Opinion ID: 2601957
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Denial of Continuance to Prepare Atkins Defense

Text: On March 13, 2001, pursuant to the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal district court denied defendant's petition for writ of habeas corpus as to the guilt phase and granted his petition as to the penalty phase of that proceeding. On April 24, 2001, the case was called in the Los Angeles Superior Court. Defendant was not present but was represented by the public defender. The public defender declared a conflict of interest and was relieved as counsel and the case was continued to April 30, 2001. On April 30, 2001, defendant was present in court and counsel was appointed to represent him. Defendant waived the statutory time for trial and the case was continued numerous times. On February 27, 2002, the trial court granted defendant's request to continue the trial to May 29, 2002, but noted that no further continuances would be granted and trial would commence on that date. On May 6, 2002, defense counsel filed a written motion for continuance, stating that obligations in other cases had prevented him from adequately preparing for the penalty phase retrial. On May 10, 2002, the trial court granted the motion and continued the trial to July 1, 2002. (1) On June 20, 2002, the United States Supreme Court held in Atkins v. Virginia (2002) 536 U.S. 304, 321 [153 L.Ed.2d 335, 122 S.Ct. 2242], that executing a mentally retarded defendant is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution as cruel and unusual punishment. The high court noted that clinical definitions of mental retardation require not only subaverage intellectual functioning, but also significant limitations in adaptive skills such as communication, self-care, and self-direction that became manifest before age 18. [6] (536 U.S. at p. 318.) The high court, however, left to the states the task of establishing procedures to determine which offenders were retarded. ( Id. at p. 317.) On June 24, 2002, defendant filed a written motion to continue the trial due to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Atkins v. Virginia. The motion stated that the high court had ruled that mentally retarded people could not receive the death penalty, but defendant's motion acknowledged that [t]he issue that is not clear is what constitutes being mentally retarded. Defendant stated: The Supreme Court has decided that the individual States should define what Mental Retardation means. There is no definition of Mental Retardation for this purpose in California Law. The Supreme Court does not define Mental Retardation in this decision. The motion for continuance stated that a week earlier (three days prior to Atkins ) defendant had been tested to determine if he was a `brain damaged' person and he was determined to have an IQ of 79, which defense counsel described as borderline for retardation. Defense counsel requested a 60-day continuance, stating he could not be ready for trial until he investigated the adaptive functioning factors that are mentioned in the Atkins v. Virginia opinion. At a hearing on the motion conducted that day, the trial court indicated it was not inclined to continue the case, asking defense counsel what he hoped to learn. Defense counsel responded that he hoped the Legislature would define mental retardation. The trial court stated: I'm not going to continue the case based on what the Legislature may or may not do. The period of time for a bill to get through our legislature at a minimum you are talking months, counsel. It is speculative and I will not do it. I cannot see any reason at all to continue the matter. None at all. If you have evidence that your client is mentally retarded, that is evidence that you would put on in any event. The record will be clear that it is an issue and both sides should be prepared to put on whatever they have in the issue. These cases are not going to be resolved at the trial level. Not for many years will there be given a standard to give to the jurors. I'm not going to try to explain to the jury that if the person is `mentally retarded' they should not impose the death sentence. I don't feel equipped to do that. There would be no guidance here for this court to do it and it would be an exercise in futility. The penalty phase retrial commenced on July 1, 2002. (2) Defendant contends the trial court deprived him of his rights to the assistance of counsel and due process of law under the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by denying his motion to continue the trial. The determination of whether a continuance should be granted rests within the sound discretion of the trial court, although that discretion may not be exercised so as to deprive the defendant or his attorney of a reasonable opportunity to prepare. ( People v. Sakarias (2000) 22 Cal.4th 596, 646 [94 Cal.Rptr.2d 17, 995 P.2d 152].) The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant a continuance to investigate the adaptive functioning factors that are mentioned in the Atkins v. Virginia opinion and to wait for the Legislature to define mental retardation. Defendant asserts: The trial court was required to follow the law set forth in Atkins.  The trial court did so. Atkins simply held that mentally retarded defendants could not be executed and left it to the states to define mental retardation and establish procedures to determine which defendants were mentally retarded. The trial court was correct that it would be months, at least, before the Legislature would define mental retardation and establish the necessary procedures for determining which defendants were mentally retarded. In fact, it was not until the following year that the Legislature enacted Penal Code section 1376, [7] which defines mentally retarded and establishes procedures for determining whether a defendant is mentally retarded. [8] The trial court, therefore, did not violate the holding in Atkins by proceeding to trial in the absence of guidance from the Legislature on how to implement the holding in that case and did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motion to continue the trial. Even had defendant established that the trial court abused its discretion in denying his motion to continue the trial in light of the high court's decision in Atkins, the record before this court does not establish that defendant was prejudiced. ( People v. Zapien (1993) 4 Cal.4th 929, 972 [17 Cal.Rptr.2d 122, 846 P.2d 704] [`In the lack of a showing of an abuse of discretion or of prejudice to the defendant, a denial of his motion for a continuance cannot result in a reversal of a judgment of conviction.'].) Nothing in the record before us suggested that defendant would have been able to show that he was retarded had the trial court granted his request for a continuance. Defendant's expert did not testify he was retarded, but rather that he was in the borderline range and just about retarded. Defendant does not argue in this court that he is retarded. He argues only that the question of whether [defendant] is mentally retarded has never been adequately investigated as a discrete and decisive issue. (3) Defendant contends he must be granted a new penalty phase trial at which jurors have the opportunity to decide whether he is mentally retarded. Defendant asserts that he has a right to have a jury determine whether he is mentally retarded under Ring v. Arizona (2002) 536 U.S. 584 [153 L.Ed.2d 556, 122 S.Ct. 2428], which held that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires that a jury must determine all facts that make a defendant eligible for the death penalty. Defendant asserts that  Atkins expressly transformed mental retardation from solely a mitigating factor into a `narrowing' circumstance that determines a defendant's eligibility for the death penalty. (4) As noted above, the Legislature in 2003 enacted section 1376, which grants a defendant [i]n any case in which the prosecution seeks the death penalty ... a jury hearing to determine if the defendant is mentally retarded if the defendant first submits a declaration by a qualified expert stating his or her opinion that the defendant is mentally retarded. ( Id., subd. (b)(1).) Two years later, this court held that section 1376 applied only to preconviction proceedings and adopted a similar procedure for defendants challenging a judgment of death. ( In re Hawthorne (2005) 35 Cal.4th 40, 47 [24 Cal.Rptr.3d 189, 105 P.3d 552].) We held that such a postconviction claim of mental retardation should be raised by petition for writ of habeas corpus.... To state a prima facie claim for relief, the petition must contain `a declaration by a qualified expert stating his or her opinion that the [petitioner] is mentally retarded . . . .' [Citation.] ( Ibid. ) We did not, however, grant a similar right to a jury trial, deeming it inappropriate to extend the jury trial option to postconviction claims. ( Id. at p. 49.) We held there was no constitutional mandate to have a jury determine whether a defendant facing a judgment of death is mentally retarded, noting that the high court in Atkins expressly left to the states the responsibility of `developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon [their] execution of sentences. [Citation.]' [Citation.] ( Id. at p. 50.) In Schriro v. Smith (2005) 546 U.S. 6 [163 L.Ed.2d 6, 126 S.Ct. 7], the high court reaffirmed that its decision in Atkins does not give a capital defendant a right to have a jury determine whether he or she is mentally retarded. The defendant in Schriro was sentenced to death in Arizona and filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal court. After Atkins was decided, the defendant asserted that he was mentally retarded. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals suspended the proceedings and directed the defendant to `institute proceedings in the proper trial court of Arizona' and further ordered that whether Smith is mentally retarded must `be determined. . . by a jury trial unless the right to a jury is waived by the parties.' ( Id. at p. 7.) The high court reversed, holding that [t]he Ninth Circuit erred in commanding the Arizona courts to conduct a jury trial to resolve [defendant]'s mental retardation claim. Atkins stated in clear terms that `we leave to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon [their] execution of sentences.' [Citation.] ... Arizona had not even had a chance to apply its chosen procedures when the Ninth Circuit pre-emptively imposed its jury trial condition. ( Id. at pp. 7-8.) Accordingly, even if defendant had met the threshold requirement imposed in Hawthorne of submitting a declaration from a qualified expert stating that he is mentally retarded, he would not have a constitutional right to have a jury determine whether he is mentally retarded. Defendant claims he is entitled to the statutory procedural protections of section 1376. As noted above, we held in Hawthorne that, [b]y its terms, section 1376 applies only to preconviction proceedings. ( In re Hawthorne, supra, 35 Cal.4th at p. 44.) Defendant argues that our decision in Hawthorne does not apply because his trial was conducted after Atkins was decided. Defendant asserts he had a right to have Atkins applied to his death penalty trial. Defendant is incorrect. The decision in Atkins did not require that defendant's trial be conducted in any particular fashion. The decision in Atkins simply held that defendant could not be executed if he is mentally retarded. Under our decision in Hawthorne, defendant still may raise that claim in a petition for writ of habeas corpus. Citing Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc. (1985) 473 U.S. 432, 439 [87 L.Ed.2d 313, 105 S.Ct. 3249], defendant contends that failing to grant him the procedural protections of section 1376 would deny him equal protection of the law, because he is similarly situated to a preconviction defendant. Defendant is not now similarly situated to a preconviction defendant because he is facing a judgment of death. Nor was he similarly situated to a preconviction defendant for purposes of section 1376 just prior to the second penalty phase trial, because section 1376 was not enacted until after the judgment of death was entered. (5) Defendant claims he must be granted a new penalty phase trial, as opposed to remand for an after-the-fact determination of mental retardation only because [s]eparate from the issue of his eligibility for the death penalty, a defendant ... must be allowed the opportunity to present evidence of his mental retardation as mitigation.... Defendant reasons that  Atkins' holding that the Eighth Amendment restricts the states from imposing death sentences on the mentally retarded necessarily changed the mitigating significance of mental retardation evidence in a capital penalty trial because a state may not permit an individual juror to vote for the death penalty if that juror believes . . . the defendant is mentally retarded. Defendant argues that after Atkins, the extenuating force of a defendant's mitigating evidence of mental retardation must be deemed absolute. The decision in Atkins does not say that. The decision in Atkins does not discuss or alter the mitigating effect of evidence of mental retardation or discuss or alter the circumstances under which an individual juror may vote for a sentence of death. As noted above, the decision in Atkins simply held that a defendant could not be executed if he or she is mentally retarded and left to the states the tasks of defining mental retardation and establishing procedures to determine which defendants are mentally retarded. Defendant contends he must be granted a new penalty phase trial so that the prosecution can decide whether to seek the death penalty in light of the factors and principles identified in the Atkins decision. There is no need to do so. The People point out that after the parties discussed the then recent decision in Atkins, the prosecutor stated: I don't think he is mentally retarded. I'm ready to go forward.