Arave v. Hoffman--a Death Penalty Case and Resentencing

On the one hand this ineffective assistance of counsel claim in a death penalty case is a very simple matter--the Court simply agreed to grant Respondent's motion (agreed to by Appellant) to dismiss one of the grounds of relief apparently favorable to Respondent granted it by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals; on the other hand, it is a textbook illustration of the difficulties, complexities and, ultimately, fruitlessness of much of capital defense and prosecution work. My summary here will give enough information to show the tremendous resources spent on capital cases and, in fact, the often inconclusive or unsatisfactory results of those cases even after lots of money has been spent on them.

A Little About the Case

Hoffman is not a nice guy. He worked for a drug dealer in ID and was responsible for the the death of a police "snitch," Williams, who had reported his "boss" to the police. This murder happened more than 20 years ago. Complexity entered at his trial in 1989. Hoffman was charged with a crime making him eligible for the death penalty, but before his trial the 9th Circuit handed down a case invalidating Arizona's procedure for sentencing people in capital punishment cases (where the judge, rather than the jury, would set the punishment). AZ's procedure was almost identical to that of ID and so Hoffman's attorney recommended to him not to take a plea bargain offer of the Idaho DA (life imprisonment rather than "rolling the dice" at trial with the possibility of being sentenced to death) since the Idaho law would no doubt soon be unconstitutional. But Hoffman's attorney "guessed" wrong, and Hoffman was eventually convicted and sentenced to death. Also, at trial and sentencing, Hoffman's rather inexperienced attorneys didn't put on mitigating evidence--evidence that would have shown Hoffman's history of being abused as a child and his borderline mental capacity.

Things Get Complex

So, after his conviction and death sentence were upheld in 1993, Hoffman appealed his convictions through a habeas corpus hearing in the federal court system. At first the District Court said that most of Hoffman's claims were time-barred (i.e., filed too late), but the 9th Circuit reversed, and so the District Court held a five-day evidentiary hearing to determine if Hoffman should get any relief. Hoffman's major complaint was that the sentencing phase of his trial was conducted incompetently by his attorneys. Finally, in 2002, the District Court agreed, and vacated his sentence of death. The District Court required the State of ID to conduct resentencing proceedings within 120 days. After several more hearings, the 9th Circuit decided that there was error not simply in the sentencing proceeding of Hoffman's trial but also at the plea-bargaining stage, where his attorney "guessed wrong" regarding ID's capital punishment law. Thus, by the time 2006 rolled around, the 9th Circuit had ordered the State of Idaho to "offer him a plea agreement with the 'same material terms' offereing in the original plea agreement.'"

This takes us to 2007. The State of ID decided to appeal this decision of the 9th Circuit to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court initially granted cert. in November 2007, but then asked the parties to brief an additional question that made it look like the 9th Circuit's decision might well be overturned by the Court. Hoffman then quickly decided to abandon his claim that counsel was ineffective during his plea bargaining. The state agreed and the US Supreme Court, on January 7, 2008, decided to accept the agreement of both sides and take away this ground of appeal. Thus, the purpose of the decision was only to declare moot the claim for ineffective assistance of counsel during pretrial plea bargaining.

What is Going On Here?

After the 9th Circuit decision, which would have required a new sentencing trial in ID, Hoffman was appointed yet another attorney on Oct. 23, 2006. This would be his attorney for capital resentencing proceedings. But, as luck would have it, the counsel suffered from a conflict of interest. Thus, new counsel was appointed on Feb. 14, 2007 with a new trial for resentening planned for Dec. 13, 2007. The law of sentencing people to death had changed considerably in ID since the crime in the late 1980s; now the jury is the body that decides the appropriateness of sentence.

So, why did Hoffman's attorney want one of the grounds for his ineffective assistance of counsel claim to be dropped? I think that if he did so, he would probably preclude the US Supreme Court from hearing the rest of the case and possibly ruling against his client. Indeed, the Court was aware that sentencing was happening in ID, and that it might be best to let the state proceedings play out before they decided to take the case on its merits. In this way, the Supreme Court would keep itself out of the loop, so to speak, and the 9th Circuit's requirement to sentence him to a sentence less than death would be the law of the case. In this interpretation, then, Hoffman's lawyers wisely acted in Hoffman's interest. Why would the state go along? Well, they would have one of the two grounds for Hoffman's claim decided. They, too, could claim a sort of "victory."

One can't help but think, however, that the court systems, both state and federal, have expended more resources on this guy than he deserved. Maybe he will now simply be resentenced to death, and he will retreat into the obscurity which he so richly deserves.

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