Arizona badly wants to execute cop killer John Montenegro Cruz (photo, left), and has defied Supreme Court rulings standing in the way.
In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that if prosecutors seek a death sentence by telling jurors a defendant is a threat to society, the judge must allow his attorneys to tell the jury that sentencing him to life means he will never be paroled. Arizona’s court rules don’t allow its state judges to do that.
Nine years later, in 2003, Cruz killed a Tucson police officer; so that was already the law of the entire land when Cruz committed the crime that landed him on Arizona’s death row. But Arizona courts refused to apply that ruling; and at his trial, Cruz was denied the benefit of that mandatory jury instruction.
At least one of his jurors later said she would’ve voted for a life sentence had his jury been so instructed, and it takes a unanimous jury to impose a death sentence.
The Supreme Court ruled again, in another defendant’s case in 2016, that Arizona has to follow the rule. But Arizona courts continued to refuse Cruz a new sentencing hearing, using a procedural dodge to get around it.
This week, the Supreme Court intervened yet again, by ordering a new sentencing hearing for Cruz (read story here; see the opinion here). Will Arizona now comply, or continue to defy the Supreme Court? And if it does, what will happen to Cruz, his constitutional rights, and the supremacy of federal law and court rulings?
It’s an interesting question, given the strong conservative push for “states rights,” especially by the Supreme Court’s new majority. The Supreme Court vote in Cruz’s case was 5-4, with Chief Justice Roberts and Kavanaugh joining the court’s three liberals in taking the Arizona supreme court out to the woodshed, while the other usual suspects voted to look the other way at Arizona’s shenanigans.
After all, Cruz isn’t a petitioner deserving of mercy. But that’s not how law works. It’s supposed to be rules-based, not based on gut feelings about a defendant and what he did.