Supreme Court throws out 3 death sentences in Texas

The Supreme Court overturned the death sentences of three Texas murderers Wednesday, ruling that jurors were not given a fair chance to spare them given their mental difficulties and histories of childhood abuse.

In a series of 5-4 votes, the court pointed to the flaws in the Texas capital sentencing system before 1991. The rulings will probably lead to new sentencing hearings for a handful of Texas death row inmates who were given death sentences under the old system.

Until Texas was forced to revise its law in 1991, jurors were given only two questions when deciding whether a convicted killer would receive a sentence of death or life in prison. Was the murder deliberate, and did the killer represent a “continuing threat” to society? If the jury agreed on a “yes” answer to both, the defendant received a death sentence.

In the late 1970s, however, the Supreme Court had said jurors must be permitted to weigh any “mitigating factor” in a defendant’s life or character as a reason to spare him from a death sentence. Nonetheless, the justices upheld the Texas system at the time, even though it left little or no room for jurors to weigh mitigating evidence.

For a time, Texas judges tried to get around the problem by telling jurors they could falsely answer “no” when they were asked whether the murderer presented a continuing threat to society, even though they thought the right answer to the question was yes.

Not surprisingly, the justices in the majority Wednesday described that approach as “fatally flawed” because it depended on jurors giving an answer they knew to be untrue.

Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer formed the majority in all three decisions.

The rulings reversed death sentences for Ted Cole, now known as Jalil Abdul-Kabir, who strangled and robbed a 68-year-old man in San Angelo; Brent Brewer, who stabbed and robbed a 66-year-old store owner in Amarillo; and LaRoyce Smith, who stabbed and killed a former co-worker at a Taco Bell in Dallas.

In a strong dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the fault in the handling of the cases lay with the Supreme Court, not the state and federal judges in Texas.

“Our precedents did not provide them with ‘clearly established’ law, but instead a dog’s breakfast of divided, conflicting and ever-changing analyses,” Roberts wrote.

He said the lower court judges were told to follow the law as it was then, but the majority at the Supreme Court shifted back and forth and failed “to follow a consistent path.”

No wonder, he said, that the appellate judges in Texas were unsure whether they should affirm or reverse the Texas death sentences handed down before 1991.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Roberts in dissent.

david.savage@latimes.com