U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a sharp dissent on Monday as the court declined to hear the case of James Skinner, serving life without parole for the 1998 killing of teenager Eric Walber in Louisiana. Joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor accused the court of failing to enforce its own precedents on withheld evidence. She highlighted the unequal treatment compared to Skinner's co-defendant Michael Wearry, who was released after similar Brady violations.
The Supreme Court refused certiorari in Skinner's appeal, prompting Sotomayor's dissent. She argued that both Skinner and Wearry were convicted based on similar eyewitness accounts, yet Wearry's death sentence was vacated in 2016 due to prosecutors withholding exculpatory Brady material. Skinner, sentenced to life without parole after an 11-1 jury verdict following a hung jury in his first trial, faces the same issues plus additional evidence from police records, Sotomayor noted. She discovered more suppressing evidence after hiring an attorney, according to her opinion. The 16-year-old Walber, an Albany High School football player filling in at Pizza Express, was beaten and run over by his own car in April 1998, with Skinner allegedly driving. Key evidence involved jailhouse informant Sam Scott, whose inconsistent story included false claims like Walber being shot and implausible details about another suspect's recent knee surgery. Scott admitted wanting revenge on Wearry, information hidden from Skinner's defense and jury. In Wearry's case, the Supreme Court ruled the state's evidence 'resembles a house of cards,' built on Scott's dubious account, leading to a 2016 order for a new trial. Louisiana prosecutors then offered Wearry a plea deal to manslaughter, allowing his release on time served in 2023. Innocence Project attorney Jim Mayer explained Wearry's decision: 'He was not present at the crime... But, would you roll the dice in front of an all-white jury where the community still remembers the crime?' Sotomayor wrote, 'Equal justice under law... requires that two codefendants, convicted of the same crime, who raised essentially the same constitutional claims, receive the same answer from the courts.' She added that Louisiana courts refused to apply Brady precedents, including the Wearry decision involving the same evidence, leaving Skinner imprisoned while Wearry walks free.
