A man on death row wants the MS Supreme Court to reconsider an earlier ruling. Here's why
Attorneys for a man on death row and more than a dozen impartial advisors are asking the state Supreme Court to reconsider its January ruling denying prisoner Timothy Ronk post-conviction relief for a second time.
"The right to effective lawyers is what has allowed innocent people, including people who had been sentenced to death, to be exonerated in Mississippi," Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel attorney Krissy Nobile said. "In Ronk v. State, the Mississippi Supreme Court held that, while there may be a right to effective assistance of post-conviction counsel in death penalty cases, there is no longer a remedy for that right in Mississippi.
"We filed an amicus brief, which is sometimes referred to as a “friend of the court” brief, urging the Mississippi Supreme Court to reevaluate that decision."
Ronk, 44, was sentenced to death in 2010 in Harrison County for capital murder and an additional 30 years for armed robbery in the stabbing death of Michelle Craite in her Woolmarket home. His conviction and sentences were upheld on appeal in 2015.
Prosecutors alleged Ronk burned Craite's house after the murder, to cover up the crime. They said Ronk took items from Craite, including a ring and television, and gave them to a woman he met on the Internet. The items later were found by police at the other woman’s home.
Defense attorneys argued the stabbing was in self-defense.
Ronk was denied post-conviction relief in 2019 and again earlier this year.
Attorneys with the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel said a motion for rehearing is not intended to be a repeat of arguments already made, but is meant to point out "specific errors of law or fact" found in a court's opinion.
"In its Opinion, this Court changed decades of Mississippi law permitting death-sentenced inmates a mechanism to litigate the ineffectiveness of initial post-conviction counsel," Ronk's attorney wrote in motion for rehearing filed Wednesday. "The Court then addressed the merits of Ronk’s claims and denied relief."
The basis of the motion, according to court documents, is threefold. It is:
A petition challenging the finding of ineffective assistance of initial post-conviction counsel should not be considered a "second" petition since it is making new claims;
The court’s ruling violates two provisions of the Mississippi Constitution; and
Ronk’s prima facie (first impression) claims should be "remanded for an evidentiary hearing."
The two constitutional provisions referenced in the petition include a person's right to legal "remedy by due course of law" and no one should be barred from defending themselves in court.
In the Supreme Court's January decision, it overturned a precedent set in 2013 in another death row case in which a man was denied relief, also for ineffective assistance of counsel in post-conviction proceedings.
"In Grayson, this Court held that a death-sentenced prisoner may seek relief in a second petition if he could show that he received ineffective assistance from his initial post-conviction counsel," Ronk's attorneys wrote. "All in all, the PCR Act encompasses a remedy to right the wrong of an inmate being burdened with ineffective capital post-conviction counsel. Thus, even if Ronk is correct that the PCR Act and all its bars are substantive law, the Court should not write remedies out of the PCR Act any more than it should write remedies into the statute."
In addition, Ronk's attorneys say the term "second" is fluid rather than finite.
"The United States Supreme Court has found that the phrase '“'second or successive'”' is not self-defining," court documents said.
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This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: MS man on death row says court erred in denying post-conviction relief
