Judge’s Bias, Misconduct Are Grounds for Death Penalty Relief

A death-row defendant is entitled to federal relief from his sentence because his sentencing judge was biased and didn’t follow applicable resentencing procedures, the Sixth Circuit said.

This case is the “epitome” of “extreme judicial malfunction,” said Judge Richard Allen Griffin of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Tuesday. Nathaniel Jackson’s sentencing proceeding was “blatantly unconstitutional at its core,” Griffin said.

After conducting a totality-of-the-circumstances review, Griffin said that the judge’s bias against Jackson was too high to be “constitutionally tolerable.” The sentencing judge “failed to act as a fair tribunal, denying Jackson his Fourteenth Amendment right to an unbiased, neutral arbiter,” the judge said, affirming the district court’s ruling in part and reversing in part.

Jackson was convicted of aggravated murder, among other charges, and sentenced to death after conspiring with and murdering his girlfriend’s former husband. After ex parte conversations between himself and the prosecutor, Ohio Judge John M. Stuard asked the prosecutor to write his sentencing opinion, which the judge then read from the bench.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Stuard acted inappropriately and sent Jackson’s case back to him for a new sentence. Stuard refused to recuse himself, wouldn’t allow Jackson to submit new mitigating evidence, and reimposed the death penalty, Griffin said. The state appellate court affirmed the new sentence.

Jackson filed a federal writ for habeas corpus relief, and the district court ruled that Jackson was denied his right to present mitigating evidence. On appeal, the Sixth Circuit also wanted to know if Stuard was unconstitutionally biased.

Stuard’s actions “show a ‘deep-seated’ favoritism toward the prosecution and antagonism toward” Jackson, making “fair judgment impossible,” Griffin said. By asking the prosecutor to draft the original sentencing opinion, Stuard allowed the prosecution to act “both as accuser and judge,” he said.

The federal standard for a judge to recuse himself because of bias is objective and requires asking if the probability of actual bias is too high to be constitutionally tolerable, Griffin said. The question is whether an average judge in the same position was likely to be neutral or whether there was an unconstitutional potential for bias, he said.

But the state supreme court publicly reprimanded Stuard for violating the state’s judicial conduct code and ordered him to conduct new sentencing proceedings. The court asked whether Jackson demonstrated that Stuard had actual bias and acted with ill will against him, the Sixth Circuit said. That test is “contrary to clearly established federal law,” it said.

Stuard ran afoul of the federal standard by having ex parte communications with the prosecutor, using the ghost-written opinion to sentence Jackson to death, refusing to accept responsibility for the ex parte contact with the prosecutor, and failing to recuse himself from Jackson’s resentencing, the Sixth Circuit said.

Stuard then used essentially his original opinion to resentence Jackson to death, Griffin said. Stuard’s actions suggest, at a minimum, a risk of bias against Jackson, he said.

Jackson is also entitled to relief on his claim that he should have been allowed to submit additional mitigating evidence at his resentencing hearing, the Sixth Circuit said. The US Supreme Court requires “capital sentencing courts to consider any and all relevant mitigating evidence presented at the time of sentencing, with no exception for cases where prior sentencing proceedings had been held,” it said.

Judges Karen Nelson Moore and R. Guy Cole Jr. joined the opinion.

The case is Jackson v. Cool, 2024 BL 269871, 6th Cir., No. 21-3207, 8/6/24.