Does a court deprive a capital defendant of his due process right to a meaningful opportunity to be heard when the defendant challenges the constitutionality of a state's capital-punishment scheme and asks to present previously unexamined evidence on the issue, but the court denies his request for an evidentiary hearing and factual findings?

QUESTION PRESENTED In Hidalgo v. Arizona, 138 S.Ct. 1054 (2018), Justice Breyer—joined by Justices Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor—wrote a statement respecting the denial of certiorari. While Justice Breyer was concerned with the constitutionality of Arizona’s death-eligibility scheme—under which nearly 99% of all first-degree murder cases qualify for at least one eligibility factor—review was not proper because the trial court had denied the petitioner’s request for a hearing. Without a hearing, evidence of the petitioner’s factual allegations regarding the breadth of Arizona’s scheme was “limited and largely unexamined by experts and the courts below in the first instance.” Because future “defendants may have the opportunity to fully develop a record with the kind of empirical evidence that the petitioner” offered, review of a different case was preferable. James Johnson requested an evidentiary hearing so experts and the court could examine his allegations in the first instance. The trial court denied his request. On appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court further denied his request for an evidentiary hearing. Does a court deprive a capital defendant of his due process right to a meaningful opportunity to be heard when the defendant challenges the constitutionality of a state’s capitalpunishment scheme and asks to present previously unexamined evidence on the issue, but the court denies his request for an evidentiary hearing and factual findings? 2