It's been a heavy week for death penalty cases recently. I don't know whether it's the summer or just random, but lots and lots of murder opinions in the pipeline. Which are always depressing, and that rarely show people at anything other than their absolute worst.
Today gives us a Ninth Circuit opinion that unanimously affirms the denial of a habeas petition in a death penalty case. It's authored by Judge Milan Smith and joined by Judges McKeown and Fletcher. So the chances of en banc or Supreme Court review are essentially zero. In California, that wouldn't mean much as a practical matter. But this is Arizona, in which they at least used to actually carry out a fair number of executions. (At least until it took two solid hours, and fifteen different attempts, to execute the last guy, at which point the Arizona governor put a moratorium on executions, until the state figures out how to actually "humanely" kill someone.) So there's at least some chance that this guy will in fact be put to death at some point.
It's also not a case where you can't figure out why the death penalty was imposed. It's someone who killed an on-duty cop, so that's going to get you sentenced to death more times than not. And, as if that wasn't enough, the Ninth Circuit's opinion drops this little nugget in a footnote on page seven: "Hours after murdering Officer Martin, Martinez robbed a
convenience store in Blythe, California, and fatally shot the store clerk.
Martinez’s convictions and sentences for that robbery and murder,
however, are not before us."
Making it virtually certain -- if it wasn't already -- that the jury's going to sentence the guy to die. As well as diminishing whatever residual sympathy a Ninth Circuit panel might have for the petitioner.
