Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/06-6407.ZO.html
Timestamp: 2017-11-20 15:42:43
Document Index: 598102161

Matched Legal Cases: ['§2254', 'Art. 46', '§2254', '§2254', '§2254', '§2244', '§2244', 'art, 549', '§2244', '§2254', '§2254', 'Art. 46', 'Art. 46', 'Art. 46', '§2254', '§2254']

“[T]he Eighth Amendment prohibits a State from carrying out a sentence of death upon a prisoner who is insane.” Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399, 409–410 (1986) . The prohibition applies despite a prisoner’s earlier competency to be held responsible for committing a crime and to be tried for it. Prior findings of competency do not foreclose a prisoner from proving he is incompetent to be executed because of his present mental condition. Under Ford, once a prisoner makes the requisite preliminary showing that his current mental state would bar his execution, the Eighth Amendment , applicable to the States under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment , entitles him to an adjudication to determine his condition. These determinations are governed by the substantive federal baseline for competency set down in Ford.
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, 73Fed. 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.
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).
The State acknowledges that Ford-based incompetency claims, as a general matter, are not ripe until after the time has run to file a first federal habeas petition. See Supplemental Brief for Respondent 6. The State nevertheless maintains that its rule would not foreclose prisoners from raising Ford claims. Under Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal, 523 U. S. 637 (1998) , the State explains, a federal court is permitted to review a prisoner’s Ford claim once it becomes ripe if the prisoner preserved the claim by filing it in his first federal habeas application. Under the State’s approach a prisoner contemplating a future Ford claim could preserve it by this means.
The phrase “second or successive” is not self-defining. It takes its full meaning from our case law, including decisions predating the enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214. See Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U. S. 473, 486 (2000) (citing Martinez-Villareal, supra); see also Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651, 664 (1996) . The Court has declined to interpret “second or successive” as referring to all §2254 applications filed second or successively in time, even when the later filings address a state-court judgment already challenged in a prior §2254 application. See, e.g., Slack, 529 U. S., at 487 (concluding that a second §2254 application was not “second or successive” after the petitioner’s first application, which had challenged the same state-court judgment, had been dismissed for failure to exhaust state remedies); see also id., at 486 (indicating that “pre-AEDPA law govern[ed]” the case before it but implying that the Court would reach the same result under AEDPA); see also Martinez-Villareal, supra, at 645.
Our interpretation of §2244 in Martinez-Villareal is illustrative. There the prisoner filed his first habeas application before his execution date was set. In the first application he asserted, inter alia, that he was incompetent to be executed, citing Ford. The District Court, among other holdings, dismissed the claim as premature; and the Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling. When the State obtained a warrant for the execution, the prisoner filed, for the second time, a habeas application raising the same incompetencyclaim. The State argued that because the prisoner “already had one ‘fully-litigated habeas petition, the plain meaning of §2244(b) … requires his new petition to be treated as successive.’ ” 523 U. S., at 643.
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) .
An empty formality requiring prisoners to file unripe Ford claims neither respects the limited legal resources available to the States nor encourages the exhaustion of state remedies. See Duncan, supra, at 178. Instructing prisoners to file premature claims, particularly when many of these claims will not be colorable even at a later date, does not conserve judicial resources, “reduc[e] piecemeal litigation,” or “streamlin[e] federal habeas proceedings.” Burton v. Stewart, 549 U. S. ___, ___ (2007) (slip op., at 7) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). AEDPA’s concern for finality, moreover, is not implicated, for under none of the possible approaches would federal courts be able to resolve a prisoner’s Ford claim before execution is imminent. See Martinez-Villareal, supra, at 644–645 (acknowledging that the District Court was unable to resolve the prisoner’s incompetency claim at the time of his initial habeas filing). And last-minute filings that are frivolous and designed to delay executions can be dismissed in the regular course. The requirement of a threshold preliminary showing, for instance, will, as a general matter, be imposed before a stay is granted or the action is allowed to proceed.
There is, in addition, no argument that petitioner’s actions constituted an abuse of the writ, as that concept is explained in our cases. Cf. Felker, 518 U. S., at 664 (“[AEDPA’s] new restrictions on successive petitions constitute a modified res judicata rule, a restraint on what is called in habeas corpus practice ‘abuse of the writ’ ”). To the contrary, we have confirmed that claims of incompetency to be executed remain unripe at early stages of the proceedings. See Martinez-Villareal, 523 U. S., at 644–645; see also ibid. (suggesting that it is therefore appropriate, as a general matter, for a prisoner to wait before seeking resolution of his incompetency claim); Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399 (remanding the case to the District Court to resolve Ford’s incompetency claim, even though Ford had brought that claim in a second federal habeas petition); Barnard v. Collins, 13 F. 3d 871, 878 (CA5 1994) (“[O]ur research indicates no reported decision in which a federal circuit court or the Supreme Court has denied relief of a petitioner’s competency-to-be-executed claim on grounds of abuse of the writ”). See generally McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 489–497 (1991) .
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.
Petitioner claims that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment s of the Constitution, as elaborated by Ford, entitled him to certain procedures not provided in the state court; that the failure to provide these procedures constituted an unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court law; and that under §2254(d) this misapplication of Ford allows federal-court review of his incompetency claim without deference to the state court’s decision.
Justice Powell’s concurrence, which also addressed the question of procedure, offered a more limited holding. When there is no majority opinion, the narrower holding controls. See Marks v. United States, 430 U. S. 188, 193 (1977) . Under this rule Justice Powell’s opinion constitutes “clearly established” law for purposes of §2254 and sets the minimum procedures a State must provide to a prisoner raising a Ford-based competency claim.
Petitioner was entitled to these protections once he had made a “substantial threshold showing of insanity.” Id., at 426. He made this showing when he filed his Renewed Motion To Determine Competency—a fact disputed by no party, confirmed by the trial court’s appointment of mental health experts pursuant to Article 46.05(f), and verified by our independent review of the record. The Renewed Motion included pointed observations made by two experts the day before petitioner’s scheduled execution; and it incorporated, through petitioner’s first Motion To Determine Competency, references to the extensive evidence of mental dysfunction considered in earlier legal proceedings.
The state court refused to transcribe its proceedings, notwithstanding the multiple motions petitioner filed requesting this process. To the extent a more complete record may have put some of the court’s actions in a more favorable light, this only constitutes further evidence of the inadequacy of the proceedings. Based on the materials available to this Court, it appears the state court on repeated occasions conveyed information to petitioner’s counsel that turned out not to be true; provided at least one significant update to the State without providing the same notice to petitioner; and failed in general to keep petitioner informed as to the opportunity, if any, he would have to present his case. There is also a strong argument the court violated state law by failing to provide a competency hearing. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 46.05(k). If this did, in fact, constitute a violation of the procedural framework Texas has mandated for the adjudication of incompetency claims, the violation undermines any reliance the State might now place on Justice Powell’s assertion that “the States should have substantial leeway to determine what process best balances the various interests at stake.” Ford, supra, at 427. See also, e.g., Brief for Respondent 16. What is more, the order issued by the state court implied that its determination of petitioner’s competency was made solely on the basis of the examinations performed by the psychiatrists it had appointed—precisely the sort of adjudication Justice Powell warned would “invit[e] arbitrariness and error,” Ford, supra, at 424.
The state court made an additional error, one that Ford makes clear is impermissible under the Constitution: It failed to provide petitioner with an adequate opportunity to submit expert evidence in response to the report filed by the court-appointed experts. The court mailed the experts’ report to both parties in the first week of May. The report, which rejected the factual basis for petitioner’s claim, set forth new allegations suggesting that petitioner’s bizarre behavior was due, at least in part, to deliberate design rather than mental illness. Petitioner’s counsel reached the reasonable conclusion that these allegations warranted a response. See Objections to Experts’ Report 13, and n. 1. On May 14 the court told petitioner’s counsel, by letter, to file “any other matters you wish to have considered” within a week. Petitioner, in response, renewed his motions for an evidentiary hearing, funds to hire a mental health expert, and other relief. He did not submit at that time expert psychiatric evidence to challenge the court-appointed experts’ report, a decision that in context made sense: The court had said it would rule on his outstanding motions, which included a request for funds to hire a mental-health expert and a request for an evidentiary hearing, once the court-appointed experts had completed their evaluation. Counsel was justified in relying on this representation by the court.
Texas law, moreover, provides that a court’s finding of incompetency will be made on the basis of, inter alia, a “final competency hearing.” Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 46.05(k); see also Ex parte Caldwell, 58 S. W. 3d 127, 129, 130 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000) (confirming that the “legislature codified the dictates of Ford by enacting [the precursor to Art. 46.05]” and indicating that “[t]he determination of whether to appoint experts and conduct a hearing is within the discretion of the trial court” before a petitioner has made a substantial showing of incompetency). Had the court advised counsel it would resolve the case without first ruling on petitioner’s motions and without holding a competency hearing, petitioner’s counsel might have managed to procure the assistance of experts, as he had been able to do on a pro bono basis the day before petitioner’s previously scheduled execution. It was, in any event, reasonable for counsel to refrain from procuring and submitting expert psychiatric evidence while waiting for the court to rule on the timely filed motions, all in reliance on the court’s assurances.
The state court failed to provide petitioner with a constitutionally adequate opportunity to be heard. After a prisoner has made the requisite threshold showing, Ford requires, at a minimum, that a court allow a prisoner’s counsel the opportunity to make an adequate response to evidence solicited by the state court. See 477 U. S., at 424, 427. In petitioner’s case this meant an opportunity to submit psychiatric evidence as a counterweight to the report filed by the court-appointed experts. Id., at 424. Yet petitioner failed to receive even this rudimentary process.
In light of this error we need not address whether other procedures, such as the opportunity for discovery or for the cross-examination of witnesses, would in some cases be required under the Due Process Clause. As Ford makes clear, the procedural deficiencies already identified constituted a violation of petitioner’s federal rights.
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.
“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 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:
The Court of Appeals’ standard treats a prisoner’s delusional belief system as irrelevant if the prisoner knows that the State has identified his crimes as the reason for his execution. See 401 F. Supp. 2d, at 712 (indicating that under Circuit precedent “a petitioner’s delusional beliefs—even those which may result in a fundamental failure to appreciate the connection between the petitioner’s crime and his execution—do not bear on the question of whether the petitioner ‘knows the reason for his execution’ for the purposes of the Eighth Amendment ”); see also id., at 711–712. Yet the Ford opinions nowhere indicate that delusions are irrelevant to “comprehen[sion]’ or “aware[ness]” if they so impair the prisoner’s concept of reality that he cannot reach a rational understanding of the reason for the execution. If anything, the Ford majority suggests the opposite.
The flaws of the Court of Appeals’ test are pronounced in petitioner’s case. Circuit precedent required the District Court to disregard evidence of psychological dysfunction that, in the words of the judge, may have resulted in petitioner’s “fundamental failure to appreciate the connection between the petitioner’s crime and his execution.” 401 F. Supp. 2d, at 712. To refuse to consider evidence of this nature is to mistake Ford’s holding and its logic. Gross delusions stemming from a severe mental disorder may put an awareness of a link between a crime and its punishment in a context so far removed from reality that the punishment can serve no proper purpose. It is therefore error to derive from Ford, and the substantive standard for incompetency its opinions broadly identify, a strict test for competency that treats delusional beliefs as irrelevant once the prisoner is aware the State has identified the link between his crime and the punishment to be inflicted.
The District Court declined to consider the significance those findings might have on the ultimate question of competency under the Eighth Amendment . See ibid. (disregarding Dr. Cunningham’s testimony in light of Circuit precedent). And notwithstanding the numerous questions the District Court asked of the witnesses, see, e.g., 1 App. 191–197, 216–218, 234–237, 321–323, it did not press the experts on the difficult issue it identified in its opinion, see ibid. The District Court, of course, was bound by Circuit precedent, and the record was developed pursuant to a standard we have found to be improper. As a result, we find it difficult to amplify our conclusions or to make them more precise. We are also hesitant to decide a question of this complexity before the District Court and the Court of Appeals have addressed, in a more definitive manner and in light of the expert evidence found to be probative, the nature and severity of petitioner’s alleged mental problems.
The underpinnings of petitioner’s claims should be explained and evaluated in further detail on remand. The conclusions of physicians, psychiatrists, and other experts in the field will bear upon the proper analysis. Expert evidence may clarify the extent to which severe delusions may render a subject’s perception of reality so distorted that he should be deemed incompetent. Cf. Brief for American Psychological Association et al. as Amici Curiae 17–19 (discussing the ways in which mental health experts can inform competency determinations). And there is precedent to guide a court conducting Eighth Amendment analysis. See, e.g., Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S. 551, 560–564 (2005) ; Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304, 311–314 (2002) ; Ford, 477 U. S., at 406–410.