Court to hear case stalled by mistake in mailroom

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from a death row inmate who faces execution after a mailroom mix-up at one of the nation's most prominent law firms.

Lawyers at the firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, had agreed to represent Cory R. Maples, a death row inmate in Alabama, without charge. When an Alabama court sent two copies of a ruling in Mr. Maples's case to the firm in NY, its mailroom sent them back unopened and stamped "Return to Sender."

Two associates handling Mr. Maples's case had indeed left the firm, but it appears that no one told the court or the mailroom that new lawyers there had taken over. A court clerk in Alabama put the returned envelopes into the court file and did nothing more.

An Alabama lawyer, John G. Butler Jr., also represented Mr. Maples and also received a copy of the ruling. Mr. Butler said in a sworn statement that he was Mr. Maples's lawyer in name only, serving as local counsel for the NY lawyers handling the case. He said he had not passed the ruling along to them or to Mr. Maples.

A deadline for filing an appeal from the ruling came and went, and so far the courts have rejected Mr. Maples's request for an extension given the circumstances. "How can a circuit court clerk in Decatur, Ala., know what is going on in a law firm in New York, N.Y.?" judge Glenn E. Thompson of the Circuit Court in Morgan County, Ala., later wrote.

Mr. Maples's new lawyers, led by Gregory G. Garre, a former US solicitor general, had asked the Supreme Court to consider two legal questions in the case, one technical, the other more fundamental. The court agreed to answer only the broader one: Whether missing a filing deadline may be excused when the inmate was blameless, the government's actions were a contributing factor and the inmate's lawyers had effectively stopped representing him?

In urging the court not to hear the case, Troy King, Alabama's attorney general, wrote that Mr. Maples had been represented by "a team of attorneys from a multimillion-dollar law firm" who should know that rules are rules.

"Filing deadlines apply to death row inmates," Mr. King wrote. "Countless attorneys have missed filing deadlines over the years, and state and federal courts routinely dismissed their client's tardy appeal as a consequence. This case is no different, and it presents nothing new or nationally compelling."

Mr. Garre responded that the case, Maples v. Thomas, nº 10-63, was hardly routine. Among other things, he said, "the state contributed to the missed deadline" and "a man's life is at stake."

The Supreme Court considered how hard the government must try to make sure that notice of a severe action was actually received in 2006 in Jones v. Flowers, which concerned the sale of a home for unpaid taxes. If a letter is returned unopened, chief justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority, officials must try harder to reach the owner.

"This is especially true," he wrote, "when, as here, the subject matter of the letter concerns such an important and irreversible prospect as the loss of a house."

Mr. Maples was convicted of murdering two companions after a night of drinking, and the jury was presented with substantial evidence of his guilt. He now contends that his court-appointed trial lawyers did a poor job of arguing that his life should be spared, a point his lawyers did not seem to dispute at the time, telling the jury apologetically that they "may appear to be stumbling around in the dark."

(Published by NY Times - March 21, 2011)