Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-06-01478/USCOURTS-ca8-06-01478-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
William Eugene Langley
Appellant
Larry Norris
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

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No. 06-1478

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William Eugene Langley,

Appellant,

v.

Larry Norris, Director, Arkansas

Department of Correction,

Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States

District Court for the

Eastern District of Arkansas.

 [PUBLISHED]

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Submitted: September 26, 2006

 Filed: October 19, 2006

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Before MURPHY, HANSEN and RILEY, Circuit Judges. 

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HANSEN, Circuit Judge.

William Eugene Langley appeals the denial of his petition for habeas corpus.

See Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254. We

dismiss the appeal. 

On April 14, 1997, an Arkansas state jury convicted Langley of kidnapping,

first-degree battery, and first-degree terroristic threatening, for which he is currently

serving 30 years of imprisonment. The state court of appeals affirmed Langley's

convictions and sentences on direct appeal, Langley v. State, No. CACR 97-786, 1998

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WL 170172 (Ark. App. 1998), and the trial court denied his petition for

postconviction relief, see Ark. R. Crim. P. 37, without a hearing. The Supreme Court

of Arkansas reversed and remanded the Rule 37 proceedings, directing the trial court

to conduct a hearing. Langley v. State, No. CR 98-1477, 2000 WL 246265 (Ark.

2000). Following a hearing, the trial court again denied relief. Applying Strickland

v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984), the Supreme Court of Arkansas affirmed

the denial of postconviction relief, concluding that counsel was not ineffective in

failing to develop a diminished capacity defense and rejecting Langley's claim that he

was deprived of an impartial jury. See Langley v. State, No. CR 00-1275, 2002 WL

31207455 (Ark. 2002). 

On October 2, 2003, after exhausting his state court remedies, Langley filed this

federal habeas petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He argued that his trial counsel

provided ineffective assistance by failing to request a mental competency hearing

prior to trial, failing to investigate and procure witnesses to support a diminished

capacity defense, and failing to raise a jury instruction question in his state court

appeal. The district court denied habeas relief, concluding that Langley had defaulted

the jury instruction claim and that the state court did not unreasonably apply

Strickland to deny his claim that counsel was ineffective for failing to develop a

diminished capacity defense. The court noted that Langley may have defaulted his

ineffective assistance claim based upon counsel's failure to request a competency

hearing prior to trial, but addressing the merits of the claim, the district court

concluded that the objective medical data did not reveal evidence of a mental disorder

and that there was no other evidence of impaired capacity; thus, the failure to request

a competency hearing was not objectively unreasonable under Strickland. 

Langley now appeals the denial of his § 2254 petition. The district court

granted a certificate of appealability on a wholly new issue–whether the Sixth

Amendment requires a trial court to conduct a competency hearing sua sponte when

the evidence is in dispute regarding the defendant's mental competency. Langley

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admits that this question was never presented to the state courts or even to the federal

district court, and he requests that this court enlarge the certificate of appealability

issued by the district court to include his ineffective assistance claim based upon

counsel's failure to pursue a mental disease or defect defense or request a competency

hearing, issues which were presented below. Respondent Larry Norris argues that the

district court abused its discretion by certifying a question on an issue that was neither

raised in the habeas petition nor considered by any court thus far. 

This appeal must be dismissed under the review established in Slack v.

McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484-85 (2000), which articulates what a habeas applicant

must show in order to be granted a certificate of appealability under AEDPA. We

have distilled the following three rules from Slack to guide our consideration of

whether a certificate of appealability was properly issued: 

1) if the claim is clearly procedurally defaulted, the certificate should not

be issued; 2) even if the procedural default is not clear, if there is no

merit to the substantive constitutional claims, the certificate should not

be issued; but, 3) if the procedural default is not clear and the substantive

constitutional claims are debatable among jurists of reason, the

certificate should be granted. 

Khaimov v. Crist, 297 F.3d 783, 786 (8th Cir. 2002) (construing and citing Slack, 529

U.S. at 484-85, and revoking a certificate of appealability as improvidently granted

on the basis of the second rule articulated above). 

In this case, the first rule applies to the claim on which the district court granted

a certificate of appealability. Langley never raised in state court the issue of whether

the trial court should have conducted a competency hearing sua sponte. In fact, as

noted, he did not even raise the claim in his federal habeas petition. There is no

question that the issue upon which the district court granted a certificate of

appealability was procedurally defaulted. Furthermore, Langley does not argue that

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there is cause and prejudice to excuse his procedural default. See Bousley v. United

States, 523 U.S. 614, 622 (1998) (holding a procedurally defaulted claim can be raised

in habeas only if the defendant can first demonstrate cause and actual prejudice for the

failure to raise it on direct review, or that he is actually innocent). No appeal is

warranted in such a case. See Slack, 529 U.S. at 484 (stating where a plain procedural

bar is present, no appeal is warranted). This court is not in the business of rendering

advisory opinions on legal issues never raised in the antecedent proceedings. 

Langley requests that we expand the certificate of appealability to include the

ineffective assistance of counsel claim that he pleaded and that the state and federal

courts addressed on the merits; that is, that his counsel was ineffective in failing to

investigate and develop a defense based upon a diminished capacity due to mental

defect or disease or request a competency hearing. The second rule articulated in

Khaimov applies to this claim because a certificate of appealability should not be

issued where there is no merit to the substantive constitutional claim. The undisputed

record demonstrates that when Langley's trial counsel learned of a possible cognitive

deficit, as indicated in the first evaluation, counsel took appropriate steps to have

Langley's mental capacity evaluated more thoroughly. The second evaluation did not

produce a diagnosis of a mental disease or defect. Also, the second evaluation

reported that the only basis of possible cognitive defects as noted by the first

psychologist were Langley's own subjective reports of memory problems. Thus,

absent any objective basis on which to pursue a diminished capacity defense or seek

a competency hearing, any failure to do so could not have prejudiced the defense. 

Accordingly, we revoke the certificate of appealability issued by the district

court as having been improvidently granted, deny Langley's request to expand that

certificate of appealability, and dismiss this appeal.

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