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| Judge tosses Pa. death row inmate's sentence |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 04/11/2005 |
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Fifteen years after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Pennsylvania's death-penalty law in the case of Scott Wayne Blystone, a federal judge has ordered that he be resentenced on grounds that his lawyer failed to provide an adequate defense. U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster in Pittsburgh said Blystone's court-appointed lawyer failed to develop or present mitigating evidence that might have spared Blystone from being sentenced to die, even though such evidence was abundant. The judge said that violated the constitutional guarantee that accused criminals are entitled to the assistance of counsel. "Trial counsel's ineffective assistance so infected the sentencing phase of (the) trial that it undermined the court's confidence in the outcome of that proceeding," Lancaster said in a 130-page decision issued last Thursday in a civil habeas corpus proceeding. Blystone, now 48 and incarcerated at the state prison in Greene, was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery in the September 1983 death of hitchhiker Dalton Smithburger Jr. in Fayette County. Blystone robbed Smithburger of $13 before shooting him six times in the head. The mitigating-circumstance provision was the linchpin of a 1990 Supreme Court decision that upheld Pennsylvania's death-penalty statute and removed threats to similar laws in 13 other states. By a 5-4 vote, the justices said the Pennsylvania statute did not violate the Constitution's ban on mandatory death sentences, like those struck down in other states that required executions for specific crimes, such as killing a police officer, or specific types of offenders. Pennsylvania law allows sentencing judges and juries to weigh both aggravating and mitigating factors in deciding whether murderers should live or die. A death sentence is mandatory only when there is at least one aggravating circumstance and no mitigating factor. In Blystone's case, jurors in Fayette County Common Pleas court counted the fact that the murder was committed during a robbery as an aggravating factor. Blystone's public defender, Jeffrey Whiteko, did not assert any mitigating circumstances. Whiteko talked to Blystone, his parents and one sister, but Blystone refused to testify or allow his parents to testify at the sentencing hearing. Though the lawyer begged the jury to spare Blystone's life, "because the defense neither presented nor argued to the jury mitigating evidence, it had no discretion to spare Blystone's life," Lancaster wrote. In subsequent appellate proceedings, other lawyers produced mitigating evidence that included witnesses who described Blystone's upbringing in a dysfunctional and abusive family; his own abuse of alcohol and drugs; expert diagnoses of Blystone's psychiatric problems; and a record of his good behavior in various institutions. Whiteko did not immediately return a telephone message left at his office last Tuesday. Robert Dunham, an assistant federal defender in Philadelphia who is part of Blystone's current legal team, noted that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued standards for lawyers appointed in capital cases only last year. Such lawyers now must have obtained jury verdicts in at least eight "significant" felony trials and take specialized training before they are eligible. |
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