Only woman on Idaho death row asked to be resentenced. A federal judge ruled against it

A federal judge has denied a request from the only woman on Idaho death row, who sought to be resentenced based on claims she had inadequate legal representation when she was on trial for three murders 30 years ago.

Robin Row, 65, was convicted by a jury in 1993 on three counts of felony first-degree murder after setting her family’s Ada County home ablaze, killing her husband and two young children. In a federal appeal, Row’s attorneys with the nonprofit Federal Defender Services of Idaho argued that evidence of their client’s traumatic brain injury was never introduced during her sentencing, illustrating ineffective legal counsel.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill dismissed Row’s case Friday. Winmill issued an earlier decision in fall 2021 that her sentencing should be returned to a jury. But in May 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unless evidence of ineffective legal counsel is first presented at the state level, it cannot later be grounds for a federal appeal.

Winmill wrote last week that he issued his ruling “with great reluctance” following the Supreme Court decision.

“Under the current state of the law, the court can do nothing to provide a remedy to (the) petitioner,” Winmill wrote. “This is a direct consequence of Idaho’s shortsighted and sometimes inadequate system of expedited justice for death penalty cases” and the Supreme Court’s recent ruling.

Row’s attorneys said in a statement Tuesday they will appeal Winmill’s ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which oversees federal cases from Idaho.

The U.S. District Court of Idaho’s hands were tied, “due to a superseding change in law that prevented it from considering the ineffectiveness of prior counsel,” Deborah Czuba, supervising attorney for the nonprofit’s unit that specializes in death penalty cases, said in a written statement. “While doing so, the court recognized that Ms. Row has suffered a clear violation of her constitutional rights.”

Attorneys representing Row appealed her initial conviction in March 1993. Since that time, Row has been housed at the state’s Women’s Correctional Center in Pocatello, instead of at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution outside of Kuna, with the rest of the state’s death row inmates — all men.

Row sentenced to death by prior law, now ruled unconstitutional

After Row’s conviction, a 4th District Court judge sentenced her to death under a prior state law. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 later found the Idaho law unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment.

Only a jury may sentence a prisoner to death, the court ruled in a 7-2 decision, and Idaho passed a law the next year to grant that authority to juries alone. A subsequent 2004 U.S. Supreme Court ruling by a 5-4 decision did not overturn past cases where a judge handed down a death sentence.

“She was not sentenced to death by a jury, as would be constitutionally required today, but rather a single judge,” Czuba said. “She since has had multiple health issues that make it difficult for her to walk and sometimes lead to confusion. She has been a model inmate who is well liked by staff at the prison.”

Row also had two prior children who each died under suspicious circumstances, but she was never prosecuted for any crimes involving their deaths. Her 15-month-old daughter was thought to have died of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, in New Hampshire in 1977, and a 6-year-old son died in Northern California in a cabin fire in 1980.

Row is the second-ever woman to receive the death penalty in Idaho. The first was Karla Windsor in 1984. A year later, the Idaho Supreme Court threw out Windsor’s death sentence, and a federal judge resentenced her to life in prison with the chance of parole after 10 years. Windsor was later released from Idaho prison in December 2004.

Including Row, Idaho has eight prisoners on death row.

The Idaho Legislature recently passed a new law, which Gov. Brad Little signed, that mandates the state prisons system execute death row inmates by firing squad if lethal injection drugs are unavailable. The law takes effect July 1.