The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a request to consider a case challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty.
The case, Hidalgo v. Arizona, questions the constitutionality of Arizona’s capital sentencing scheme, as well as the constitutionality of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment. The justices said Monday the court would not consider the case, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan “respecting the denial of certiorari.”
“In this case, the opportunity to develop the record through an evidentiary hearing was denied,” Breyer wrote in a statement supporting the court’s decision not to take up the case. “As a result, the record as it has come to us is limited and largely unexamined by experts and the courts below in the first instance.
“… Capital defendants may have the opportunity to fully develop a record with the kind of empirical evidence that the petitioner points to here. And the issue presented in this petition will be better suited for certiorari with such a record,” he continued.
Neal Katyal, the former solicitor general for the Obama administration who has led the charge in challenging President Trump’s travel bans, asked the high court to hear the case last year. In his petition, he argued Arizona’s capital punishment method “includes so many aggravating circumstances that virtually every defendant convicted of first degree murder is eligible for death.”
Katyal filed the petition on behalf of Abdel Daniel Hidalgo, who killed someone for $1,000 from a gang member. During that crime, Hidalgo also killed a bystander.
He was charged with two counts of first degree murder and one count of first degree burglary.
Hidalgo pleaded guilty and a jury sentenced him to death. He appealed his death sentence to the Arizona Supreme Court and argued the state’s death penalty scheme was unconstitutional because it “fails to narrow adequately the class of offenders eligible for the death penalty” and denies equal protection.
