Opinion ID: 78439
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Competency to Proceed with 3.850 Post-Conviction Claim

Text: Ferguson contends that he is entitled to a de novo evidentiary hearing because the 3.850 proceedings were held while he was incompetent. He asserts that the district court erred in finding both that he had no federal constitutional right to be competent during those proceedings and that the 3.850 court's competency determination was supported by the record. The circuit court held three days of evidentiary hearings in August and October 1988 on the question of competency. The court subsequently issued an order finding Ferguson competent and denying his motion to stay the proceedings because of his incompetency. The Florida Supreme Court initially issued a summary denial of Ferguson's appeal related to this decision. See Ferguson IV, 593 So.2d at 513. The court had the opportunity to reexamine this evidence in greater depth in a subsequent, post- Carter appeal. After determining that Carter applied retroactively, the court looked at whether the evidence supported the circuit court's competency findings. It recounted the evidence presented at the hearing, essentially agreeing with the circuit court's descriptions, acknowledged that the evidence regarding Ferguson's competency was conflicting, and found that there was adequate support for the circuit court to reject the opinions of those doctors finding Ferguson incompetent. As a result, the court concluded that the circuit court had not abused its discretion in denying the motion to stay. Even if Ferguson had a federal due process right to be competent during the 3.850 proceedings, [54] these competency findings are entitled to a presumption of correctness, which we may ignore only if the petitioner shows by clear and convincing evidence that the state court's determination was not fairly supported by the record. Turner v. Crosby, 339 F.3d 1247, 1273 (11th Cir.2003) (quotation marks and citation omitted); see Hauser ex rel. Crawford v. Moore, 223 F.3d 1316, 1323 (11th Cir.2000) (per curiam). This deference requires that [we] more than simply disagree with the state court before rejecting its factual determinations. Instead, [we] must conclude that the state court's findings lacked even fair support in the record. Turner, 339 F.3d at 1273 (quotation marks and citation omitted). After carefully examining the record from the competency hearing, we find that the evidence fairly supported the finding that Ferguson was competent to proceed with his 3.850 claim. Accordingly, we conclude that the district court properly denied both Ferguson's request for an evidentiary hearing and his habeas claim with respect to this issue.