Supreme Court sides with death row inmate

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court rarely gives criminal defendants a second chance if they miss a deadline to file an appeal, but the justices did so yesterday in the case of an Alabama death row inmate, citing a "perfect storm" of missing lawyers and unopened letters.

Cory Maples, convicted of killing two people in Alabama, was "abandoned" by his lawyers and lost his right to appeal because of "extraordinary circumstances quite beyond his control," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

Alabama is one of the few states that do not pay for lawyers to represent death row inmates in their appeals, Ginsburg noted. Private law firms often take on their work as volunteers. Maples may have thought he was lucky when two attorneys from the New York firm of Sullivan & Cromwell agreed to represent him in his appeals.

The New York attorneys filed an initial claim, asserting that Maples' trial lawyer failed him by not arguing he was intoxicated when he shot and killed two friends after a night of drinking. But 18 months later, when an Alabama judge rejected his initial appeal, the lawyers had left for other jobs. They did not notify Maples, the judge or a local attorney listed on the appeals. Copies of the judge's order sent to the New York firm were returned by the mailroom unopened.

Thus the 42-day deadline for Maples to appeal the ruling passed by. Alabama prosecutors then insisted it was too late for Maples to appeal because he had "defaulted" by missing the deadline. The Alabama Supreme Court and the U.S. Appeals Court in Atlanta agreed.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, ruled that Maples deserves a right to appeal his conviction. Maples "has shown ample cause, we hold, to excuse the procedural default into which he was trapped when counsel of record abandoned him without a word of warning," Ginsburg said.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a concurring opinion to Ginsburg's. Alito said a "veritable perfect storm of misfortune, a most unlikely combination of events" had come together to unfairly deprive Maples of a chance to appeal.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, saying they wanted to maintain the "principle that defendants are responsible for the mistakes of their attorneys."