9th Cir.;
14-15309

The court of appeals affirmed a district court judgment denying a petition for writ of habeas corpus. The court held that the Arizona Supreme Court properly considered all mitigating evidence in a death penalty case, and did not erroneously restrict its consideration to mitigating factors causally linked to the crime.

In 1989, Richard Greenway was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1988 execution-style murders of a mother and daughter. Greenway petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing, among other things, that the Arizona state courts improperly failed to consider all mitigating circumstances. The district court rejected that claim, and the court of appeals initially affirmed, but reconsidered following the issuance of its en banc opinion in McKinney v. Ryan, 813 F.3d 798, 818–19 (9th Cir. 2015). The McKinney court held that because Arizona courts had “consistently,” during the period between 1989 and 2005, limited consideration of mitigating factors to those causally linked to the commission of the crime, contrary to the United States Supreme Court's teachings in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586 (1978) and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104 (1982), it had to be presumed that the causal-nexus test had been improperly applied to any case decided during that time period. Accordingly, reconsideration of Greenway's case was warranted.