Innocence Fears Raised in High-Court Case Claiming Bad Lawyering

Two men sitting on Arizona’s death row say they face execution because they had bad lawyers.

On Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether they’re allowed to prove it.

David Martinez Ramirez and Barry Jones were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in separate state-court cases. Arizona officials say the pair had the chance to raise ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claims in state postconviction proceedings, so they’re bound by the state-court record and can’t develop new evidence on federal habeas review. The defendants point out their state postconviction lawyers were ineffective, too, so federal habeas review is the only way to ...