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Thread: Gregory Scott Dickens - Arizona

  1. #11
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    The decision can be found here.

    The decision is an en banc mess with multiple concurrences and dissents as to the decision's three parts. There are profound disagreements over the correct interpretation of the US Supreme Court Enmund, Martinez and Pinholster cases. Perhaps the Supreme Court will end up granting certiorari in this case and, hopefully, sort out this mare's nest.

  2. #12
    Senior Member Member RobertH's Avatar
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    Inmate Death Notification

    FLORENCE – Inmate Gregory Dickens, 48, ADC #102305 was pronounced dead after being given lifesaving measures at his housing location at ASPC-Eyman. The apparent cause is suicide.

    Dickens was sentenced to death out of Yuma County on charges of first degree murder, armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery. He had been on death row since December 17, 1993.

    On September 10, 1991, Dickens and an accomplice laid in wait at a rest stop on Interstate 8 near Yuma for potential robbery victims. Dickens instructed his accomplice to rob “appropriate victims” and “leave no witnesses.” Bryan and Laura Bernstein eventually drove into the rest stop, were robbed at gunpoint and shot. Both victims died at the scene, but Bryan Bernstein lived long enough to explain the crime to a sheriff’s deputy who responded.

    All inmate deaths are investigated in consultation with the county medical examiner.

    http://www.azcorrections.gov/adc/new...ath_notify.pdf

    I am guessing he couldn't handle the recent news...

  3. #13
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    Death-Row Suicide Won't Interfere With Habeas

    By JAMIE ROSS
    Courthouse News

    Habeas relief may still be available to the death-row inmate who committed suicide before the ineffective-counsel hearing he obtained, the 9th Circuit ruled.

    Gregory Dickens died of an apparent suicide on Jan. 27, four days after the full 9th Circuit ruled that new evidence of Dickens' health conditions altered his previously exhausted claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.

    The court refused Tuesday to vacate that opinion and dismiss the habeas petition as moot.

    "No party disputes that we had jurisdiction at the time we decided this case. The untimely death of Dickens after our decision had been rendered does not 'deprive [this] court of jurisdiction retroactively,'" the unsigned order states.

    Allowing the ruling to stand prejudices only the defense because Dickens is not alive for the hearing to which he would have been entitled, the judges said.

    "The precedent set by the en banc panel in this case will undoubtedly affect cases now pending before this court," according to the order. "We see no reason to undo this precedent and force future panels to duplicate out efforts by re-deciding issues we have already resolved within the contours of article III."

    Judge Consuelo Callahan, who was part of the initial dissent in January, again challenged the majority Tuesday.

    Her paragraph-long opinion questions only the majority's reading of Martinez v. Ryan , which found that substantial ineffective assistance of counsel could establish cause for the default of an ineffective assistance claim.

    "The en banc court divided on the Martinez issue and on another major issue, each of which might have received Supreme Court attention, neither of which will now," Callahan wrote.

    Dickens was sentenced to death on felony murder and armed robbery charges after he provided Travis Amaral with a .38-caliber revolver used to kill Bryan and Laura Bernstein in 1991. The Bernsteins were stopped at a rest stop in Yuma, Ariz., when Amaral robbed the couple, shot them both in the head, and left the stop in a car Dickens drove.

    http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/03/12/66077.htm

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