For those who do not practice law, this excerpt from Ruiz vs State, 299 Ark. 144, 772 S.W.2d 297 (Ark. 1989), might provide some insight into the strengths and/or weaknesses of capital litigation:
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"This capital murder case has followed a long and tortuous path. Appellants were charged with robbery, kidnapping and murder of Marvin Ritchie and Opal James. They were twice found guilty and given death sentences and in the latest trial, involving only the issue of punishment, death sentences were again imposed. Those proceedings have been reviewed three times by this court, twice by the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and once by the United States Supreme Court. One conclusion which might well be drawn from the foregoing litigation is that appellants' second trial was error free and our affirmance of those convictions and sentences in 1981 is now effectively reinstated. The state urges us to eschew that course, however, and to address appellants' current appeal from the resentencing trial on the merits. We concur in that view.
[41] Some overview of the prior proceedings is essential to an understanding of the arguments. Appellants were serving life sentences in the Oklahoma State Prison at McAllister - Ruiz for armed robbery, Denton for murder. On June 23, 1977, they disappeared from a work crew. On the morning of the 29th they were seen near the town of Magazine in Logan County, Arkansas, driving a car with Louisiana license plates.
[42] When the marshal of Magazine, Marvin Ritchie, and two employees of the Corp of Engineers, David Small and Opal James, who were working in Logan County, were found to be missing, a search party was organized and that afternoon two of the men were found handcuffed together in the trunk of Ritchie's car. Marvin Ritchie was dead and David Small was critically wounded. Ritchie had been shot in the back of the head and Small through the chest. Small survived to provide essential testimony against the appellants at all three trials. Two days later, the body [299 Ark Page 149] [43] of Opal James was found in a remote section of Montgomery County.
[44] Appellants were tried and convicted in Logan County and sentences of death were imposed. Those convictions were appealed and the judgment was reversed upon a holding that the trial court erred in denying a motion for a change of venue and in seating a jury incapable of rendering a fair and impartial verdict. Ruiz and Denton v. State, 265 Ark. 875, 582 S.W.2d 915 (1979).
[45] Appellants were tried anew, this time in Conway County, and sentences of death were imposed. In the ensuing appeal the judgment was affirmed. Ruiz and Denton v. State, 273 Ark. 94, 617 S.W.2d 6, cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1093 (1981). State post conviction remedies were pursued and exhausted. Ruiz and Denton v. State, 275 Ark. 410, 630 S.W.2d 44 (1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 82 (1982).
[46] Appellants next sought habeas corpus relief in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. That request was denied and appellants appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, where the judgment of the District Court was reversed on the grounds that the case was governed by Grigsby v. Mabry, 758 F.2d 226 (8th Cir. 1985), holding that so-called "death-qualified" juries, being conviction prone, are unconstitutional. Ruiz v. Lockhart, 754 F.2d 254 (8th Cir. 1985). The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and vacated the decision of the Court of Appeals in the light of Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U.S. 162, 106 S.Ct. 1758 (1986), which upheld the constitutionality of "death-qualified" juries, reversing Grigsby. See Lockhart v. Ruiz, 476 U.S. 1112, 106 S.Ct. 1964 (1986). The case was remanded for consideration of issues which had been reversed by the Court of Appeals and on November 20, 1986, that court again reversed the District Court, this time on the premise that robbery was used both as an element of the crime of capital murder and as one of the aggravating circumstances found by the jury to justify the death penalty, which the court had, in Collins v. Lockhart, 754 F.2d 258 (8th Cir.) cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1013, 106 S.Ct. 546, 88 L.Ed.2d 475 (1985), held to be an impermissible duplication, resulting in what has been referred to as "double counting." The duplication issue had been preserved by appellants, but not reached by the Court of Appeals in [299 Ark Page 150] [47] view of its reversal on the Grigsby argument. The court upheld the validity of Ruiz and Denton's convictions, but vacated the death sentences because of the use of pecuniary gain as an aggravating circumstance where robbery was an element of the underlying capital crime. *fn1 The state was given a reasonable time to either retry the issue of punishment or reduce appellants' sentences to life without parole. The state proceeded to retry the appellants without the use of pecuniary gain as an aggravating circumstance and again the jury imposed a sentence of death, resulting in the present appeal. Appellants assert nineteen errors by the trial court. We find no merit in the arguments for reversal."
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The whole opinion is about twenty three pages.
