2 Supreme Court Rulings May Spur Pace of Executions : Jurisprudence: U.S. justices refuse to order hearings of Death Row appeals, one of them from California. Rulings again limit federal review of state criminal cases.

The Supreme Court Monday again made it harder for Death Row inmates and other criminals to challenge their convictions in a federal court by claiming their constitutional rights were violated by state courts.

The pair of 6-3 rulings, including one in a California case, could speed the pace of executions around the nation. Many inmates have kept their legal cases--and themselves--alive by contesting their convictions in prolonged battles in federal courts.

In one decision, the justices reinstated a death sentence against a Sonoma County man who in 1975 shot and killed his wife. The second ruling involved a Virginia case.

Together, the rulings send a now-familiar message: Convicted criminals should not routinely get a second chance to contest their cases in a federal court.

About 95% of criminal cases nationwide are handled in the state courts. During the 1960s and ‘70s, however, the Supreme Court encouraged federal judges to closely review state cases to make sure that a defendant’s rights under the U.S. Constitution were protected. Inmates took advantage of this protection by filing a petition of habeas corpus to transfer their cases from a state to a federal court.

But under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the high court has stressed the opposite. Federal judges should not casually meddle in state court matters, the conservative majority has said.

The California case concerned whether an inmate should get a second chance to contend that he was unfairly induced to incriminate himself.

The defendant in the case, Owen Duane Nunnemaker, was sentenced to death for the 1975 slaying of his estranged wife, Alice. Nunnemaker went to her home in Sebastopol, Calif., shot her at close range and cut a phone cord to prevent her children from calling for help. She died of her wounds.

He later claimed he loved her, but was temporarily deranged. Prosecutors, however, sent a police psychiatrist to interview Nunnemaker, who found him calm and rational. During the trial, the psychiatrist gave damaging testimony against the defendant, who was convicted and sentenced to death.

In his appeal in state courts, Nunnemaker said his Miranda rights were violated because the psychiatrist never warned him his statements could be used against him. The California appellate courts ruled that it was too late for Nunnemaker to raise this Miranda issue. His lawyer should have objected during the trial, the judges said.

Without giving a reason, the California Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.

But he fared better in the federal courts. Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit of Court Appeals ruled that Nunnemaker was entitled to a hearing before a federal judge to see whether his constitutional rights had been violated.

The Supreme Court said the 9th Circuit erred in the case, Ylst vs. Nunnemaker, 90-68. The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said the federal appeals court should have presumed that the California courts declined to hear Nunnemaker’s appeal for procedural reasons, and the federal courts have no power to second-guess those procedural rules.

In their dissent from the ruling, Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens said, “The Court today continues its crusade to erect petty procedural barriers” to raising constitutional claims in the federal courts.

Monday’s other death penalty case ruling was written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, herself a former state judge. She rejected the claim of a Virginia Death Row inmate that his initial appeal of his conviction still should be considered by that state’s court system, even though his lawyer was three days late in filing it.

The case “concerns the respect the federal courts owe the states,” O’Connor said. Because the state rules forbid the consideration of a late appeal, the federal courts must do the same, she said in Coleman vs. Thompson, 89-7662.

Law enforcement spokesmen praised the rulings for upholding valid criminal convictions. The decisions mean that an old legal challenge “cannot be resuscitated by some sympathetic federal judge,” said Charles Hobson of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento. But Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), whose House subcommittee is considering the federal habeas corpus laws, lambasted the court. The decisions “force innocent prisoners to pay the ultimate price for the errors of their lawyers in a state court,” Edwards said.