USCCB, Georgia bishops intervene on behalf of death row inmate
October 09, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Georgia Catholic Conference have filed an amicus curiae [friend of the court] brief with the US Supreme Court in a case involving Darryl Stinski, who was sentenced to death in 2007 for the 2002 murders of a 41-year-old mother and her 13-year-old daughter.
Stinski argues that his attorney was ineffective, preventing the jury from hearing evidence about mental health factors that he believes would have led the jury to sentence him to life imprisonment instead.
“Prior to engaging in the acts for which he is imprisoned—acts committed when he was 18 years old—Darryl Stinski endured instability, neglect, abandonment, and abuse from an early age,” the USCCB’s general counsel argued in the brief. “Mr. Stinski suffered from mental-health conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder, adjustment disorder with depressed features, a learning disability, and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.”
“While Mr. Stinski’s actions require accountability, morality demands that jurors have access to all relevant information—including that relevant to Mr. Stinksi’s ability to comprehend the meaning of his actions—before it can justly impose the most irreversible and severe consequence possible, that of death,” the general counsel continued. “Upon postconviction review, Mr. Stinski presented a strong case that his trial attorney provided ineffective assistance—specifically at sentencing—and that this contributed to the imposition of a death sentence instead of life without parole.”
The USCCB’s general counsel concluded:
Mr. Stinski lacks even the opportunity to have a federal court review his assertion of ineffective counsel, effectively terminating the search for truth and sealing his fate—unless this Court intervenes ...The above note supplements, highlights, or corrects details in the original source (link above). About CWN news coverage.
The death penalty, by its very nature, requires extraordinary care and caution in its application. Catholic teaching on the role of mercy, the sanctity of life, the exercise of prudence, and the requirements of justice all point to the necessity of a justice system that errs on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion of relevant evidence presented to juries.
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