Whether the State of Mississippi has run afoul of due process by arbitrarily denying an available state court forum to adjudicate a federal constitutional claim —here, whether Jordan's death sentence violates the Ex Post Facto Clause?

The State of Mississippi seeks to execute Petitioner Richard Gerald Jordan, a 79 -year -old man who has been on Mississippi’s death row for nearly half a century, for a crime he committed in January 1976, shortly after he returned from combat duty in Vietnam . At the time of Jordan’s crime, the only constitutional penalty in Mississippi for any classification of murder was imprisonment for life because this Court’s decision in Woodson v. North Carolina , 428 U.S. 280 (1976) invalidated Mississippi’s then -exist ing mandatory death penalty scheme. The Mississippi Legislature did not enact a constitutionally permissible capital sentencing scheme until after Jordan’s retrial. Jordan thus filed an ex post facto challenge to his death sentence i n 1978. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected Jordan’s claim , holding that the change in state statu te affected only a matter of “procedure.” Forty -five years then passed . In tw in decisions, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed course on decades -old state precedent, holding that all laws passed by the Mississippi Legislature are, by definition, matters of substantive law, and that the Judiciary lacks authority to enact substantive law. Consistent with the State’s Post -Conviction Act, Jordan relied on these intervening decisions to renew his ex post facto challenge, since his challenge should now be considered a question of substantive law. Even though its intervening decision s opened the door to consideration of the substance of the federal ex post facto challenge, the Mississippi Supreme Court arbitrarily refused to address the merits and held the claim statutorily barred. The question presented is: Whether the State of Mississippi has run afoul of due process by arbitrarily denying an available state court forum to adjudicate a federal constitutional claim —here, whether Jordan’s death sentence violates the Ex Post Facto Clause ?