Opinion ID: 2978449
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Thompson’s Incompetency for Execution

Text: This Court reviews a district court’s dismissal of a petition brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 de novo, but reviews the district court’s factual findings for clear error. White v. Mitchell, 431 F.3d 517, 524 (6th Cir. 2005). Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996) (“AEDPA”), a federal court may not grant a writ of habeas corpus to a state prisoner with respect to any claim adjudicated on the merits unless (1) the state court’s decision was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), or (2) the state court’s decision “was based on an unreasonable application of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceedings.” § 2254(d)(2). A state court’s decision is “contrary to” clearly established federal law under § 2254(d)(1) “if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by [the Supreme] Court on a question of law Nos. 06-5744/5770 Thompson v. Bell Page 10 or if the state court decides a case differently than [the Supreme] Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts.” Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412-13 (2000). An “unreasonable application” occurs when “the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from [the Supreme] Court’s decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner’s case.” Id. A federal habeas court may not find a state court decision unreasonable “simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly.” Id. at 411. Rather, the state court decision must be an “objectively unreasonable” application of federal law to be reversed. Id. at 409. A habeas court must presume the state court’s factual findings are correct. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1).
“[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, 409-10 (1986). The Supreme Court derived this principle from reasons found in the “common law” that presently “have no less logical, moral, and practical force than they did when first voiced.” Id. at 409. In Ford, Justice Powell stated in a concurrence to the four-justice plurality opinion that prisoners are insane for the purposes of execution if they are “unaware of the punishment they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it.” Id. at 422. Powell also opined that a state may, consistent with due process, presume a prisoner who was competent to stand trial is sane at the time of execution, and “may require a substantial threshold showing of insanity merely to trigger the hearing process.” Id. at 426. Powell’s concurrence, needed to create a majority, became the controlling opinion in Ford and “constitutes ‘clearly established’ law for purposes of § 2554.” Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 949 (2007). The Panetti Court clarified Ford’s competency-for-execution and “substantial threshold showing” standards. 551 U.S. at 948-62. In Panetti, the state court had denied the petitioner an evidentiary hearing despite his incompetency petition including “a letter and a declaration from . . . a psychologist and a law professor[] who had interviewed petitioner while on death row,” id. at 938, as well as “references to the extensive evidence of mental dysfunction considered in earlier legal proceedings,” id. at 950. On habeas review, the Nos. 06-5744/5770 Thompson v. Bell Page 11 district court found that the petitioner’s motion had been sufficient to meet the “substantial threshold showing” requirement, and the court therefore held an evidentiary hearing. At the hearing, four experts testified that the petitioner had a “schizo-affective disorder . . . resulting in a genuine delusion . . . [that] 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 954 (quotations omitted). According to the petitioner’s experts, the petitioner understood that the state wanted to execute him for the murders he committed, but “believe[d] in earnest that the stated reason is a ‘sham’ and the State in truth want[ed] to execute him ‘to stop him from preaching.’” Id. at 955. The district court denied the petitioner’s incompetency claim because “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 941-42. The Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court in Panetti first confirmed that the petitioner had made the substantial threshold showing when he filed his motion with the state court, and under Ford was therefore constitutionally entitled to an evidentiary hearing. Id. at 950. The Court cited both the expert reports and the petitioner’s documented history of mental illness in reaching this conclusion. Id. However, with respect to the competency standard applied by the lower courts, the Supreme Court stated that “the Court of Appeals’ standard is too restrictive to afford a prisoner the protections granted by the Eighth Amendment.” Id. at 956-57. The Court elaborated: 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. 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 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, 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 Nos. 06-5744/5770 Thompson v. Bell Page 12 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. .... . . . 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. Id. at 958, 959, 960 (internal citations omitted). In Thompson’s case, the Tennessee Supreme Court properly identified the standard by which to determine competency when it stated Ford’s rule that a prisoner must be able 1 to understand the impending execution and the reason for it. Thompson, 134 S.W.3d at 176. Accordingly, Thompson’s petition may only be granted if the state courts unreasonably applied that standard to the facts of Thompson’s case. See Williams, 529 U.S. at 411. As Panetti makes clear, the state courts’ dismissal of Thompson’s petition without conducting an evidentiary hearing was an unreasonable application of Ford’s tenets. First, the Tennessee Supreme Court unreasonably applied Ford when it determined that Thompson’s “severe delusions” are “irrelevant” to a Ford competency analysis. See Panetti, 551 U.S. at 960 (“It is therefore error to derive from Ford . . . 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.”). Thompson’s delusions relate to precisely the two concepts that Justice Powell required a prisoner to understand to be competent: his impending execution and the reason for it. See Ford, 477 U.S. at 422. With respect to Thompson’s understanding of his execution, he believes that only the Secretary of the Navy can execute him; that electrocution will not “eliminate his life,” but that he will live for at least two more years after being electrocuted; and that he will be re-tried for the crime once a “professional” 1 In Coe v. Bell, 209 F.3d 815, 824-26 (6th Cir. 2000), this Court held that Tennessee’s standard and procedures for determining incompetency for execution follow the dictates of Powell’s concurrence and are therefore constitutional. Nos. 06-5744/5770 Thompson v. Bell Page 13 jury is constituted. With respect to Thompson’s understanding of the reason for his execution, although he seems to know on some level that it is for “kill[ing] Brenda Lane,” his understanding of the connection between his act of murder and the execution appears to be cursory at best, since he seems to believe that when his buried riches are discovered, he will be exonerated. Second, the Tennessee Supreme Court’s determination that Thompson’s documented history of mental illness is equally “irrelevant” to the question of his present incompetency was also unreasonable. See Panetti, 551 U.S. at 950 (citing petitioner’s “extensive evidence of mental dysfunction considered in earlier legal proceedings” as part of the basis for his threshold showing). Although the court was correct that only Thompson’s present competency was at issue, his medical records are relevant to that question, particularly to the extent that they demonstrate a chronic mental condition, or a condition that has only worsened over time. Thompson’s medical history demonstrates his “long history of bipolar disorder and psychic symptoms,” and that he has been psychotic and delusional since at least 1989. While this history is not definitive proof of Thompson’s current incompetency for execution, it is at least probative of the seriousness of his illness and whether it is chronic. Regardless of whether Thompson’s incompetency petition should be granted, his evidence has at least created a genuine issue about his competency, and therefore warrants an evidentiary hearing. Thompson included extensive evidence of his incompetency in his petition, including (1) the reports of three medical experts, two of whom had recently examined Thompson on multiple occasions; (2) a long documented history of delusions and psychosis; and (3) the state’s previous effort to appoint a conservator to make medical decisions on his behalf–essentially an acknowledgment by the state that Thompson was mentally ill. The conservatorship was terminated less than five months prior to Thompson’s competency petition filing, and only because a court found Thompson had become voluntarily compliant with his drug program. The evidence Thompson submitted was undoubtedly a “substantial threshold showing,” and therefore an evidentiary hearing should have been held. Nos. 06-5744/5770 Thompson v. Bell Page 14 Because the Tennessee courts unreasonably applied federal law clearly established by Ford, this Court does not afford AEDPA deference to their dismissal of Thompson’s petition. “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.” Panetti, 551 U.S. at 953. Accordingly, this Court will remand the action to the district court to conduct Thompson’s incompetency hearing and decide the merits of his incompetency claim de novo.