Ethics Bureau Students Attend SCOTUS Hearing

Students from the Ethics Bureau at Yale attended oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, February 29, 2016 to observe a capital case in which they submitted an amicus brief late last year.

The case, Williams v. Pennsylvania, specifically examines whether Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille should have recused himself from an appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court by death-row inmate Terrance Williams. Castille served as the District Attorney of Philadelphia and personally authorized his subordinates to seek the death penalty for Williams while serving in that role.

In the brief, Grace Hart ’16, John Rafael Perez ’16, and Joseph Samuels ’17 argued that there were “egregious constitutional and ethical violations” inherent in Castille’s decision to remain on the panel to decide Pennsylvania’s appeal from Williams’ successful challenge to his conviction. The students, who are members of The Ethic's Bureau at Yale (EBaY), were guided and supervised by Visiting Lecturer in Law Lawrence J. Fox. The team communicated with various experts in the field in reaching these conclusions.

"It was amazing to see the Justices and the advocates on both sides engage with so many of the issues that we struggled with over the course of writing the brief," said Perez. "It was also heartening that many of the Justices were deeply invested in the ethical issues underlying Justice Castille’s refusal to recuse himself and the effect such behavior would have on criminal defendants in the future. I’m sure I speak for all of us on the team when I say that we left the Court with a deep sense of hope for what is to come."

"Going down for arguments was particularly special because it was so apparent that the justices had read and relied on EBaY’s brief to understand the ethics violations in Williams v. Pennsylvania," said Samuels. "Justice Sotomayor, in particular, used many of the core arguments from our amicus in a line of questions she put to the state’s attorney. In a case of this magnitude—where the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court utterly failed in maintaining the impartiality and fairness at the core of our judicial system—seeing our work so prominently featured was thrilling."

Samuels said a win in this case would be an important victory and mean a lot to everyone who has worked so hard on the case from the clinic.

"A win would mean that Terrence Williams gets the fair review of his death sentence without the influence of a justice who also served as prosecutor in the case," he noted. "A win also helps restore confidence in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which in our opinion, is currently stained by Chief Justice Castille’s failure to recuse himself from this case. To know that our brief may help a death-sentenced inmate get the impartial tribunal he is constitutionally guaranteed underlines the importance and impact of EBaY’s work."

Read more about the history of the clinic’s involvement in the case.

The clinic's involvement in this case has been widely cited in recent media reports.

PRESS CLIPS

ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/justices-hear-claim-judicial-bias-death-row-case-37276794

AP: http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/02/conflict_pa_supreme_court_just.html

Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dorothy-samuels/ethics-101-williams-v-pennsylvania_b_9318126.html?1456421677

ACS Blog: https://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/when-the-prosecutor-becomes-the-judge