The Nebraska Supreme Court rejected death-row inmate Marco Torres Jr.’s appeal of a district court's denial of a post-conviction relief hearing to challenge the state’s method of determining who gets the ultimate punishment.
The state’s highest court found the challenge was filed too late because Torres didn't raise the issue within a year of the Jan. 12, 2016, decision in Hurst v. Florida.
Torres’ attorney, Jeff Pickens of the Public Advocacy Commission, argued that the U.S. Supreme Court decision — which said jurors must make every finding necessary in order for someone to be sentenced to death — put the constitutionality of Nebraska's sentencing procedures in doubt.
In a decision Friday, the court didn’t address that question, saying only that Torres’ motion was time-barred under the Nebraska Postconviction Act and that the district court judge was right to deny him a hearing.
"Torres’ successive motion is not timely … because he filed his motion more than 1 year after the release of the opinions in Hurst and Johnson — the U.S. Supreme Court cases that Torres contends announced a 'newly recognized right,'†wrote Justice Stephanie Stacy.
In Hurst, the nation's high court found that a man's death sentence in a 1998 murder case violated the Sixth Amendment because, under Florida's sentencing scheme, a judge, not a jury, made the critical findings necessary to impose the death penalty.
In Nebraska, juries decide whether aggravating factors exist to justify an execution. If so, a three-judge panel then determines whether the aggravating factors outweigh any mitigating factors in the defendant's favor to warrant a death sentence.
Torres, 43, was sent to death row on two counts of first-degree murder for killing roommates Timothy Donohue, 48, and Edward Hall, 60, in Grand Island in 2007. His DNA was found at the crime scene and he had used Hall's debit card two days before his body was found.