Opinion ID: 75729
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the procedural due process issue involving mental competency

Text: 31 The first issue specified in the certificate of appealability involves a straightforward mental incompetency procedural due process claim, which was timely raised on direct appeal and rejected on the merits without discussion by the Fourth District Court of Appeal. See Wright v. State, 536 So.2d 1072 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1988). 1 Applying the deference prescribed by 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), the district court held that the state appellate court's decision on this issue was neither contrary to, nor involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court. 32 To start with, Wright says that the district court should not have given the state court's decision any deference under § 2254(d)(1), because the rejection of this claim without any discussion of it does not amount to the claim having been adjudicated on the merits in the state court proceedings, which is a predicate for the application of § 2254(d)(1). We have not previously addressed this issue, although we brushed up against it in Romine v. Head, 253 F.3d 1349 (11th Cir.), reh'g and reh'g en banc denied, 273 F.3d 1118 (11th Cir.2001), petition for cert. filed (U.S. Nov. 12, 2001) (No. 01-798). In that case, it was unclear whether the federal constitutional issue had been raised and decided in state court — we expressed grave doubt that it had been — and the attorneys representing the State insisted that the state court had not addressed the federal issue. Id. at 1365. In those circumstances, we held that no deference was due the state court's decision of the federal constitutional issue for the simple reason that the state court probably had not decided it. Id. We would not defer to that which did not exist. 33 The circumstances in this case are different from those in Romine, because here neither side denies that the federal issue was raised in and decided by the state court, and we do not gravely doubt that it was. Instead, the question here is whether the state court's summary, which is to say unexplicated, rejection of the federal constitutional issue qualifies as an adjudication under § 2254(d) so that it is entitled to deference. Six circuits have squarely addressed that question, all of them concluding that the summary nature of a state court's decision does not lessen the deference that it is due. See Sellan v. Kuhlman, 261 F.3d 303, 310-12 (2d Cir.2001); Bell v. Jarvis, 236 F.3d 149, 158-62 (4th Cir.2000) (en banc), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 122 S.Ct. 74, 151 L.Ed.2d 39 (2001); Harris v. Stovall, 212 F.3d 940, 943 n. 1 (6th Cir.2000); Aycox v. Lytle, 196 F.3d 1174, 1177-78 (10th Cir.1999); James v. Bowersox, 187 F.3d 866, 869 (8th Cir.1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1143, 120 S.Ct. 994, 145 L.Ed.2d 942 (2000); Delgado v. Lewis, 181 F.3d 1087, 1091 n. 3 (9th Cir.1999), cert. granted and judgment vacated on other grounds, 528 U.S. 1133, 120 S.Ct. 1002, 145 L.Ed.2d 926 (2000). 2 We agree with those circuits. 34 We begin with the plain language of the statute itself. See Harris v. Garner, 216 F.3d 970, 972 (11th Cir.2000) (en banc) (We begin our construction of [a statutory provision] where courts should always begin the process of legislative interpretation, and where they often should end it as well, which is with the words of the statutory provision.), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 1065, 121 S.Ct. 2214, 150 L.Ed.2d 208 (2001); United States v. Steele, 147 F.3d 1316, 1318 (11th Cir.1998) (In construing a statute we must begin, and often should end as well, with the language of the statute itself. (quotation marks and citation omitted)). The plain language of § 2254(d)(1) requires only that the federal claim have been adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings and have resulted in a decision that is neither contrary to nor involves an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent. That is all the text of the provision requires. 35 A judicial decision and a judicial opinion are not the same thing. The chief responsibility of judges is to decide the case before them. They may, or may not, attempt to explain the decision in an opinion. The text of § 2254(d)(1) accepts this orthodox view. See Sellan, 261 F.3d at 311 (Nothing in the phrase `adjudicated on the merits' requires the state court to have explained its reasoning process.); Bell, 236 F.3d at 160 (First and foremost, the language of § 2254(d) does not support such a requirement.). The statutory language focuses on the result, not on the reasoning that led to the result, and nothing in that language requires the state court adjudication that has resulted in a decision to be accompanied by an opinion that explains the state court's rationale. See Sellan, 261 F.3d at 311 (Nowhere does the statute make reference to the state court's process of reasoning.); Aycox, 196 F.3d at 1177 (The focus is on the state court's decision or resolution of the case. (emphasis in original)). Accordingly, all that is required is a rejection of the claim on the merits, not an explanation. 36 To conclude otherwise on this issue would be writing into § 2254(d)(1) an additional requirement that Congress did not put there — a requirement that the state courts explain the rationale of their decisions. Some might view such an addition as an improvement, others would not. Regardless, it would be an addition, and courts ought not add to what the legislature has said is the law. See Garner, 216 F.3d at 976 (declining to add exception to statute on ground that [w]e will not do to the statutory language what Congress did not do with it, because the role of the judicial branch is to apply statutory language, not to rewrite it). Our function is to apply statutes, to carry out the expression of the legislative will that is embodied in them, not to improve statutes by altering them. See Badaracco v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue, 464 U.S. 386, 398, 104 S.Ct. 756, 764, 78 L.Ed.2d 549 (1984) (Courts are not authorized to rewrite a statute because they might deem its effects susceptible of improvement.). 37 The plain language of § 2254(d)(1) is enough, and we could stop there, but we add another thought. Reading into the statute a requirement that state courts spell out their rationale would run counter to the main thrust of the amendments to the habeas corpus provisions that were enacted as part of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). Those amendments, including the one that resulted in § 2254(d), plainly were intended to require greater federal court deference to state court decisions and to promote more federal-state judicial comity. Telling state courts when and how to write opinions to accompany their decisions is no way to promote comity. Requiring state courts to put forward rationales for their decisions so that federal courts can examine their thinking smacks of a grading papers approach that is outmoded in the post-AEDPA era. See Hennon v. Cooper, 109 F.3d 330, 335 (7th Cir.1997) (rejecting the approach to § 2254(d)(1) that would have federal habeas courts judge the quality of the state courts' reasoning, because such an approach would place the federal court in just the kind of tutelary relation to the state courts that the recent amendments are designed to end). In § 2254(d) Congress meant to, and did, mandate deference to state court adjudications on the merits of federal constitutional issues, and a decision that does not rest on procedural grounds alone is an adjudication on the merits regardless of the form in which it is expressed. 3 38 We turn now to the question of whether the state court's rejection of Wright's procedural due process claim is a decision that involves an unreasonable application of ... clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States. § 2254(d)(1). The clearly established federal law on this issue, as determined by the Supreme Court, is set out in Drope v. Missouri, 420 U.S. 162, 95 S.Ct. 896, 43 L.Ed.2d 103 (1975), Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 86 S.Ct. 836, 15 L.Ed.2d 815 (1966), and Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402, 80 S.Ct. 788, 4 L.Ed.2d 824 (1960). Under Dusky the standard for mental competency to stand trial is whether [a defendant] has sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding — and whether he has a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him. 362 U.S. at 402, 80 S.Ct. at 789 (internal quotation marks omitted). Under Drope and Pate the standard for determining whether a trial court violates the Due Process Clause by failing to conduct an inquiry into a defendant's competency to stand trial, where no inquiry is requested, is whether the objective facts known to the trial court at the time create a bona fide doubt as to mental competency. Drope, 420 U.S. at 180, 95 S.Ct. at 908; Pate, 383 U.S. at 385, 86 S.Ct. at 842 (Where the evidence raises a ` bona fide doubt' as to a defendant's competence to stand trial, the [trial] judge on his own motion must impanel a jury and conduct a sanity hearing....). 39 There is no contention that the state appellate court's rejection of the mental competency procedural due process claim in this case was contrary to the actual decisions in Drope, Pate, or Dusky; instead, the dispute centers around the unreasonable application prong of § 2254(d)(1). In determining whether the state court's decision is an unreasonable application of the law set out in those three Supreme Court decisions, we need not decide whether we would have reached the same result as the state court if we had been deciding the issue in the first instance. Instead, we decide only whether the state court's decision of the issue is objectively unreasonable. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 411, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 1522, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000) (Under § 2254(d)(1)'s `unreasonable application' clause, then, a federal habeas court may not issue the writ simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Rather, that application must also be unreasonable.); Brown v. Head, 272 F.3d 1308, (11th Cir. 2001) (It is the objective reasonableness, not the correctness per se, of the state court decision that we are to decide.). 40 The Fourth District Court of Appeals decision rejecting Wright's procedural due process claim relating to mental incompetency is not objectively unreasonable. The facts known to the judge during the trial are that Wright suffers from schizophrenia, which had caused him to be judged mentally incompetent in 1970, which was seventeen years before the trial in this case. And he knew that Wright had been adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity when he was tried on the charges relating to that earlier case. But the trial judge also knew that, on that distant occasion, following his treatment in a hospital Wright's mental competency had been restored. The medical experts all agreed that Wright's illness was one that went into periods of remission from time to time. The judge heard that in the years between the findings and adjudication in 1970 and the trial of this case in 1987, Wright had been tried and convicted on a number of occasions without any finding (or apparent suggestion) that he was mentally incompetent. 41 Although Wright attempted an insanity defense at the trial of this case in January of 1987, it failed. One expert, who had examined Wright five weeks before the trial, testified that he had been actively psychotic at the time of the crime five months earlier, but the expert did not testify that Wright was not mentally competent either at the time of the evaluation, or more importantly, at the time of the trial. Instead, he testified that during the evaluation Wright had been responsive in answering questions about his name, address, and similar things, and that Wright had accurately described to him the crime and Wright's role in it. There was no expert opinion or other testimony suggesting that Wright was mentally incompetent to stand trial in 1987. 4 There was plenty of unrebutted testimony indicating that, whatever may have been his condition on other occasions, Wright was mentally competent during the period immediately leading up to the trial. A corrections officer and an employee testified without contradiction about Wright's perfectly normal activities in jail from shortly after his arrest to the date of the trial. They told about Wright's legal research and drafting, the legal assistance and advice he provided other inmates, his normal discussions with guards and inmates, his reading and watching TV, playing cards, and plans to learn Spanish. 42 The state appellate court's rejection of Wright's procedural due process claim implicitly reflects a conclusion that all of the facts considered together were not sufficient to raise a bona fide doubt as to whether Wright, at the time of this trial in January of 1987, had sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding — and whether he [had] a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him. Dusky, 362 U.S. at 402, 80 S.Ct. at 789 (internal quotation marks omitted). Because that conclusion is not objectively unreasonable, the district court did not err in denying habeas relief to Wright on this claim. 43