Source: http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/551/06-6407/opinion.html
Timestamp: 2014-08-01 04:04:13
Document Index: 112482732

Matched Legal Cases: ['§2254', 'Art. 46', '§2244', '§2244', '§2244', '§2254', '§2244', '§2244', '§2244', '§2244', '§2254', '§2254']

Panetti v. Quarterman :: 551 U.S. ___ (2007) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center Justia.comFind a LawyerLegal AnswersLawMore ▾Justia BlogVerdictLaw Blog DirectoryLegal FormsUS Law US Supreme Court Cases Federal Cases US Constitution US Code Federal RegulationsFederal DocketsState CasesState Codes & StatutesTrademarksPatentsCompany Legal ProfilesMarketing ServicesSign InSearchJustia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 551 › Panetti v. Quarterman › Opinion
NEW - Receive Justia's FREE Daily Newsletters of Opinion Summaries for the US Supreme Court, all US Federal Appellate Courts & the 50 US State Supreme Courts and Weekly Practice Area Opinion Summaries Newsletters. Subscribe NowPanetti v. Quarterman551 U.S. ___ (2007)Annotate this CaseOpinionPDFSyllabus
NO. 06-6407SCOTT LOUIS PANETTI, PETITIONER v. NATHANIEL
DIVISIONon writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the fifth circuit[June 28, 2007] Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
We conclude we have statutory authority to adjudicate the claims petitioner raises in his habeas application; we find the state court failed to provide the procedures to which petitioner was entitled under the Constitution; and we determine that the federal appellate court employed an improperly restrictive test when it considered petitioner’s claim of incompetency on the merits. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and remand the case for further consideration.I
On a morning in 1992 petitioner awoke before dawn, dressed in camouflage, and drove to the home of his estranged wife’s parents. Breaking the front-door lock, he entered the house and, in front of his wife and daughter, shot and killed his wife’s mother and father. He took his wife and daughter hostage for the night before surrendering to police. Tried for capital murder in 1995, petitioner sought to represent himself. The court ordered a psychiatric evaluation, which indicated that petitioner suffered from a fragmented personality, delusions, and hallucinations. 1 App. 9–14. The evaluation noted that petitioner had been hospitalized numerous times for these disorders. Id., at 10; see also id., at 222. Evidence later revealed that doctors had prescribed medication for petitioner’s mental disorders that, in the opinion of one expert, would be difficult for a person not suffering from extreme psychosis even to tolerate. See id., at 233 (“I can’t imagine anybody getting that dose waking up for two to three days. You cannot take that kind of medication if you are close to normal without absolutely being put out”). Petitioner’s wife described one psychotic episode in a petition she filed in 1986 seeking extraordinary relief from the Texas state courts. See id., at 38–40. She explained that petitioner had become convinced the devil had possessed their home and that, in an effort to cleanse their surroundings, petitioner had buried a number of valuables next to the house and engaged in other rituals. Id., at 39. Petitioner nevertheless was found competent to be tried and to waive counsel. At trial he claimed he was not guilty by reason of insanity. During his trial petitioner engaged in behavior later described by his standby counsel as “bizarre,” “scary,” and “trance-like.” Id., at 26, 21, 22. According to the attorney, petitioner’s behavior both in private and in front of the jury made it evident that he was suffering from “mental incompetence,” id., at 26; see also id., at 22-23, and the net effect of this dynamic was to render the trial “truly a judicial farce, and a mockery of self-representation,” id., at 26. There was evidence on the record, moreover, to indicate that petitioner had stopped taking his antipsychotic medication a few months before trial, see id., at 339, 345, a rejection of medical advice that, it appears, petitioner has continued to this day with one brief exception, see Brief for Petitioner 16–17. According to expert testimony, failing to take this medication tends to exacerbate the underlying mental dysfunction. See id., at 16, 18, n. 12; see also 1 App. 195, 228. And it is uncontested that, less than two months after petitioner was sentenced to death, the state trial court found him incompetent to waive the appointment of state habeas counsel. See Brief for Petitioner 15, n. 10. It appears, therefore, that petitioner’s condition has only worsened since the start of trial. The jury found petitioner guilty of capital murder and sentenced him to death. Petitioner challenged his conviction and sentence both on direct appeal and through state habeas proceedings. The Texas courts denied his requests for relief. See Panetti v. State, No. 72,230 (Crim. App., Dec. 3, 1997); Ex parte Panetti, No. 37,145–01 (Crim. App., May 20, 1998). This Court twice denied a petition for certiorari. Panetti v. Texas, 525 U. S. 848 (1998); Panetti v. Texas, 524 U. S. 914 (1998). Petitioner filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §2254 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. His claims were again rejected, both by the District Court, Panetti v. Johnson, Cause No. A–99–CV–260–SS (2001), and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Panetti v. Cockrell, 73 Fed. Appx. 78 (2003) (judgt. order), and we again denied a petition for certiorari, Panetti v. Dretke, 540 U. S. 1052 (2003). Among the issues petitioner raised in the course of these state and federal proceedings was his competency to stand trial and to waive counsel. Petitioner did not argue, however, that mental illness rendered him incompetent to be executed.
The judge sent a letter to counsel, including petitioner’s attorney, Michael C. Gross, dated May 14, 2004. It said:“Dear Counsel:
On September 29, 2004, the District Court denied petitioner’s habeas application on the merits. It concluded that the state trial court had failed to comply with Art. 46.05; found the state proceedings “constitutionally inadequate” in light of Ford; and reviewed petitioner’s Eighth Amendment claim withoutdeferring to the state court’s finding of competency. Panetti v. Dretke, 401 F. Supp. 2d 702, 706, 705–706 (WD Tex. 2004). The court nevertheless denied relief. It found petitioner had not shown incompetency as defined by Circuit precedent. Id., at 712. “Ultimately,” the court explained, “the Fifth Circuit test for competency to be executed requires the petitioner know no more than the fact of his impending execution and the factual predicate for the execution.” Id., at 711. The Court of Appeals affirmed, Panetti v. Dretke, 448 F. 3d 815 (CA5 2006), and we granted certiorari, 549 U. S. ___ (2007).II
We first consider our jurisdiction. The habeas corpus application on review is the second one petitioner has filed in federal court. Under the gatekeeping provisions of 28 U. S. C. §2244(b)(2), “[a] claim presented in a second or successive habeas corpus application under section 2254 that was not presented in a prior application shall be dismissed” except under certain, narrow circumstances. See §§2244(b)(2)(A)–(B). The State maintains that, by direction of §2244, the District Court lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate petitioner’s §2254 application. Its argument is straightforward: “[Petitioner’s] first federal habeas application, which was fully and finally adjudicated on the merits, failed to raise a Ford claim,” and, as a result, “[his] subsequent habeas application, which did raise a Ford claim, was a ‘second or successive’ application” under the terms of §2244(b)(2). Supplemental Brief for Respondent 1. The State contends, moreover, that any Ford claim brought in an application governed by §2244’s gatekeeping provisions must be dismissed. See Supplemental Brief for Respondent 4–6 (citing §§2244(b)(2)(A)–(B)).
These purposes, and the practical effects of our holdings, should be considered when interpreting AEDPA. This is particularly so when petitioners “run the risk” under the proposed interpretation of “forever losing their opportunity for any federal review of their unexhausted claims.” Rhines v. Weber, 544 U. S. 269, 275 (2005). See also Castro v. United States, 540 U. S. 375, 381 (2003). In Rhines “[w]e recognize[d] the gravity of [the] problem” posed when petitioners file applications with only some claims exhausted, as well as “the difficulty [this problem has] posed for petitioners and federal district courts alike.” 544 U. S., at 275, 276. We sought to ensure our “solution to this problem [was] compatible with AEDPA’s purposes.” Id., at 276. And in Castro we resisted an interpretation of the statute that would “produce troublesome results,” “create procedural anomalies,” and “close our doors to a class of habeas petitioners seeking review without any clear indication that such was Congress’ intent.” 540 U. S., at 380, 381.See also Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 420, 437 (2000); Johnson v. United States, 544 U. S. 295, 308–309 (2005); Duncan v. Walker, 533 U. S. 167, 178 (2001); cf. Granberry v. Greer, 481 U. S. 129, 131–134 (1987).
In the usual case, a petition filed second in time and not otherwise permitted by the terms of §2244 will not survive AEDPA’s “second or successive” bar. There are, however, exceptions. We are hesitant to construe a statute, implemented to further the principles of comity, finality, and federalism, in a manner that would require unripe (and, often, factually unsupported) claims to be raised as a mere formality, to the benefit of no party. The statutory bar on “second or successive” applications does not apply to a Ford claim brought in an application filed when the claim is first ripe. Petitioner’s habeas application was properly filed, and the District Court had jurisdiction to adjudicate his claim.IIIA
We agree with petitioner that no deference is due. The state court’s failure to provide the procedures mandated by Ford constituted an unreasonable application of clearly established law as determined by this Court. It is uncontested that petitioner made a substantial showing of incompetency. This showing entitled him to, among other things, an adequate means by which to submit expert psychiatric evidence in response to the evidence that had been solicited by the state court. And it is clear from the record that the state court reached its competency determination after failing to provide petitioner with this process, notwithstanding counsel’s sustained effort, diligence, and compliance with court orders. As a result of this error, our review of petitioner’s underlying incompetency claim is unencumbered by the deference AEDPA normally requires. Ford identifies the measures a State must provide when a prisoner alleges incompetency to be executed. The four-Justice plurality in Ford concluded as follows:“Although the condemned prisoner does not enjoy the same presumptions accorded a defendant who has yet to be convicted or sentenced, he has not lost the protection of the Constitution altogether; if the Constitution renders the fact or timing of his execution contingent upon establishment of a further fact, then that fact must be determined with the high regard for truth that befits a decision affecting the life or death of a human being. Thus, the ascertainment of a prisoner’s sanity as a predicate to lawful execution calls for no less stringent standards than those demanded in any other aspect of a capital proceeding.” 477 U. S., at 411–412.
Justice Powell’s opinion states the relevant standard as follows. Once a prisoner seeking a stay of execution has made “a substantial threshold showing of insanity,” the protection afforded by procedural due process includes a “fair hearing” in accord with fundamental fairness. Ford, 477 U. S., at 426, 424 (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (internal quotation marks omitted). This protection means a prisoner must be accorded an “opportunity to be heard,” id., at 424 (internal quotation marks omitted), though “a constitutionally acceptable procedure may be far less formal than a trial,” id., at 427. As an example of why the state procedures on review in Ford were deficient, Justice Powell explained, the determination of sanity “appear[ed] to have been made solely on the basis of the examinations performed by state-appointed psychiatrists.” Id., at 424. “Such a procedure invites arbitrariness and error by preventing the affected parties from offering contrary medical evidence or even from explaining the inadequacies of the State’s examinations.” Ibid. Justice Powell did not set forth “the precise limits that due process imposes in this area.” Id., at 427. He observed that a State “should have substantial leeway to determine what process best balances the various interests at stake” once it has met the “basic requirements” required by due process. Ibid. These basic requirements include an opportunity to submit “evidence and argument from the prisoner’s counsel, including expert psychiatric evidence that may differ from the State’s own psychiatric examination.” Ibid.
The state court’s denial of certain of petitioner’s motions rests on an implicit finding: that the procedures it provided were adequate to resolve the competency claim. In light of the procedural history we have described, however, this determination cannot be reconciled with any reasonable application of the controlling standard in Ford. That the standard is stated in general terms does not mean the application was reasonable. AEDPA does not “require state and federal courts to wait for some nearly identical factual pattern before a legal rule must be applied.” Carey v. Musladin, 549 U. S. ___, ___ (2006) (slip op., at 2) (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment). Nor does AEDPA prohibit a federal court from finding an application of a principle unreasonable when it involves a set of facts “different from those of the case in which the principle was announced.” Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U. S. 63, 76 (2003). The statute recognizes, to the contrary, that even a general standard may be applied in an unreasonable manner. See, e.g., Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362 (finding a state-court decision both contrary to and involving an unreasonable application of the standard set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984)). These principles guide a reviewing court that is faced, as we are here, with a record that cannot, under any reasonable interpretation of the controlling legal standard, support a certain legal ruling. Under AEDPA, a federal court may grant habeas relief, as relevant, only if the state court’s “adjudication of [a] claim on the merits … resulted in a decision that … involved an unreasonable application” of the relevant law. When a state court’s adjudication of a claim is dependent on an antecedent unreasonable application of federal law, the requirement set forth in §2254(d)(1) is satisfied. A federal court must then resolve the claim without the deference AEDPA otherwise requires. See Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U. S. 510, 534 (2003) (performing the analysis required under Strickland’s second prong without deferring to the state court’s decision because the state court’s resolution of Strickland’s first prong involved an unreasonable application of law); id., at 527–529 (confirming that the state court’s ultimate decision to reject the prisoner’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim was based on the first prong and not the second). See also Williams, supra, at 395–397; Early v. Packer, 537 U. S. 3, 8 (2002) (per curiam) (indicating that §2254 does not preclude relief if either “the reasoning [or] the result of the state-court decision contradicts [our cases]”). Here, due to the state court’s unreasonable application of Ford, the factfinding procedures upon which the court relied were “not adequate for reaching reasonably correct results” or, at a minimum, resulted in a process that appeared to be “seriously inadequate for the ascertainment of the truth.” 477 U. S., at 423–424 (Powell, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore consider petitioner’s claim on the merits and without deferring to the state court’s finding of competency.IVA
A review of the expert testimony helps frame the issue. Four expert witnesses testified on petitioner’s behalf in the District Court proceedings. One explained that petitioner’s mental problems are indicative of “schizo-affective disorder,” 1 App. 143, resulting in a “genuine delusion” involving his understanding of the reason for his execution, id., at 157. According to the expert, this delusion has recast petitioner’s execution as “part of spiritual warfare … between the demons and the forces of the darkness and God and the angels and the forces of light.” Id., at 149. As a result, the expert explained, although petitioner claims to understand “that the state is saying that [it wishes] to execute him for [his] murder[s],” he believes in earnest that the stated reason is a “sham” and the State in truth wants to execute him “to stop him from preaching.” Ibid. Petitioner’s other expert witnesses reached similar conclusions concerning the strength and sincerity of this “fixed delusion.” Id., at 203; see also id., at 202, 231–232, 333. While the State’s expert witnesses resisted the conclusion that petitioner’s stated beliefs were necessarily indicative of incompetency, see id., at 240, 247, 304, particularly in light of his perceived ability to understand certain concepts and, at times, to be “clear and lucid,” id., at 243; see also id., at 244, 304, 312, they acknowledged evidence of mental problems, see id., at 239, 245, 308. Petitioner’s rebuttal witness attempted to reconcile the experts’ testimony:“Well, first, you have to understand that when somebody is schizophrenic, it doesn’t diminish their cognitive ability… . Instead, you have a situation where—and why we call schizophrenia thought dis-
order[—]the logical integration and reality connection of their thoughts are disrupted, so the stimulus comes in, and instead of being analyzed and processed in a rational, logical, linear sort of way, it gets scrambled up and it comes out in a tangential, circumstantial, symbolic … not really relevant kind of way. That’s the essence of somebody being schizophrenic… . Now, it may be that if they’re dealing with someone who’s more familiar … [in] what may feel like a safer, more enclosed environment … those sorts of interactions may be reasonably lucid whereas a more extended conversation about more loaded material would reflect the severity of his mental illness.” Id., at 328–329.See also id., at 203 (suggesting that an unmedicated individual suffering from schizophrenia can “at times” hold an ordinary conversation and that “it depends [whether the discussion concerns the individual’s] fixed delusional system”). There is, in short, much in the record to support the conclusion that petitioner suffers from severe delusions. See, e.g., 1 App.157, 149, 202–203, 231–232, 328–329, 333; see generally id., at 136–353. The legal inquiry concerns whether these delusions can be said to render him incompetent. The Court of Appeals held that they could not. That holding, we conclude, rests on a flawed interpretation of Ford. The Court of Appeals stated that competency is determined by whether a prisoner is aware “ ‘that he [is] going to be executed and why he [is] going to be executed,’ ” 448 F. 3d, at 819 (quoting Barnard, 13 F. 3d, at 877); see also 448 F. 3d, at 818 (discussing Ford, 477 U. S., at 421–422 (Powell, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment)). To this end, the Court of Appeals identified the relevant District Court findings as follows: first, petitioner is aware that he committed the murders; second, he is aware that he will be executed; and, third, he is aware that the reason the State has given for the execution is his commission of the crimes in question. 448 F. 3d, at 817. Under Circuit precedent this ends the analysis as a matter of law; for the Court of Appeals regards these three factual findings as necessarily demonstrating that a prisoner is aware of the reason for his execution. The Court of Appeals concluded that its standard foreclosed petitioner from establishing incompetency by the means he now seeks to employ: a showing that his mental illness obstructs a rational understanding of the State’s reason for his execution. Id., at 817–818. As the court explained, “[b]ecause we hold that ‘awareness,’ as that term is used in Ford, is not necessarily synonymous with ‘rational understanding,’ as argued by [petitioner,] we conclude that the district court’s findings are sufficient to establish that [petitioner] is competent to be executed.” Id., at 821.
In our view the Court of Appeals’ standard is too restrictive to afford a prisoner the protections granted by the Eighth Amendment. The opinions in Ford, it must be acknowledged, did not set forth a precise standard for competency. The four-Justice plurality discussed the substantive standard at a high level of generality; and Justice Powell wrote only for himself when he articulated more specific criteria. Yet in the portion of Justice Marshall’s discussion constituting the opinion of the Court (the portion Justice Powell joined) the majority did reach the express conclusion that the Constitution “places a substantive restriction on the State’s power to take the life of an insane prisoner.” Ford, 477 U. S., at 405. The Court stated the foundation for this principle as follows:“[T]oday, no less than before, we may seriously question the retributive value of executing a person who has no comprehension of why he has been singled out and stripped of his fundamental right to life… . Similarly, the natural abhorrence civilized societies feel at killing one who has no capacity to come to grips with his own conscience or deity is still vivid today. And the intuition that such an execution simply of-fends humanity is evidently shared across this Nation. Faced with such widespread evidence of a restriction upon sovereign power, this Court is compelled to conclude that the Eighth Amendment prohibits a State from carrying out a sentence of death upon a prisoner who is insane.” Id., at 409–410.Writing for four Justices, Justice Marshall concluded by indicating that the Eighth Amendment prohibits execution of “one whose mental illness prevents him from comprehending the reasons for the penalty or its implications.” Id., at 417. Justice Powell, in his separate opinion, asserted that the Eighth Amendment “forbids the execution only of those who are unaware of the punishment they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it,” id., at 422.
Whether Ford’s inquiry into competency is formulated as a question of the prisoner’s ability to “comprehen[d] the reasons” for his punishment or as a determination into whether he is “unaware of … why [he is] to suffer it,” then, the approach taken by the Court of Appeals is inconsistent with Ford. The principles set forth in Ford are put at risk by a rule that deems delusions relevant only with respect to the State’s announced reason for a punishment or the fact of an imminent execution, see 448 F. 3d, at 819, 821, as opposed to the real interests the State seeks to vindicate. We likewise find no support elsewhere in Ford, including in its discussions of the common law and the state standards, for the proposition that a prisoner is automatically foreclosed from demonstrating incompetency once a court has found he can identify the stated reason for his execution. A prisoner’s awareness of the State’s rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it. Ford does not foreclose inquiry into the latter. This is not to deny the fact that a concept like rational understanding is difficult to define. And we must not ignore the concern that some prisoners, whose cases are not implicated by this decision, will fail to understand why they are to be punished on account of reasons other than those stemming from a severe mental illness. The mental state requisite for competence to suffer capital punishment neither presumes nor requires a person who would be considered “normal,” or even “rational,” in a layperson’s understanding of those terms. Someone who is condemned to death for an atrocious murder may be so callous as to be unrepentant; so self-centered and devoid of compassion as to lack all sense of guilt; so adept in transferring blame to others as to be considered, at least in the colloquial sense, to be out of touch with reality. Those states of mind, even if extreme compared to the criminal population at large, are not what petitioner contends lie at the threshold of a competence inquiry. The beginning of doubt about competence in a case like petitioner’s is not a misanthropic personality or an amoral character. It is a psychotic disorder.
It is proper to allow the court charged with overseeing the development of the evidentiary record in this case the initial opportunity to resolve petitioner’s constitutional claim. These issues may be resolved in the first instance by the District Court.* * *