The U.S. Supreme Court said yesterday it will not hear the case of William Kuenzel, an Alabama death row inmate who has been represented pro bono since 2003 by David Kochman, an associate at Reed Smith (NYLJ, May 3). Kochman, along with his co-counsel Jeffrey Glen and Rene Hertzog of Anderson, Kill & Olick, filed a petition for writ of certiorari on behalf of Kuenzel in January, asking the high court to more clearly define the standard it set for "actual innocence" claims in Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298 (1995). The court grants full review to only 1 percent of applications it receives per term. It denied Kuenzel’s cert petition without explanation, as is customary.
Kuenzel was convicted in 1988 of fatally shooting a convenience store clerk but has professed his innocence for the past 25 years. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta has denied his requests for a retrial three times. The cert petition was Kuenzel’s best chance at preventing his execution by lethal injection.
