Homeless in Arizona

When a prosecutor commits perjury in an attempt to murder a person it's written off as a trivial mistake in an attempt to kill a scum bag criminal. And the prosecutor doesn't even get a slap on the wrist.

Source

Supreme Court overturns Arizona man's death sentence

Michael Kiefer, The Republic | azcentral.com 3:59 p.m. MST May 31, 2016

The U.S. Supreme Court knocked down the death sentence because the judge allowed a prosecutor to argue that the defendant could be potentially dangerous when, in fact, he would be locked up forever.

In 2001, Shawn Patrick Lynch and an accomplice, Michael Sehwani, killed James Panzarella in his home in Scottsdale. Lynch and Sehwani apparently met Panzarella in a Scottsdale bar and then went to where he lived, a guesthouse in his parents’ backyard, and hired an escort for a tryst with Sehwani, paid for with Panzarella’s money.

The next day, Panzarella was found bound to a chair in the home, with his throat slit so severely that he was nearly decapitated. Sehwani and Lynch were arrested the same day, after they had stolen Panzarella’s car and used his credit cards for multiple purchases and cash withdrawals.

Both men were sentenced to death, but Lynch’s sentencing was problematic.

The first jury found him guilty of first-degree murder but could not reach a unanimous verdict on whether to sentence him to life or death. He went back to trial for a new sentencing, and though the jury sent him to death row, the sentence was overturned because prosecutor Juan Martinez had misrepresented the aggravating factor “excessively cruel, heinous or depraved,” as three separate aggravators.

In 2012, the case went to trial a third time to determine a life or death sentence, and a new jury imposed a death sentence on Lynch.

In September 2015, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld that death sentence even though Lynch’s attorneys alleged multiple instances of prosecutorial misconduct by Martinez, who had meanwhile gained notoriety for his performance in the subsequent Jodi Arias murder trial.

The Arizona Supreme Court acknowledged that Martinez had acted improperly on several occasions, and “disturbingly made a number of inappropriate comments, prompting valid objections,” but ruled that “prosecutorial misconduct, while present in some instances, was not so pronounced or sustained as to require a new sentencing trial.”

But in that same appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court, Lynch also alleged that the judge in the case, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Karen O’Connor, had erred by not informing the jury that Lynch would never be released from prison. The Arizona justices denied the allegation and let the death sentence stand.

That was the basis for the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the sentence Tuesday.

The per curiam opinion, which means there was no justice named as author, depended on a 1994 opinion in a case where prosecutors also argued that a defendant would likely be dangerous in the future but failed to inform the jury that he was already ineligible for parole and therefore not a future danger to society.

Tuesday’s opinion noted that parole was abolished in Arizona for felonies committed after 1993. At the time that Lynch committed murder, the range of sentencing for first-degree murder was death, natural life or life with no chance of release for 25 years. Release can be effected only by an act of clemency by the governor, and even that sentence has since been eliminated from Arizona statutes, leaving only life or death on the table.

“Future dangerousness,” therefore, made no sense, since Lynch would never be paroled anyway.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the majority, saying, “Today’s decision imposes a magic-words requirement.”

The case was sent back to Arizona courts “for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion."

Based on that wording, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery declined comment through a spokeswoman, saying the matter was still pending.