Washington, D.C. – Three decades after an Arizona man fatally bludgeoned a friend, a young girl, and a grandmother, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ended his efforts to escape execution. The court found that a trial lawyer’s incomplete illustration of the man’s psychologically damaging experiences does not merit leniency.
In a 6-3 decision, the high court’s conservatives sided with Arizona prosecutors and reversed a Ninth Circuit panel’s ruling in favor of convicted murderer Danny Lee Jones. The ruling held that mitigating factors, such as childhood sexual abuse and lasting trauma, do not outweigh the brutality of the baseball bat killings in 1992.
According to the majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the Ninth Circuit “downplayed the serious aggravating factors present here and overstated the strength of mitigating evidence that differed very little from the evidence presented at sentencing.” The opinion asserted that, had the Ninth Circuit followed Supreme Court precedent, it would have affirmed the district court’s decision rejecting Jones’ bid to avoid capital punishment.
