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Summary:
During its 2006-2007 term the Supreme Court announced decisions in eight capital cases. Three arose under a later abandoned Texas procedure that restricted jury consideration of mitigation evidence to evidence of intent, future dangerousness and victim provocation. In one, Smith v. Texas, the Court held that the defendant's failure to challenging the state's insufficient corrective adjustments in the procedure could not be used to deny him the benefit of a less demanding test to assess the harm caused by use of the challenged, defective underlying procedure. In another, AbdulKabir v. Quarterman, it rejected the suggestion that the Court's earlier cases permitted the use of the mitigating evidence-restricting procedure as long as the evidence in question related at least in part to one of the narrow factors that the procedure allowed to be considered. In the third, Brewer v. Quarterman, it rejected the suggestion that the Court's earlier cases permitted the use of the mitigating evidence-restricting procedure as long as the procedure permitted "sufficient" consideration of the evidence in question given its quality and weight. Earlier in the term in Ayers v. Belmontes, the Court concluded that the feature in California's capital sentencing procedure that permits consideration to any evidence that extenuated the gravity of the crime allowed a jury from giving full effect to mitigating evidence of the defendant's character and background even if otherwise unrelated to the crime. In Uttecht v. Brown, the Court held that appellate courts should give considerable deference to a trial judge's dismissal of a prospective capital juror for cause. In Schriro v. Landrigan, it found that the absence of prejudice doomed an ineffectiveness of counsel challenge based on trial counsel's failure to search for mitigating evidence. In Lawrence v. Florida, it construed the federal habeas statute of limitations and concluded that the statute was not tolled pending a petition for Supreme Court review of state collateral review decisions (e.g. state habeas corpus decisions). In Panelli v. Quarterman, it determined that the limitation on second or successive habeas petitions posed no impediment to consideration of a petition which challenged the execution of a mentally incompetent death row inmate.
