CT-REQ-2995 Advancing Racial Justice Pro Bono Report 01 TW V3 - Flipbook - Page 10
Challenging the death penalty
In 2023, we teamed up with the ACLU, the
ACLU of Kansas, Ali & Lockwood, and the Death
Penalty Defense Unit for an unprecedented
evidentiary hearing challenging the death
penalty in Kansas v. Kyle Young. The case
involved a Black man facing a capital trial in
Sedgwick County, Kansas. In 2024, our team
is litigating a similar challenge in Kansas v.
Antoine Fielder on behalf of another Black
man confronting similar charges in Wyandotte
County, Kansas. Our question for these courts:
If the death penalty is racist, arbitrary, and does
not make Kansans safe, does it violate the
Kansas constitution?
In Cruz v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
in favor of our client, John Montenegro Cruz,
holding that he had the right to tell the jury that
he was parole-ineligible. Mr. Cruz was sentenced
to death in 2005 after the Arizona trial court
repeatedly refused to let him tell the jury of his
parole ineligibility (the court actually told the
jury that he was eligible for parole). Multiple
jurors came forward after the verdict to explain
they would have spared Mr. Cruz’s life had they
known parole was unavailable. Arizona courts
had refused to hear Mr. Cruz’s Simmons claim
based on a newly interpreted procedural rule,
but the Supreme Court’s decision cleared the
way for Mr. Cruz to obtain relief in state court.
As a result, we successfully convinced the state
of Arizona to confess error on remand and join
our request for the Arizona Supreme Court to
vacate Cruz’s death sentence and order new
sentencing proceedings.