Washington, D.C. (6/3/2009) -- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Sixth Court of Appeals in the case, Bobby, Warden v. Bies, Monday, saying that Bies’s claim of violation of the Double Jeopardy clause was invalid because he was never acquitted and then re-convicted after his 1992 sentence.
Michael Bies has been sitting in jail at the Ohio State Penitentiary for the past 17 years, while his murder case traveled through the United States Court system in Bies’s attempts to abdicate his death sentence by claiming his own mental retardation.
Bies, along with an accomplice, Darryl Gumm, abducted 10 year-old Aaron Raines from a park in Lower Price Hill. Police found Raines’s body later that evening in the basement of an abandoned building.
Coincidentally, shortly after Bies’s case was first heard back in 1992, another case, Atkins v. Virginia, was settled that established a precedent barring the execution of mentally retarded offenders. At the time of Bies’s hearing, his mental capacity was a concern, but the jury decided that it was entitled to some weight, however, they resolved that the mitigating factors did not outweigh the crime’s brutality, and so for this reason, the verdict was not reversed.
Bies attempted to question all previous courts’ decisions in his recent oral argument before the Supreme Court on April 27, 2009. He claimed that his mental capacity was, in fact, a contributing factor in the case. For this reason, Bies immediately raced to the next level of judicial appeal, following the courts’ condemning sentence. He continued to run his case from court to court after each unsatisfactory outcome.
In addition to reversing the Sixth Court of Appeal’s ruling, The Supreme Court stated that Bies’s use of the Double Jeopardy clause was inappropriate and his case was basically unfit for the Supreme Court. Point blank: Bies was wasting the Supreme Court’s time.
“The decision invites unwarranted federal interference in state-court proceedings. Immediately after the state post-conviction court denied his motion for summary judgment, Bies raced to federal court under the cloak of double jeopardy, thereby frustrating any progress in that proceeding or development of the record on the Atkins issue,” said Justice Ginsburg.
Justice Ginsburg read the verdict, which interestingly enough, did not directly reference Bies’s mental state of health or question the Ohio courts’ procedure for testing degrees of mental retardation.
The court said that if Bies wished to address this issue, he would have to go back to square one and appeal to the District Court. The Supreme Court felt that this was not a necessary factor in its determination of whether Bies was victimized under the Double Jeopardy clause.
The clause states that once a capital defendant is “acquitted” based on findings establishing entitlement to a life sentence, the Double Jeopardy clause bars any renewed inquiry into Bies’s mental capacity.
After careful consideration, the United States Supreme Court deemed Bies’s case inappropriate for this appeal and the Double Jeopardy clause inconsequential to the sentence.
Justice Ginsburg read the courts’ decision in a mumbled tone, reflecting the level of enthusiasm the court felt for the case.
She said that “First, Bies was not ‘twice put in jeopardy,’ He was sentenced to death, and Ohio sought no further prosecution or punishment.” The court viewed Bies’s plea as a mere excuse, saying that Bies had put himself in the position of Double Jeopardy voluntarily by choosing to appeal his case multiple times.
Justice Ginsburg said, “Instead of ‘serial prosecutions’ by the government, this case involves ‘serial efforts’ by the defendant to vacate his capital sentence.” The Supreme Court was not going to let Bies off the hook, wisely noting that their decision (as is often the case) could create a snowball effect for criminals waiting on death row.
The Supreme Court added, “The decision potentially has ramifications for all types of criminal cases. The Sixth Circuit has allowed an individual who has neither been acquitted of a crime, nor subjected to a second prosecution, to invoke the Double Jeopardy.” The fear is that, now, after Bies’s appeal made it to the top and was heard by the highest court in the United States, other felons will attempt to invoke the Double Jeopardy clause in the hopes that their cases will also be reconsidered.
Ginsburg spoke for the court when she concluded that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals made a grave mistake when, along with its consideration of the Double Jeopardy. It failed to independently reassess the case evidence. It also neglected to pay detailed attention to Bies’s level of mental retardation over the past two decades.
Both the Ohio State Court of Appeals and the Ohio State Supreme Court originally deemed Bies’s mild to borderline mental retardation as mitigating factors, but not significant when compared with the aggravating circumstances. The degree of retardation was never reconsidered over the course of deliberations.
Therefore, in its Monday verdict, The United States Supreme Court reestablished Bies’s conviction based on its decision that Bies’s case did not fall under the umbrella of the Double Jeopardy clause, and subsequently, the U.S. would not protect him from capital punishment.
The Supreme Court acknowledged that with the Atkins determination to uphold the Eighth Amendment rights of offenders, the validity and justice of Bies’s conviction was questionable. To the defendant, the death sentence seemed in direct contradiction to the recent legislation.
However, both the Ohio Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court affirmed Bies’s conviction, based on their decision that the mitigating circumstances were factors in the case, but did not outweigh the nature and severity of the crime.
By Catherine Moore, camoore@bu.edu
