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[email protected].BY ROBERT BARNES
The Supreme Court on Monday
made it harder for defendants to
seek relief from federal courts on
claims that their convictions in
state court were tainted by inef-
fective counsel.
The 6-to-3 decision divided the
court’s majority conservatives
from its liberals. It will have the
most direct effect on two of Ari-
zona’s death row inmates, one of
whom claims his state-appointed
lawyer failed to pursue evidence
that could have proven him inno-
cent and another who says his
lawyer did little to try to prove the
inmate’s intellectual disability.
But advocates say the ruling
will resonate more widely and
implicates a subset of cases where
defendants had bad lawyers both
at their trials and in post-convic-
tion appeals.
Justice Clarence Thomas, writ-
ing for the majority, s aid a federal
law that sought to streamline
criminal appeals does not allow a
federal court to conduct hearings
or consider evidence “beyond the
state-court record based on inef-
fective assistance of state post-
conviction counsel.”
“In our dual-sovereign system,
federal courts must afford unwav-
ering respect to the centrality ‘of
the trial of a criminal case in state
court,’ ” wrote Thomas, referring
to a court precedent. He added
that intervention by federal
courts is “an affront to the State
and its citizens who returned a
verdict of guilt after considering
the evidence before them. Federal
courts, years later, lack the com-
petence and authority to reliti-
gate a State’s criminal case.”
He was joined by Chief Justice
John G. Roberts Jr. and the rest of
the court’s most consistently con-
servative justices: Samuel A. Alito
Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M.
Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Bar-
rett.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued
a stinging rebuttal, calling Thom-
as’s opinion “perverse” and “illog-
ical,” and said that it “reduced to
rubble” previous Supreme Court
findings that the constitutional
right to effective counsel is a “bed-rock principle” in an adversary
system of criminal justice.
With Monday’s ruling, “the
Cou rt hamstrings the federal au-
thority to safeguard” the right,
Sotomayor wrote. “The Court’s
decision will leave many people
who were convicted in violation
of the Sixth Amendment to face
incarceration or even execution
without any meaningful chance
to vindicate their right to coun-
sel.”
She was joined by the two other
justices on the left, Stephen G.
Breyer and Elena Kagan.
The cases concerned two Ari-
zona men who were convicted of
brutal murders.
David Ramirez was convicted
of fatally stabbing his girlfriend,
Mary Ann Gortarez, and her 15-
year-old daughter, Candie, in
1989.
“Police also found physical evi-
dence that Ramirez had raped
Candie,” Thomas wrote. Ramirez
claimed his lawyers in state pro-
ceedings failed to present evi-
dence of a horrific childhood that
might have led to a life sentence
instead of the death penalty.
Barry Lee Jones was convicted
of sexual assault, three counts of
child abuse and felony murder
after the 1994 death of his girl-
friend’s 4-year-old, Rachel Gray.
Jones was convicted of beating
the girl to death.
But his lawyer at the Supreme
Court said previous lawyers had
failed to present medical evi-
de nce that could have shown that
the child sustained her injuries
when she was not in Jones’s care.
And his postconviction lawyer
failed to develop a showing of his
trial lawyer’s shortcoming, Jones
claimed.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for
the 9th Circuit sided with both
men, and Arizona brought the
cases to the Supreme Court.
Innocence Project Executive
Director Christina Swarns wrote
in an op-ed column in the New
York Times that Jones “lost the
lawyer lottery twice.” Her organi-
zation said the ability of federal
courts to conduct evidentiary
hearings into such claims was
crucial.“Since 1989, almost 3,000 peo-
ple have been wrongfully convict-
ed of crimes in the United States,”
Swarns wrote. “And since 1973,
186 people condemned to death
have been exonerated. Bad law-
yering — including poor prepara-
tion, inadequate investigation
and intrinsic bias — was a leading
cause.”
But Thomas said the Supreme
Court has found that federal re-
view of state convictions is an
extreme remedy reserved for the
most extraordinary cases. The
Antiterrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act of 1996 impos-
es strict limits on federal courts,
he wrote.
“Serial relitigation of final con-
victions undermines the finality
that ‘is essential to both the re-
tributive and deterrent functions
of criminal law,’ ” Thomas wrote,
quoting a previous Supreme
Court case.
Sotomayor responded that it
made no sense to limit federal
review of ineffective-counsel
claims to issues raised in the state
court record.
“Ine ffective-assistance claims
frequently turn on errors of omis-
sion: evidence that was not ob-
tained, witnesses that were not
contacted, experts who were not
retained, or investigative leads
that were not pursued,” she wrote.
“Demonstrating that counsel
failed to take each of these mea-sures by definition requires evi-
dence beyond the trial record.”
She said the court missed the
larger point of its ruling. “To put it
bluntly: Two men whose trial at-
torneys did not provide even the
bare minimum level of represen-
tation required by the Constitu-
tion may be executed because
forces outside of their control pre-
vented them from vindicating
their constitutional right to coun-
sel,” she wrote.
Washington lawyer Robert
Loeb, who argued the case for
Ramirez and Jones at the Su-
preme Court, said in a statement
that the decision “means that a
federal court can have evidence
that someone, like Barry Jones,
did not commit the crime sup-
porting the death sentence, but
that the court then is helpless to
offer any relief.”
But organizations that support
the death penalty said Congress
already has acted.
“In 1996, Congress cracked
down on the misuse of habeas
corpus to second-guess judg-
ments that have already been ful-
ly and fairly decided in state
courts,” Criminal Justice Legal
Foundation legal director Kent
Scheidegger said in a statement.
“Today’s decision affirms that fed-
eral courts cannot make up their
own exceptions to evade that law.”
The cases are Shinn v. Ramirez
and Shinn v. Jones.Court limits review in i ne≠ective-counsel cases
BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST
The Supreme Court’s 6-to-3 decision in the ineffective-counsel
cases divided its majority conservatives from its liberals.All programs will be streamed live
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Post Live eventsBY SARAH PULLIAM BAILEY
Southern Baptist leaders for
decades both ignored and cov-
ered up sex abuse allegations
while claiming to have little pow-
er to address them, a s hocking
third-party investigation re-
leased Sunday found.
The nearly 300-page report
included confidential emails and
memos between longtime law-
yers for the 13-million member
denomination and leaders of the
Southern Baptist Convention’s
administrative arm. The product
of an eight-month probe request-
ed by Southern Baptists at their
annual meeting in Nashville in
2021, it includes several key take-
aways.(^) Top leaders repeatedly tried
to bury sex abuse claims and
lied about what they could do :
The report describes how key
Southern Baptist leaders en-
gaged in a pattern of ignoring,
stonewalling and even “vilifying”
sex abuse survivors. The report
details multiple instances when
Southern Baptist leaders shot
down requests by survivors and
other concerned members to
maintain a d atabase of abusers.
Publicly, the leaders said they
couldn’t because of “church poli-
ty,” or the denomination’s decen-
tralized structure. But the report
found that their attorneys had
advised them that they could
keep such a list and that the
leaders did so in secret.
The most recent list of sex
abusers prepared by a staff mem-
ber contained the names of 703
alleged abusers, with 409 be-
lieved to be SBC affiliated at some
point, according to the report.
Guidepost, the firm that conduct-
ed the investigation, found that
nine people who were accused
are still in ministry, two of whom
are still associated with an SBC
church. Despite collecting these
reports for more than 10 years,
the report said, “there is no indi-
cation leaders took any action to
ensure that the accused minis-
ters were no longer in positions
of power at SBC churches.”
Debbie Vasquez, whose story
of sexual abuse and rape by her
pastor when she was a minor is
included in the report, said she
couldn’t sleep Sunday night after
the report came out.
“To some people, this is an
eye-opener. Survivors knew,” said
Vasquez. “We’ve been at it for
over a decade. We already knew
they were covering this up. I h ave
yet to come across a leader who
was willing to do something
about it.” She said her abuser is
still a p astor at a c hurch that is no
longer af filiated with the SBC.
Sing Oldham, a former spokes-
man for the Executive Commit-
tee, which is the administrative
arm the report focused on, said in
an interview that he had set up a
Google alert for “Baptist” and
“arrested” and would forward
news reports to Southern Baptist
Executiv e Committee leader Au-
gust Boto about anyone who
might be connected to the SBC.
But Oldham said in an interview
he was not aware anyone was
aggregating such reports and re-
jected the idea that he was in-
volved in creating a secret data-
base.
“I do wish that we as a conven-
tion and as an executive commit-
tee had been more open to hear
[survivors’] concerns and to be
more responsive to what they
have to say,” Oldham said. “It was
a whole new field of what are the
legalities that we have to consid-
er? What do we have authority to
tell a church what to do?”
A former SBC president was
considered “credibly accused”
of sexual assault: Johnny Hunt
was considered “credibly ac-
cused” of sexually assaulting a
woman during a beach vacation
in 2010, a m onth after his tenure
as SBC president ended. After the
report was published, Hunt, who
resigned this month from his vice
president position with the con-
vention’s North American Mis-
sion Board, denied in a tweet that
he had abused anyone.
Kevin Ezell, president of
NAMB, said generally that the
details in the report “are egre-
gious and deeply disturbing,”
though he did not speak to the
accusations directed against
Hunt specifically. A spokesman
for NAMB did not respond to
questions over what NAMB lead-
ers knew about the woman’s ac-
cusations and whether Hunt was
provided severance in his resig-
nation.
Hunt, who was widely loved
across the denomination and
mentored young pastors, led
something called the City of Ref-
uge residential program that as-
sisted “pastors in crisis,” many of
whom had “moral failings.” The
woman who accused Hunt of
assaulting her told Guidepost
that Hunt asked her if she was
“wild growing up,” before he
eventually “forced himself on her
again by groping her, trying to
pull her shirt down, and violently
kissing her.” On Monday, Hunt
did not respond to requests for
further comment.
Unheeded warnings went on
for decades : The report also de-
scribed a series of instances when
leaders ignored warnings by sex
abuse survivors and advocates.
In 2016, a person called to report
a pastor’s involvement in abuse
of her mother. According to the
report, a staff member for the
Executiv e Committee asked Boto,
“Do I call this lady back? I suspect
no.” No documents indicate a
follow-up response, the report
said.
A Catholic whistleblower tried
to warn Southern Baptist leaders
that they might be falling into the
same pattern as Catholic leaders
did in not dealing with clergy
abuse. A Southern Baptist leader
wrote back and said there was
nothing they could do because,
“Southern Baptist leaders truly
have no authority over local
churches.”
The report includes emails be-
tween leaders and employees of
the SBC’s Executive Committee
in which members of the survivor
community were ignored or
“shunned, shamed, and vilified.”
In an internal email in 2019,
Boto equated the focus on sexual
abuse with the work of the devil,
saying, “It is a s atanic scheme to
completely distract us from evan-
gelism.” In an email, Oldham
wrote to Boto, offering to bring
him up to speed about the group
Survivors Network of Those
Abused by Priests. “Dealing with
SNAP can be tricky,” Oldham
wrote. “They have a way of twist-
ing your words to suit their pur-
poses.” Boto responded, “Good
job.” Boto could not be reached
for comment. Oldham said that
at the time of the email he was
new to his job and that he would
not use those words today.
Leaders seemed to put con-
cern over potential litigation
over people’s safety : Southern
Baptist leaders appeared to value
avoiding lawsuits over prevent-
ing sexual abuse, according to the
report, which stated, “it is strik-
ing that many reform efforts
were met with resistance, typical-
ly due to concerns over incurring
legal liability.” For example,
based on outside counsel, leaders
recommended removing the
word “crisis” when referring to
sex abuse.
Jim Guenther and Jaime Jor-
dan, who were attorneys for the
SBC until last fall when they
resigned, said in a statement
Monday that they believe the
report contains “misstatements
of fact and quotations” that were
reported out of context.
“Understanding legal risks
and how to mitigate those risks
are primary reasons individuals
and organizations hire legal
counsel,” they said. “As lawyers
we are bound by professional
rules of conduct to zealously pro-
tect our clients’ legitimate inter-
ests and to discuss the legal
consequences of any proposed
course of conduct.”
Southern Baptists are expect-
ed to discuss the recommenda-
tions in the report at their annual
gathering in Anaheim, Calif.,
next month.
Many survivors are planning
to tr avel there to stand outside in
protest, Vasquez said. Grant
Gaines, a Southern Baptist pastor
in Murfreesboro, Tenn., said the
denomination, as well as individ-
ual pastors, need to be thinking
seriously through sexual abuse
prevention steps.
Gaines said his own Belle Aire
Baptist Church has had policies
in place, such as having at least
two adults in a nursery room and
background checks for volun-
teers, but it has gone through
extra steps this past year to work
with a group called GRACE to
add more training and awareness
around sex abuse for his whole
congregation.
“As painful as it might be,” he
said of the Guidepost report, “it’s
nothing like the pain survivors
have felt, the resistance they have
felt in getting things changed.”
Jules Woodson, whose 2018
allegation that her Southern Bap-
tist youth pastor sexually assault-
ed her was viewed as a tipping
point in leading the denomina-
tion to confront sex abuse, said
the Guidepost investigation is
historic for the denomination.
“This is going to need to be a
cultural change,” Woodson said.
“You don’t change a culture over-
night. The first part of that is
acknowledging what has hap-
pened. Nobody can naysay or
deny or act ignorant anymore.”
Key points from Southern Baptists’ abuse report
A Catholic whistleblower tried to warn
Southern Baptist leaders that they might be
falling into the same pattern as Catholic
l eaders did in not dealing with clergy abuse.
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