Nixon pledges death penalty review after high court ruling

All 68 Missouri death row cases will receive "thorough and thoughtful review" for compliance with new U.S. Supreme Court rulings on capital punishment, Attorney General Jay Nixon said Monday.

Nixon's announcement came hours after the nation's highest court ruled in an Arizona case that juries, not judges, are to decide whether to impose the death penalty.

The attorney general's office said nearly one of every six Missouri death row inmates -- 12 out of 68 -- were condemned by a judge instead of a jury.

"This is a substantial change in the law," Nixon said. "We are going to do a thorough and thoughtful review of all the cases we have where the death penalty has been given, to see which ones might be affected."

Results of the review, by his team of death penalty attorneys, are expected within a few weeks, Nixon said. He added that the review would include the high court's decision last week to bar the execution of the mentally retarded.

Missouri has no execution dates pending. The attorney general said no Missouri death penalties were automatically commuted by Monday's decision.

But Marty Robinson, director of the state public defender's office, predicted a flurry of court action seeking new trials, new sentencing or commutations.

Monday's decision concerned instances in which juries determined defendants' guilt or innocence and judges alone decided their punishment.

The court held that such sentences violate defendants' constitutional right to trial by jury.

Missouri law allows judges to impose the death penalty in some cases, most often when the same jury that convicted a defendant deadlocks about sentencing.

Robinson noted that the judge isn't inside the jury room and therefore cannot know which factors in a case jurors had accepted or rejected in pondering punishment.

"It's my opinion that in all these Missouri cases, the issue is going to be squarely within the Arizona ruling because the judge would have sentenced someone to death without knowing why the jury deadlocked," the chief public defender said.

Nixon noted a distinction: Four of the 12 Missouri death sentences imposed by a judge came after the defendant pleaded guilty, with no jury involved.

Missouri has executed 57 men since the state resumed carrying out the death penalty in January 1989. State officials could not immediately say how many of those executed had been sentenced to die by a judge instead of a jury.