A couple of notable new capital cases on the latest SCOTUS "relist watch"

I noticed that this latest Relist Watch by John Elwood over at SCOTUSblog includes two new relisted capital cases.  Though I am not sure cert should be expected on either of these two cases, they both raise "evergreen" issues in the capital punishment arena.  Here are John's full descriptions (with links from the original):

The state of Alabama sentenced Kenneth Eugene Smith, the respondent in Hamm v. Smith, to die for murdering Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett in a murder-for-hire plot.  Smith challenged Alabama’s lethal injection process as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual, and he proposed nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative means of execution under the Supreme Court’s procedures for method-of-execution claims.  The Eighth Amendment inquiry focuses on whether the state’s chosen method of execution “cruelly superadds pain to the death sentence” by asking whether the state has “a feasible and readily implemented alternative method of execution that would significantly reduce a substantial risk of severe pain.”  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit held that nitrogen hypoxia is “feasible and readily implemented” because Alabama adopted a statute authorizing that method of execution.  The state has petitioned for certiorari, arguing that that nitrogen hypoxia is not yet “feasible and readily implemented” because the state has not developed a protocol for that method of execution.

Kevin Burns, the petitioner in Burns v. Mays, was convicted and sentenced to death for killing two people (and wounding two others) during a botched robbery. A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit held that Burns had not received constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel.  Before the Supreme Court, Burns argues that he received constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel because his lawyer failed to ask the jury not to sentence him to death because of “residual doubt” about his guilt as permitted by state law, because he failed to introduce evidence that a co-defendant was the actual shooter, and because counsel conducted only one or two hours of work to prepare for the sentencing phase of the trial.  Burns argues that his entitlement for relief is so clear that the Supreme Court should summarily reverse.