Death row case divides Supreme Court

• The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) voted to overturn a state judge’s decision that would have spared David Brown, a Louisiana inmate, from death row.
• The decision was split along party lines, with the three liberal justices dissenting.
• The justices argued that prosecutors had withheld information that could have spared Brown from the death penalty, violating Brown’s constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) voted to overturn a state judge’s decision sparing a Louisiana man from death row. The decision split SCOTUS along party lines.

David Brown is on death row in Louisiana after a jury sentenced him to death for his role in killing David Knapps, an Angola prison guard, during a thwarted prison escape attempt in 1999 with four other inmates. After the sentencing, prosecutors revealed information that could have spared Brown from the sentence, an action that liberal SCOTUS justices believe violated Brown’s constitutional rights.

A state judge overturned Brown’s death sentence, but on Monday, SCOTUS refused to hear the case, voting 4-3 against hearing Brown’s appeal. The three liberal justices— Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—dissented against their Republican counterparts.

In the dissent letter, Jackson explained that prosecutors withheld vital information that could have spared Brown. The information came forth after the jury ruled in favor of sentencing Brown to death. She argued that the information was a form of prosecutorial misconduct and constituted it as a Brady violation. The violation is a “pretrial discovery rule that was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963 and “requires prosecutors to disclose materially exculpatory evidence [or evidence that could be used to exonerate a defendant] in the government’s possession to the defense,” according to Cornell Law School.

According to Jackson’s letter, Brown admitted to being involved in an initial assault of a prison guard but maintained he wasn’t present when Knapps was killed. Barry Edge, another defendant in the trial, confessed to a fellow inmate that only Edge and fellow inmate Jeffrey Clark made the decision to kill Knapps, backing up Brown’s claim as he did not identify Brown as being present at the murder.

The New Orleans Advocate reported that Brown had Knapps’ blood on his clothes and had dragged the prison guard to the bathroom, where he died. Knapps had been hit with a hammer and beaten to death in the thwarted escape attempt.

Edge’s confession wasn’t revealed by the prosecution until after Brown’s sentencing. Jackson argued that this violated Brown’s rights to due process because the confession was favorable to Brown’s case.

“Had Brown’s jury been presented with the confession, there is a reasonable probability that at least one juror might have viewed Brown’s culpability in a different light,” Jackson wrote in the letter.

However, SCOTUS overruled the state judge’s decision because the majority of the justices believed that the information wouldn’t have spared Brown from the jury’s decision.

“Edge’s confession was not favorable to Brown because it did not specify who actually killed the victim, nor did it expressly state that Brown was ‘not present or not involved’,” according to the letter.

Jackson argued that SCOTUS has reversed similar cases to enforce the mandate, which is part of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Newsweek reached out to several Fourteenth Amendment experts for comment by email.