Missouri man appeals his death sentence after attorneys failed in their duty to challenge the jury foreman’s bias

Petitions for the Week

By Kalvis Goldene
Here is a list of all petitions we’re watching. Here is a list of all the petitions we are watching. The challenge is that they must convince a federal judge that the state sentence or conviction was “unreasonable” and, if they do not succeed, they will need permission to appeal. This week we highlight petitions that ask the court to examine, among other issues, whether a court can deny a request for a post-conviction appeal when at least one judge will grant it. He left the truck, slumped in the passenger’s seat, to get help for his fiance. Shockley fell to the ground and reached a nearby house, where the residents called 911 and he called the woman he was with. Shockley’s sister, his wife and the homeowners were all outside, but Shockley was nowhere to be seen. Shockley denied being the driver to officers and no one else did either. After months of investigation, officers questioned again one of the homeowners Shockley asked for help the night of crash. The officers falsely claimed that Shockley confessed that he was the driver. She then revealed that Shockley told her the same thing that night. Shockley denied any involvement and claimed to have an alibi. The officers then interviewed Shockley. Shockley was arrested three days later – not as a suspect, but because he fled the scene of the accident. Shockley was charged with both crimes but only prosecuted on murder. Shockley was found guilty and sentenced to die. Shockley’s lawyers did not ask the jury foreman about his self-published status during jury selection. Shockley’s lawyers demanded a retrial, claiming that the foreman was biased against him. Shockley’s lawyers declined to ask the foreman or other jurors questions about the book or potential bias. The request for a new trial was denied.
Shockley hired new lawyers to represent him. The new lawyers found out from the jurors that the foreman shared his book with other jurors as well as court officials, both before and during trial. Shockley filed for post-conviction relief, on the ground that his trial attorneys’ failure to question the foreman or any of the other jurors after learning about the book fell so short of professional norms that it violated his constitutional rights.
The Missouri Supreme Court ultimately rejected Shockley’s claim, but one judge dissented from that decision, writing that Shockley was entitled to a new trial.

Shockley then went to federal court, asking a federal district judge in Missouri to order a new trial. The judge denied Shockley’s request due to the high threshold in federal court for post-conviction remedies. He also denied Shockley permission to appeal — known as a “certificate of appealability” — concluding that his claims “lack debatable merit.”

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit similarly refused to grant Shockley a certificate of appealability, as did the full 8th Circuit, with two judges dissenting.

In Shockley v. Vandergriff, Shockley asks the justices to send his case back to the 8th Circuit with instructions to let his appeal move forward. Shockley explains that the Supreme Court has ruled people seeking post-conviction justice in federal court can receive a certificate of appelability if they demonstrate that “reasonable jury members could debate” their strength of claims. He argues that the courts of appeals are divided on whether this standard is met if at least one judge grants the certificate. Shockley claims that he has a right to appeal because “reasonable juryists” have “debated” his case. Three federal judges would allow his appeal to move forward and a state supreme judge would have agreed that his trial lawyers were constitutionally deficient, and would have given him a new trail. Missouri explains that federal law allows courts of appeals the freedom to determine their own procedures when it comes to certificates of appealability. The state argues that the federal law allows courts of appeals to set their own procedures for certificates of appealability, including whether or not to deny them based on the dissents from some judges. Accordingly, the state maintains, Shockley’s case doesn’t implicate a divide among the circuits on a legal question, merely a difference in internal procedures ancitipated by Congress.

Last August, the Supreme Court refused to halt the execution of another man on Missouri’s death row, Johnny Johnson, who had argued he could not be put to death because a psychiatrist had diagnosed him with severe mental illness and found he was not competent to stand trial.

The full 8th Circuit overrode a decision by a three-judge panel of the court that had granted Johnson a certificate of appealability. Dissenting from the Supreme Court’s refusal to step in, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that “

ecause reasonable jurists could, did, and still debate whether” Johnson was entitled to relief from his death sentence, “the Eighth Circuit should have authorized an appeal.”

A list of this week’s featured petitions is below:

Ellingburg v. United States

24-482

Issue

: Whether criminal restitution under the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act is penal for purposes of the Constitution’s ex post facto clause.

Hoskins v. Withers

24-504

Issues

: (1) Whether qualified immunity shields government officials from liability even in cases where they retaliate against a person for exercising a clearly established constitutional right; and (2) whether, even assuming a plaintiff must show that retaliatory conduct is clearly unlawful, qualified immunity should have been denied because the retaliatory conduct here was clearly unlawful.

Abbey v. United States[b]24-510

Issue

: Whether petitioners’ negligence claims “aris
out of … misrepresentation,” and thus are barred by Section 2680(h) of the Federal Tort Claims Act, even though petitioners did not personally rely on an alleged misrepresentation.
Korban v. Watson Memorial Spiritual Temple of Christ24-512

Issue
: Whether a prior federal judgment precludes state-law claims in a subsequent state- or federal-court action that arise from a common core of facts and that could have been, but were not, raised in the prior federal action.
Carter v. Stewart24-513

Issues
: (1) Whether a prospective juror who alleges they were struck as the result of a policy, custom or usage of racial discrimination have a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. SS 1983; and (2) if so, whether such claims must be adjudicated in the same manner as other Section 1983 lawsuits, including the submission of genuine issues of material fact to a jury.
Shockley v. Vandergriff24-517[e]Issue

: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit erred in denying petitioner’s application, over dissent, to appeal the denial of his Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel claims.
Lighting Defense Group v. SnapRays
24-524Issue

: Whether a defendant subjects itself to personal jurisdiction anywhere a plaintiff operates simply because the defendant knows its out-of-forum conduct “would necessarily affect marketing, sales, and other activities” within the forum, even though the defendant has no contacts with the plaintiff or the forum whatsoever.
Bethesda University v. Cho
24-530Issue

: Whether the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine bars courts from adjudicating the religious qualifications of the leaders of a religious institution.
Federal Republic of Nigeria v. Zhongshan Fucheng Industrial Investment Co.
24-532Issues

: (1) Whether, for interpreting the intentions of treaty parties regarding a word like “person,” extra-textual information such as historical context and contemporary domestic law is a material input in parallel with the textual analysis; and (2) whether the New York Convention applies for arbitration agreements governing a dispute with a sovereign nation arising out of its role as a sovereign.

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