Arizona Criminal Procedure and Sentencing per Cruz v. Arizona

In 2003, John Montenegro Cruz changed the trajectory of his life forever when he fatally shot a Tucson police officer after being pursued during a hit-and-run investigation. He was convicted of capital murder in 2005 and sentenced to death. More than 17 years later, Cruz’s case is being heard by the United States Supreme Court. 

In Arizona trial court, Cruz and his legal team had made several requests to instruct the sentencing jury that his capital conviction would make Cruz ineligible for parole, hoping that the jury would view this as a way to avoid capital punishment. The judge, however, denied every request, claiming that because capital defendants could still be granted executive clemency, the possibility of Cruz being released was not definitive. The judge subsequently presented the jury with two options: the death penalty or life with the possibility of parole. After the sentencing jury returned with the verdict, the jury foreman explicitly stated to the press that they “wanted to be lenient,” and that they “would rather have voted for life if there was one mitigating circumstance that warranted it.” 

What exactly is the issue with this procedure? The 1994 Simmons v. South Carolina SCOTUS case sheds light on the procedural misconduct of the trial court and judge. The judgment in Simmons outlined the right—the mandate—of a capital defendant to have the jury instructed about the defendant’s parole ineligibility, where the defendant’s dangerousness is at issue and life in prison without the possibility of parole is the only alternative to capital punishment. This right was granted by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

Cruz’s case meets both of the aforementioned qualifiers. Firstly, his dangerousness was certainly in contention during his trial. Secondly, he was ineligible for any parole-eligible sentencing according to Arizona law, which states that defendants sentenced anywhere from 25 years to life in prison are ineligible for parole if sentencing occurred after 1994. So, he appealed directly to the Arizona Supreme Court, which denied the appeal on the basis that Simmons did not apply and stated that parole prospects are irrelevant and inconsiderable to a jury.

However, Lynch v. Arizona, a SCOTUS case from 2016, affirmed the ruling in Simmons and affirmed the ineligibility of capital defendants for parole. This rendered the Arizona trial court’s denial of jury instruction a major judicial blunder. Because Cruz’s conviction occurred during the interval between the decisions of Simmons and Lynch, he appealed for postconviction relief grounded in Arizona’s Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g) which states that defendants can apply for postconviction, retroactive relief when a major change in law has been made. Still, relief was denied.

Cruz was granted certiorari in March 2022, and the Court hopes to answer “whether the Arizona Supreme Court’s holding that Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g) precluded post-conviction relief is an adequate and independent state-law ground for the judgment.” 

As of the publishing of this piece, the Court has heard oral argument for Cruz v. Arizona, but has not yet decided on the case. The pure language of Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g) reads:

Grounds for relief are there has been a significant change in the law that, if applicable to the defendant's case, would probably overturn the defendant's judgment or sentence.

Using a plain text interpretation of the scope of remedy, a predictable outcome would be the Court entering judgment in favor of Cruz, the petitioner. Since there has been no significant change in Arizona law, but rather a change in the applicability—that is, Simmons has always applied to capital defendants in Arizona, and Lynch simply confirmed this—the petitioner’s case seems to be a match there. This change in applicability of the law undoubtedly, and quite literally, applies to Cruz’s case of life or death. Given that the jury foreman expressed a desire to have imposed a sentence less harsh than death, it is unquestionable that Cruz’s sentence would have a significant probability of being overturned.

The cases of Simmons, Lynch, and now Cruz skim the bounds of recent political debates surrounding sentencing reform. Although the Court has held that capital punishment is not a violation of Eighth Amendment rights, perhaps the principles behind proportionality of sentence should be reviewed, not only in capital offenses, but especially for misdemeanors. By taking a serious look at sentencing reform, we could reallocate resources currently used for prisons to other public safety measures. This would also shift the majority of prisoners to be violent criminals rather than non-violent offenders who do not pose serious threats to public safety. 

In sum, it would be an unsurprising result to see the Court enter a strong majority for the petitioner. With support from the Fourteenth Amendment and Simmons and Lynch precedents, the Court has the opportunity to lay to rest similar arising conflicts in other state supreme courts, and potentially open the door for a conversation around sentencing reform.

Connor Wayne Kraska is a Senior at Brown University studying Economics and International and Public Affairs. He currently serves as a Staff Writer for the Brown Undergraduate Law Review and can be contacted at connor_kraska@brown.edu.