Supreme Court reinstates Tennessee inmate’s death sentence

The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the death sentence of a Tennessee inmate convicted of the 1985 murder of a hotel maid, reversing a lower court finding that the defendant had received unacceptably poor defense counsel.

In an 8-1 decision, the court overturned a Cincinnati-based federal appeals court decision last year to grant Anthony Hines a new trial. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented without comment. 

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled in May that Hines was entitled to a new trial because his lawyer had not done enough to advance an alternative legal theory at trial that blamed another man for the murder. 

But the justices ruled that any shortcomings in Hines’s defense had failed to clear the high legal hurdle needed to set aside his conviction. They also concluded that the 6th Circuit had failed to adequately take into account all of the facts supporting Hines’s guilty conviction.

“Nowhere in its 10-page discussion of Hines’ theory did the majority consider the substantial evidence linking him to the crime: His flight in a bloody shirt; his possession of the victim’s keys, wallet, and car; his recurring association with knives; or his ever-changing stories about tussling with imaginary assailants,” reads the Monday ruling.

Hines was convicted of using a hunting knife to murder a maid in March 1985 at a motel on the outskirts of Nashville.