Opinion ID: 220526
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Statements About Hurles's Counsel

Text: Finally, Judge Hilliard challenged the professionalism of Hurles's attorney, whose credibility would later be important as Hurles's sole counsel during the trial and sentencing proceedings. She argued that the attorney's insecurity over handling the case on her own placed her competence in doubt. Judge Hilliard stated: [I]f Appointed Counsel believes, because of her caseload, personal competence, or otherwise, that she is incapable of rendering competent representation of the Petitioner, she is ethically bound to withdraw from this case, and, quite possibly, to withdraw her name from the list of lawyers who contract to provide defense services on behalf of Maricopa County as well. Clearly there are other attorneys who provide contract services for Maricopa County who would be able to provide competent representation in a case as simple as this. This point was entirely superfluous to the brief and appears designed merely to question the competence of an attorney who determined she needed assistance in a capital case. Indeed, in addition to questioning her competence in this particular case, the brief even raises the prospect that this attorney should no longer receive gainful employment from Maricopa County if she did not have the personal competence to do so. After having raised questions about Hurles's only legal counsel in pleadings to the Arizona Court of Appeals, Judge Hilliard then had sole responsibility for determining the credibility of mitigating evidence presented by that attorney. Taken together with her comments about the merits of Hurles's case, such direct prejudgment raises an unconstitutional probability of bias.
Based on these three deficiencies flowing from the special action proceeding, the average judge would be tempted not to hold the balance nice, clear, and true. Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 532, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749 (1927). Judge Hilliard's conduct falls within the parameters of behavior prohibited by clearly established Supreme Court precedent. In Murchison, for example, the Court found an appearance of bias where the judge who had acted as a one-man grand jury later presided over the defendant's contempt trial relating to his conduct before the judge in that grand jury. In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 137, 75 S.Ct. 623, 99 L.Ed. 942 (1955). The Court determined that the judge had a conflict of interest at the trial stage because of his earlier participation followed by his decision to charge them. Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., ___ U.S. ____, 129 S.Ct. 2252, 2261, 173 L.Ed.2d 1208 (2009) (describing the holding of Murchison ). Similarly, in Johnson v. Mississippi , the Court evaluated a judge's fitness to preside over the petitioner's criminal contempt proceeding. 403 U.S. 212, 215, 91 S.Ct. 1778, 29 L.Ed.2d 423 (1971). The judge had previously been named as a defendant in a separate civil rights suit brought by the petitioner, and subsequently made intemperate remarks about civil rights litigants. Id. Based on the judge's status as an adversary in the petitioner's civil rights suit and his remarks about litigants such as the petitioner, the Court determined that he was too enmeshed in matters involving [the] petitioner to preside over his contempt proceeding. Id. As in Murchison and Johnson, here the Judge's conflict of interest at the trial and sentencing stages arose from her earlier participation as a direct party in the special action proceeding. Caperton, 129 S.Ct. at 2261. The Murchison Court distinguished these circumstances from one in which a judge simply responded to conduct in open court. Murchison, 349 U.S. at 137, 75 S.Ct. 623. Similarly, Judge Hilliard's initial denial of the motion for additional counsel is not the basis for any claim of bias, nor was her status as a nominal respondent in the special action. Rather, it was her direct participation in the special action that made her part of the accusatory process and rendered her ineligible to preside over the remainder of Hurles's case. Id. The dissent attempts to distinguish Murchison and Johnson because Judge Hilliard (a) was only a party in an ancillary proceeding, rather than in the trial itself, (b) did not assume a prosecutorial role in Hurles's case, and (c) did not appear to have personal animus towards Hurles. Dissent at 1329-30. This misconstrues the two cases. First, the sources of the bias at issue in both Murchison and Johnson were separate pretrial proceedings. Id.; Johnson, 403 U.S. at 215, 91 S.Ct. 1778. Other courts have also construed Supreme Court case law to apply more broadly to the process as a whole. See, e.g., United States v. Meyer, 462 F.2d 827, 842 (D.C.Cir.1972) (describing necessity for recusal when the judge has adopted an adversary posture with respect to the alleged contemnor, as in Murchison and Johnson ). Second, the fact that Hurles initiated the special action proceeding and Judge Hilliard did not have a direct prosecutorial role is of no import. Indeed, we find no authority for the proposition that whether a judge affirmatively creates the conflict determines whether she can proceed impartially. Johnson itself involved a judge who had been named as a defendant in the petitioner's civil rights suit. Johnson, 403 U.S. at 215, 91 S.Ct. 1778. Murchison likewise does not state that the judge must be the initiator or instigator of the accusatory process; it states instead that she must recuse herself if she becomes part of the accusatory process. A defendant such as Judge Hilliard is still part of the process to the extent that she was an adversary in the special action and then proceeded to preside over Hurles's trial and single-handedly determine his sentence. See also Smith v. Lockhart, 923 F.2d 1314, 1322 n. 12 (8th Cir.1991) (finding that judge should have disqualified himself because he had been a defendant in Smith's federal class action suit); United States v. Meyer, 462 F.2d 827, 842 (D.C.Cir.1972) (emphasis added) (Thus, the trial judge, by virtue of his status as a defendant in a suit brought by the alleged contemnor, was in an adversary posture with respect to him, and was presumptively biased. This is true even though the judge's status as an adversary party was created by an action of the alleged contemnor (filing suit)....). Whether Judge Hilliard was a plaintiff or defendant in the action at issue is thus irrelevant; what matters is her adversarial posture toward Hurles. Finally, the Supreme Court has never required evidence of personal animus in order to demonstrate judicial bias. Though the Johnson Court made note of the judge's intemperate remarks ... concerning civil rights litigants, Johnson, 403 U.S. at 215, 91 S.Ct. 1778, it grounded its holding in the fact that the judge had previously been an adversary in the petitioner's civil rights suit. This comports with the Court's longstanding rule, which the dissent recognizes, that a petitioner need not demonstrate actual bias in order to succeed on his claim. See Caperton, 129 S.Ct. at 2262-63. Moreover, as discussed above, Judge Hilliard also made inappropriate statements in her response brief, statements which suggested she had prejudged the strength of Hurles's case. That Johnson happened to involve more direct evidence of personal animus does not render it inapplicable here. Respondent's position that Judge Hilliard prevailed in the special action, and therefore had no incentive to be biased against Hurles, is both misleading and logically unsound. While the Court of Appeals declined to exercise jurisdiction over the petition for special action, it sided with Hurles in holding that Judge Hilliard had no standing to appear as more than a nominal respondent in the case, or in any case with the posture of Hurles v. Superior Court . In fact, the court issued an opinion solely to point out the impropriety of the judge's actions and to set a precedent against any future involvement of that kind by a judge in a special action proceeding. Hurles, 849 P.2d at 1 (This petition for special action presents a significant threshold question of standing, which we publish this order to address.). Thus, on the subject of the opinion, Judge Hilliard did not prevail at all; rather, she was called out for inappropriate conduct. Id. at 4. Moreover, depending on the circumstances of the proceeding, whether the Judge had prevailed would not necessarily alter her temptation toward bias against the defendant. In this case, given the concern expressed by the Court of Appeals, Judge Hilliard had reason to be biased against Hurles independent of the fact that the court did not reach the merits of her order denying additional counsel. We emphasize again that it is the highly unusual facts of this case that compel us to conclude Hurles was denied his right to due process. As the Supreme Court has noted, most questions concerning a judge's qualifications to hear a case are not constitutional ones, because the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment establishes a constitutional floor, not a uniform standard. Bracy v. Gramley, 520 U.S. 899, 904-05, 117 S.Ct. 1793, 138 L.Ed.2d 97 (1997) (citations omitted). We deal here with a perfect storm of rare incidents that are unlikely to repeat themselves. Unlike in Caperton, where the Court had to contend with the possibility that its ruling would unleash a flood of recusal motions, this case presents no such danger. Caperton, 129 S.Ct. at 2265; see id. at 2274 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (arguing that the Court's decision would lead to a drastic increase in judicial bias litigation). First, as Judge Hilliard herself pointed out, special action appearances by trial judges no longer occur in the wake of Hurles v. Superior Court . Thus, this factual scenario is a relic of past practice in Arizona courts, rare even at the time and nonexistent today. Second, in this particular case, the judge in question was the sole arbiter of the defendant's death sentence; she alone weighed the evidence and determined that Hurles deserved to die. This practice is no longer constitutionally permissible in the wake of Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 597-98, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002). Indications of probable bias are thus all the more troubling in an exceptional case such as this, and the consequences of an unfair capital sentencing are irreversible. We must therefore conclude that [o]n these extreme facts the probability of actual bias rises to an unconstitutional level. Caperton, 129 S.Ct. at 2265.
At oral argument, when counsel was asked what relief she was seeking for her client pursuant to his judicial bias claim, she requested only a new sentencing. Therefore, we remand to the district court with instructions to grant a writ of habeas corpus as to Petitioner's sentence unless the State of Arizona elects, within 90 days of the issuance of the mandate, to resentence Petitioner before a jury and presided over by a judge other than Judge Hilliard, within a reasonable time thereafter to be determined by the district court. Because Hurles will receive a new sentencing and, if necessary, a new appeal after his sentence has been determined by a jury, we do not reach or decide the remainder of his claims on appeal, including whether his sentencing or appellate counsel were ineffective, and whether he defaulted on any of those claims. REVERSED and REMANDED.