Sotomayor Disappoints in Ineffective Counsel Case

Criminal justice reformers: If you were troubled by President Obama nominating then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the announcement of her first notable opinion for the Supreme Court offers no solace.

Sotomayor was a vigorous prosecutor before joining the federal bench. As a trial judge, she handed down more convictions and longer sentences than her colleagues. Serving on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Sotomayor sided with prosecutors the vast majority of the time. But as a justice, reformers still wondered, how would she adjudicate criminal cases?

Today, as the Supreme Court releases Justice Sotomayor's majority opinion in Wood v. Allen, we have the beginning of an answer. In Wood, the defendant shot and killed his girlfriend while she slept. Before the Alabama trial for his crime, he scored below 70 on a preliminary IQ test. In other words, Wood likely was developmentally disabled, which -- if introduced as evidence -- might have prompted a jury to recommend a more lenient sentence. Among Wood's three public defenders, two were veteran attorneys, and one was rookie lawyer fresh out of law school. And it was this fledgling defense attorney, having never handled a capital case, who presented Wood's case during the sentencing phase of the trial.

In Alabama, a defendant may only be sentenced to death if at least 10 out of 12 jurors say so. After Wood's attorney failed to further investigate his sub-par IQ or introduce any related evidence, exactly 10 jurors recommended death by electrocution, and the judge complied.

Wood appealed his sentence from Alabama's death row. But that process came to a close today. Tasked with assessing Wood's argument that his counsel was unconstitutionally ineffective, Justice Sotomayor wrote the decision denying his claim, and affirmed his death sentence.

Writing for a 7-2 majority, Justice Sotomayor declared that it was possible that Wood's counsel had made a "strategic decision" not to raise Wood's mental deficiencies to the jury. Joined by Justice Kennedy, Justice Stevens disagreed, writing, "The only reasonable factual conclusion I can draw from this record is that counsel's decision [not to investigate or introduce evidence of Wood's sub-par IQ] was the result of inattention and neglect."

Wood's long-delayed execution has yet to be scheduled by Alabama officials. When that day comes, though, Alabama will take the life of a murderer, a man who may or may not be mentally retarded, a poor person represented by a novice when his life was on the line. And on that day, the action will be unjustified, even if the condemned is not a saint, or even an innocent man.

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