Arizona’s Attorney General is hoping to preserve the death sentence of Arizona inmate David Ramirez and reinstate the first degree murder conviction of Arizona inmate Barry Jones. The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) consolidated the defendants’ two cases in January 2021.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider the cases.
In 1989, Ramirez murdered Mary Ann Gortarez and her 15-year-old daughter. He stabbed the mother and daughter to death. Later he also admitted that he had had sex with the 15-year-old girl the night of the murders.
The Arizona courts consistently denied relief to Ramirez, upholding his murder convictions and death sentences. The Ninth Circuit, however, remanded his case to the federal district court, finding that there is a “reasonable probability” that Ramirez’s sentencing would have been different if his attorney at the time had presented evidence of the defendant’s low IQ and a history of abuse, sexual assault, neglect and developmental issues.
“The (sentencing) judge did find several mitigating factors, and only three aggravating factors,” Chief Judge Sidney Thomas wrote in his opinion. “Had the evidence of a mental impairment been introduced, as well as the evidence of the level of abuse Ramirez suffered, there is a substantial claim that the judge ‘would have struck a different balance.’”
In 1994, Barry Jones murdered his girlfriend’s 4-year-old daughter. The victim died from an infection of the abdominal organs caused by blunt force trauma inflicted the day before her death while she was in Jones’ care. Jones did nothing to help the little girl, instead lying to friends who were worried about her condition that she had been examined by paramedics. After she died overnight, Jones drove his girlfriend and the victim’s lifeless body to the hospital and left them there. The medical examiner found that the 4-year-old girl had been sexually assaulted before her death.
Although the Arizona courts had consistently denied Jones’ attempt to overturn his convictions, a federal district court granted habeas relief based on new expert testimony he had never presented in state court and concluded that he was entitled to a new trial. The Ninth Circuit denied the State’s appeal and agreed with the district court that Jones must be retried or released from prison.
In January of this year, the AGO filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court arguing that the Ninth Circuit had violated a federal statute by basing its decisions in these two cases on evidence the inmates had never before presented to the Arizona courts and that Ramirez’ death sentence should be preserved and Jones’ convictions should be reinstated.