One of America's top law firms has copped
an absolute shellacking in the US Supreme Court for a case in which a death row
inmate was "abandoned" in the most unfortunate of circumstances.
The Supreme Court this week voted to
reverse a Federal Appeals Court ruling which had found that Cory Maples, who
was convicted of killing two men in 1995, would no longer be able to appeal his
death sentence because of a monumental stuff up on the part of his lawyers.
The Associated Press reports that Maples
missed the deadline to appeal his conviction when court notices to his lawyers
at US
mega-firm Sullivan and Cromwell were returned unopened.
Upon seeing the unopened mail, the local
court clerk didn't think it necessary to take further action and Maples thus
missed his chance at escaping execution.
Ordinarily, deadlines such as this are
sacrosanct and defendants are held responsible for the mistakes of their
lawyers.
However, in this particular case, the court
found that Maples' lawyers did not just stuff up, "they abandoned him".
"Through no fault of his own, Maples, an
inmate on death row, was left unrepresented at a critical time," said one of
the judges, who also took a swipe at the state of Alabama for using inexperienced lawyers to
represent defendants in death penalty matters.
"What occurred here was not a predictable
consequence of the Alabama
system, but a veritable perfect storm of misfortune," said another judge.
Apparently, Maples copped a raw deal from
the start, with one of his lawyers telling jurors during his sentencing trial
that the defence team "may appear to be stumbling around in the dark".
Maples probably thought things were looking
up, however, when the Sullivan and Cromwell lawyers agreed to act for him on a
pro bono basis.
But in 2003, the good-hearted lawyers
acting for Maples made what turned out to be life or death decisions (for
Maples, that is): one left for a job in Europe and the other became a clerk for
a federal judge. Unfortunately, they forgot to mention this minor detail to
Maples or the court.
As such, the appeals notices were sent to
the firm, where they were not passed to other lawyers but were instead sent
back to Alabama.
The local lawyer apparently did nothing either, thinking the gallant New Yorkers
were vigilantly working on the case.
It was only after the deadline passed that
Maples discovered the true and rather unfortunate state of affairs. Other
lawyers at the firm attempted to continue with the appeal, but both state and
federal courts ruled that Maples was, quite simply, out of luck.
Maples fortunes finally turned when a
majority in the Supreme Court found otherwise, and the court will now hear his
claim that his inexperienced, poorly paid trial lawyers made such a dog's
breakfast of the case that their work actually violated the Constitution's
guarantee of representation for criminal defendants.
Ouch!
