Source: http://openjurist.org/134/f3d/1368
Timestamp: 2015-11-28 02:48:40
Document Index: 366659559

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 134', '§ 2244', '§ 2253', '§ 2244', 'art, 117', 'art, 118', '§ 2244']

134 F3d 1368 Ceja v. Stewart | OpenJurist
134 F. 3d 1368 - Ceja v. Stewart HomeFederal Reporter, Third Series134 F.3d
134 F3d 1368 Ceja v. Stewart 134 F.3d 1368
98 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 557, 98 Daily JournalD.A.R. 1135Jose Jesus CEJA, an individual, Petitioner,v.Terry STEWART, Director of Arizona Department ofCorrections; Donald Wawrzaszek, Superintendent ofArizona State Prison, Respondents.
No. 98-99000.
Michael W. Patten, Charles Van Cott and Timothy A. Nelson, Brown & Bain, Phoenix, Arizona, for the petitioner-appellant.
Galen H. Wilkes, Assistant Arizona Attorney General, Phoenix, Arizona, for the respondents-appellees.
Before: FLETCHER, FARRIS and HAWKINS, Circuit Judges.
This matter is before us on appeal from the district court's January 19, 1998 denial of Petitioner's habeas corpus petition seeking a stay of his execution now scheduled for January 21, 1998. On January 18, 1998, we denied Petitioner's January 17, 1998 habeas corpus petition filed directly with this Court. Our Order of January 18, 1998 was without prejudice to: (1) Petitioner seeking relief in the district court for claims not covered by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA"), codified in relevant part at 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3); and (2) Petitioner seeking permission from this Court to file a successive petition concerning those claims covered by AEDPA.
Petitioner filed a habeas corpus petition with the district court on January 19, 1998, raising two Eighth Amendment claims, one based on the length of his confinement on death row (a claim based on Justice Stevens's memorandum respecting the denial of certiorari in Lackey v. Texas, 514 U.S. 1045, 115 S.Ct. 1421, 131 L.Ed.2d 304 (1995) ("Lackey" claim)), and the second based on Arizona's method of carrying out execution by lethal injection.
The district court found that both claims were covered by AEDPA and that Petitioner had not sought or obtained permission from this Court to file either claim. With respect to the "Lackey" issue, the district court noted that no Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit authority recognizes such a claim as an exception to AEDPA.
I respectfully dissent from the majority's summary refusal to grant a stay of execution and to address Jose Ceja's claim that to execute him now, after 23 years of incarceration, would violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. Accordingly, I would grant a certificate of appealability, see 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1) (West 1997), and address the merits of his claims.
I speak first to the circumstances of the man whose claims the majority declines to review. Ceja has been incarcerated on death row since December 19, 1974--twenty-three (23) years. He has spent more time on death row than any other inmate in Arizona, possibly more than any other inmate in the United States. Ceja has spent more than half of his life on death row, entering at the age of 19. He is now 42. At the start, he was an irresponsible, street-tough teenager without a high school degree. He is now a middle-aged man with a GED and several college courses to his credit who has held employment as a porter on death row and as a law clerk in the law library at the prison.
For twenty-three years, Ceja has suffered the anxiety of impending death and the greatly restricted activity allowed death row inmates. During that time, Ceja has had an execution date set at least five times: February 8, 1978; September 24, 1980; May 11, 1983; December 19, 1984; and January 21, 1998. For 23 years, Ceja has lived in solitary confinement, much of it in the typical death row cell on Cell Block 6 at the Arizona State Prison in Florence. Those cells are little more than a 7' X 10' windowless concrete box with a metal sink and toilet and a concrete slab for a bed. Activity outside that cell is typically limited to 3 one-to-two hour periods per week in which the inmate may shower or exercise. Visitations and phone privileges are much more limited than those for the general prison population. Many of a death row inmate's neighbors are deeply disturbed men responsible for some of the most notorious murders in Arizona.
If Ceja is executed, his de facto sentence will be 23 years of solitary confinement in the most horrible portion of the prison--death row--followed by execution. There has never been such a sentence imposed in this country--or any other, to my knowledge. Neither Arizona nor any other state would ever enact a law calling for such a punishment.1
The sentencing judge who initially decided that the death sentence was the appropriate punishment now unequivocally states that executing Jose Ceja now after 23 years of incarceration on death row is too harsh a punishment for his crimes. The reasons for imposing the death sentence--as stated by the sentencer himself--are no longer served by execution.
I necessarily must first address the jurisdiction of our court to hear the Lackey claim that Ceja has raised. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA") has drastically curtailed the ability of prisoners to obtain relief in the federal courts from allegedly unconstitutional convictions or sentences. Most significantly for present purposes, the Act places strict limitations on the claims that a prisoner can raise in a second or successive petition. The Act provides:
28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2). Thus, the thrust of the Act is that a prisoner who seeks to take advantage of the Great Writ must enumerate all the grounds on which he believes himself deserving of such relief in his first petition in federal court. If he fails to do so, he will be barred from pleading his claims later on unless he can make out a convincing claim of actual innocence or the Supreme Court articulates a new, retroactive rule of constitutional law. While the new restrictions may be harsh, they still provide claimants with the opportunity to have all their grounds for relief heard in federal court.
We have recognized, however, that there is a small class of claims for which the AEDPA, at least on its face, appears not to leave open even this small window of opportunity: claims involving the circumstances of a prisoner's execution. Such claims do not become ripe for adjudication until the state has issued a warrant for the prisoner's execution. As we explained in Poland v. Stewart, 117 F.3d 1094 (9th Cir.1997), "Where there is no danger of imminent and certain injury to a party, an issue has not matured sufficiently to warrant judicial intervention." Id. at 1104 (citations omitted). In the case of an Eighth Amendment claim regarding the circumstances of an execution, as opposed to a death-row inmate's conviction or confinement, when the inmate "does not currently face any risk of execution [under the contested circumstances, he] will face no hardship or immediate or certain danger if [the courts] do not review his Eighth Amendment claim." Id.
We first encountered the problem that such claims face under the AEDPA in Martinez-Villareal v. Stewart, 118 F.3d 628, 634-35 (9th Cir.1997), cert. granted, --- U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 294, 139 L.Ed.2d 226 (1997). The petitioner in Martinez-Villareal, a death-row inmate from Arizona, claimed that he was not competent to be executed and that carrying out his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 106 S.Ct. 2595, 91 L.Ed.2d 335 (1986). Martinez-Villareal had raised his claim in his first habeas petition, where it was dismissed on the ground that it was not yet ripe for adjudication. See id. at 629-30. Upon the issuance of a warrant for his execution, Martinez-Villareal attempted to reassert his as-yet-unadjudicated claim of incompetence in a second petition. This time, however, he faced the apparently insurmountable hurdle of 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2). Indeed, as we recognized, this was a problem that every prisoner in Martinez-Villareal's position would necessarily face.
Even if the State had issued its warrant of execution prior to our consideration of Martinez-Villareal's first habeas petition, his competency claim would still be premature. In Lonchar v. Thomas, 517 U.S. 314, 320-21, 116 S.Ct. 1293, 1297, 134 L.Ed.2d 440 (1996), the Supreme Court instructed that 'if the district court cannot dismiss the [first habeas] petition on the merits before the schedul