice Alito wrote an opinion, joined by five other justices, overturning the Ninth Circuit’s grant of habeas corpus to Mr. Jones. The Court reasoned that Mr. Jones’s purportedly new evidence would merely have been cumulative to mental health evidence introduced at his original sentencing. The majority ruling wrote that the lower appellate court “overstated the strength of mitigating evidence that differed very little from the evidence presented at sentencing” (Thornell, p 1314).

Additionally, the Court found that the Ninth Circuit did not consider the aggravating factors taken into account when Mr. Jones was sentenced to death, writing that the “weakness of [Mr.] Jones’s mitigating evidence contrasts sharply with the strength of the aggravating circumstances” (Thornell, p 1313). These aggravating factors included the commission of multiple murders, one of which was of a child.

Applying the standard set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) for adjudicating ineffective assistance claims, the Court found that the lower appellate court “downplayed the serious aggravating factors present here and overstated the strength of mitigating evidence that differed very little from the evidence presented at sentencing” (Thornell, p 1314). The Court thus denied Mr. Jones’s petition, because it was not reasonably likely that the new evidence would have led to a sentence other than death.

Dissent

Two separate dissenting opinions were filed. In the first, Justices Sotomayor and Kagan agreed with the majority that there was error in the Ninth Circuit’s having “all but ignored” the aggravating factors discussed above. But these two justices would have remanded the case for further review as opposed to engaging in factual review and entering judgment against Mr. Jones.

It is worth noting that, when counting these two justices, eight of the nine justices found error in the Ninth Circuit’s grant of the writ to Mr. Jones. The six-judge majority went further by actually entering judgment against Mr. Jones (denying him relief), whereas dissenting Justices Kagan and Sotomayor would have left factual reanalysis to the lower courts. That course would have left the door open for the Ninth Circuit to rule in Mr. Jones’ favor in a subsequent appeal.

Finally, Justice Jackson, writing alone, dissented and stated that the “Ninth Circuit committed no legal error” in its review of the facts (Thornell, p 1316). Justice Jackson opined that the lower appellate court followed the appropriate methodology in weighing potentially mitigating evidence against the aggravating factors presenting at trial, even if the lower court’s review was “concise.”