31 March 2021 :
U.S. Supreme Court reinstates Anthony Hines' death sentence.
Hines, now 61, White, was sentenced to death on January 10, 1986 in the March 3, 1985 Robbery, rape and murder of Katherine Jean Jenkins.
The 6th Circuit ruled in May 2020 that Hines was entitled to a new trial and sentence because his lawyer had not done enough to advance an alternative legal theory at trial that blamed another man for the murder.
Today in an 8-1 decision, the SC overturned the federal appeals court decision. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented without comment.
The justices ruled that any shortcomings in Hines’s defense had failed to clear the high legal hurdle needed to set aside his conviction. They also concluded that the 6th Circuit had failed to adequately take into account all of the facts supporting Hines’s guilty conviction.
