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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Wetzel v. Lambert, 565 U.S. ___ (2012)

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James Lambert was convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder of two patrons during a robbery of Prince’s Lounge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the Commonwealth’s primary witnesses at Lambert’s trial was Bernard Jackson, who admitted to being involved in the robbery, as well as 15 other unrelated armed robberies, and identified Bruce Reese and Lambert as his accomplices. Almost 20 years later, Lambert's attorneys—the federal defenders—discovered a cryptic handwritten notation on a police activity sheet that "Woodlock is named as a co-defendant by Jackson."  Based on this note, without more, the Third Circuit overturned Lambert's death sentence, and ordered the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office to retry Lambert within 120 days or, alternatively, to release him.  The Commonwealth petitioned for certiorari.

Prior to reaching the Third Circuit, Lambert presented the note to the Pennsylvania state courts on post-conviction collateral appeal.  There, the Commonwealth argued that the note only appeared once in Lambert's police file and, therefore, it was reasonable to assume that Woodlock was named by Jackson as a co-defendant in one of his fifteen other robberies.  At most, the Commonwealth argued, Woodlock's involvement in Lambert's crime was speculation.  The Court of Common Pleas, Superior Court, and Supreme Court of Pennsylvania agreed and, also, they pointed out that Jackson had been impeached thoroughly based on his extensive criminal record; one additional ambiguous piece of evidence would not have made a difference.  Based on this conclusion, each of the state courts denied Lambert relief.

Lambert then petitioned for habeas corpus in the District Court where, again, he was denied relief.  The Third Circuit, on the other hand, concluded that it was “patently unreasonable” for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to presume that whenever a witness is impeached in one manner, any other impeachment evidence would be immaterial. According to the Third Circuit, the notation that Jackson had identified Woodlock as a co-defendant would have “opened an entirely new line of impeachment” because the prosecutor at trial had relied on the fact that Jackson had consistently named Lambert as the third participant in the robbery.

The Supreme Court of the United States granted writ of certiorari.  That Court observed that the state court rulings were two-fold: that the notation was ambiguous and therefore immaterial and, also, that additional impeachment would have been redundant.  The Supreme Court then pointed out that the Third Circuit had only addressed the state courts' redundancy argument and, therefore, had not appropriately decided whether there was any reasonable basis on which to affirm the state courts' decision.  As such, it remanded the matter for reconsideration on that issue by the Third Circuit.  Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Kagan dissented.

This case perfectly illustrates the predominant fact about the application of the death penalty in Pennsylvania: it isn't carried out.  Lambert was convicted and sentenced to death in 1984.  He first raised this frivolous issue in the early 2000s and, only now, a decade later, has reached the Supreme Court.  Far from finally resolving the question, the Court remanded the matter for further consideration by the Third Circuit, a process that will last for two years at least while the Commonwealth and the federal defenders brief the issue.  Thereafter, no matter the outcome, there will be another petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court which will delay the execution for another year.  And, no doubt, more issues will surface during the investigation of this issue that will launch new decades long appeals of their own.

In the meanwhile, Pennsylvania citizens are paying for the full-time services of appellate attorneys in the Philadelphia District Attorney's office to work on Lambert's case.  They're also paying a team of federal defenders—literally, it's not just one lawyer, it's a team of attorneys and paralegals, all paid on the inflated federal payscale—to raise one pointless issue after another to keep Lambert away from the needle.  And of course the courts, court staff, judges, and justices aren't cheap either.

Whatever your position on the death penalty, this is not an effective use of our resources.

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