Whether Petitioner's guilty pleas were involuntary due to the trial judge's misrepresentation that life with the possibility of parole was a sentencing option, when in fact it was not

QUESTIONS PRESENTED **CAPITAL CASE** Petitioner pleaded guilty to two counts of capital murder in Arizona after repeated assurances from the trial judge that one of the sentencing options was life with the possibility of parole. The same judge would later find that this information was a “material factor” in Petitioner’s decision to forego a guilt-or-innocence phase trial. Petitioner’s penalty-phase jurors were likewise told, both during selection and in the court’s answer to their question during deliberations, that if not sentenced to death, Petitioner could be sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Petitioner was later sentenced to death on one count and to life with the possibility of parole on the other count. As this Court made clear in Lynch v. Arizona, 578 U.S. 613 (2016) (per curiam), the trial court’s statements to Petitioner and his jury about parole eligibility were wrong. In fact, Arizona had abolished parole in 1994, and Petitioner, whose charges arose in 2008, could only legally be sentenced to natural life in prison or death. In state post-conviction proceedings, Petitioner challenged the voluntariness of his guilty plea and argued that he was sentenced to death in violation of his due process rights under Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154 (1994) (plurality opinion), and Lynch. The state court denied both claims on the ground that neither Petitioner nor his jury had actually been misinformed regarding parole eligibility—a position that was by then already squarely foreclosed by Lynch. And the state court avoided the impact of Lynch by declining to apply that decision retroactively or to treat it as a “change in the law under [Arizona] Rule [of Criminal Procedure] 32.1(g)—two positions now squarely foreclosed by Cruz v. Arizona, 143 8S. Ct. 650, 657 (2023). This case presents two questions: 1. Should this Court grant certiorari, vacate the decision below, and remand this case, as it did with six similarly situated petitioners in Burns v. Arizona, No. 21-847, 2023 WL 2357300 (U.S. Mar. 6, 2023) (mem.), because the lower court’s opinion is inconsistent with Cruz? 2. Are Petitioner’s guilty pleas involuntary thus warranting summary reversal where they are predicated upon the trial judge’s misrepresentation that life with the possibility of parole was a sentencing option, when in fact, it was not? i