Opinion ID: 619888
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: AEDPA Deference and Due Process

Text: As a preliminary matter, Hines argues that the district court incorrectly applied AEDPA deference to the state court’s determinations. He contends that, by deciding his Atkins claim without a live hearing, the state court violated federal law and that therefore the district court should have reviewed his claim de novo. At the COA stage, we ask “whether the District Court’s application of AEDPA deference . . . was debatable amongst jurists of reason.” Miller-El, 537 U.S. at 341. As we explained above, AEDPA normally mandates deference to state court proceedings. Indeed, a habeas petitioner may not raise a claim for federal habeas relief on the basis of deficiencies in his state habeas proceeding. See Moore v. Dretke, 369 F.3d 844, 846 (5th Cir. 2004) (per curiam) (“It is axiomatic that infirmities in state habeas proceedings do not constitute grounds for federal habeas relief.” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has clarified that a state court’s unreasonable application of federal law within the broader context of adjudicating a defendant’s claim can negate the requirement of AEDPA deference. See Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 953 (2007) (“When a state court’s adjudication of a claim is dependent on an antecedent unreasonable 6 Case: 11-70010 Document: 00511707653 Page: 7 Date Filed: 12/27/2011 No. 11-70010 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.”).2 Such federal law may include due process, as “[e]ven though Atkins did not specifically mandate any set of procedures, it was decided against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s and lower court’s due process jurisprudence.” Rivera v. Quarterman, 505 F.3d 349, 358 (5th Cir. 2007). We applied Panetti’s holding in an Atkins context in both Rivera v. Quarterman, 505 F.3d 349 (5th Cir. 2007), and Wiley v. Epps, 625 F.3d 199 (5th Cir. 2010). In Rivera, we concluded that the CCA’s decision that a petitioner had failed to establish a prima facie case of mental retardation and thus could not develop his claim further through a hearing, despite a substantial showing of evidence by petitioner, was an unreasonable application of federal law and left “our review of petitioner’s underlying incompetency claim . . . unencumbered by the deference AEDPA normally requires.” Rivera, 505 F.3d at 358 (citing Panetti, 551 U.S. at 947–48).3 As we explained, Panetti drew on Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), and “[u]nder Ford, ‘[o]nce a prisoner seeking a stay of execution has made a ‘substantial threshold showing of insanity,’ the protection afforded by procedural due process includes a ‘fair hearing’ in accord with fundamental fairness.’” Id. (quoting Panetti, 551 U.S. at 949 (quoting Ford, 477 U.S. at 426 (Powell, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment))). In Rivera, the CCA’s failure to provide a prisoner a forum in which to develop his claim after he made such an evidentiary showing constituted an unreasonable 2 In Panetti, the Supreme Court relied on its previous decision in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), in which the Court held that defendants who claim ineligibility for the death penalty because of insanity are entitled to a hearing compliant with due process and fundamental fairness. See Panetti, 551 U.S. at 949–50 (citing Ford, 477 U.S. at 424–27 (Powell, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment)). 3 A “prima facie case of mental retardation ‘is simply a sufficient showing of possible merit to warrant a fuller [exploration] by the district court.’” Wiley, 625 F.3d at 213 (quoting In re Henderson, 462 F.3d 413, 415 (5th Cir. 2006)) (alteration in original). 7 Case: 11-70010 Document: 00511707653 Page: 8 Date Filed: 12/27/2011 No. 11-70010 application of clearly established federal law and stripped the state court proceedings of AEDPA deference. Id. at 357–58, 361. We again declined to apply AEDPA deference in Wiley, a habeas appeal from a Mississippi capital conviction. Wiley, 625 F.3d at 213. In that case, a prisoner satisfied the specific state law requirements for a prima facie case of mental retardation under Mississippi law and was therefore entitled to an evidentiary hearing regarding his Atkins claim. Id. at 206–07 (citing Chase v. State, 873 So.2d 1013, 1028–29 (Miss. 2004)). The Mississippi Supreme Court held in Chase that “[u]pon receiving [a substantial showing of mental retardation by the petitioner], and any response filed by the State, the trial court shall provide a reasonable amount of time for testing the defendant for mental retardation. Thereafter, the trial court shall set a hearing on the motion, and the matter shall proceed.” Chase, 873 So.2d at 1029. In light of this standard, we found that “the Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision in Wiley’s case to deny a hearing and decide the mental retardation question appear[ed] to be an anomaly” and at odds with its own stated procedures and precedents both prior to and after Wiley’s case. Wiley, 625 F.3d at 209–11. This inconsistency was a violation of “the core due process concepts of notice and foreseeability . . . . [as] [t]he state court applied an unexpectedly more stringent process to Wiley without notice, contrary to its announced procedure in numerous cases.” Id. at 211 (citations omitted). Accordingly, we held that the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably applied clearly established federal law by not remanding Wiley’s petition to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing. Id. at 213 (citing Rivera, 505 F.3d at 357; Panetti, 551 U.S. at 948). Hines argues that the district court’s decision to apply AEDPA deference to the state court’s findings is debatable because our holding in Wiley necessitated a de novo review of the state court’s determinations—i.e., one 8 Case: 11-70010 Document: 00511707653 Page: 9 Date Filed: 12/27/2011 No. 11-70010 devoid of AEDPA deference. Hines contends that he presented a prima facie case of mental retardation to the state court but was denied a live evidentiary hearing in violation of his due process rights. To make this point, Hines argues that our decision in Wiley did not turn only on Mississippi’s specific procedures, but was a broader holding that a state court’s failure to provide an Atkins hearing after any prima facie showing of mental retardation is a due process violation. We strongly disagree. Hines’s reading of Wiley misapprehends how the Mississippi Supreme Court violated federal due process when adjudicating Wiley’s state habeas claim. Our decision in Wiley was based on the fact that “Wiley presented a prima facie case of mental retardation in his state court habeas application under the Mississippi standards for an Atkins claim.” Id. at 213 (emphasis added). Indeed, over the course of our opinion, we referred to multiple Mississippi decisions dealing with Atkins-related procedures, including the Mississippi Supreme Court’s controlling decision in Chase v. State, 873 So.2d 1013 (Miss. 2004), which explicitly held that a prima facie showing of mental retardation establishes a prisoner’s right to an evidentiary hearing. See Wiley, 625 F.3d at 205–13 (citing Chase, 873 So.2d at 1029–30). Our concern was that by disregarding its holding in Chase and “adjudicating Wiley’s mental retardation claim without telling him that it would do so [i.e., by not granting an evidentiary hearing after Wiley made out a prima facie case of mental retardation], the state court implicated the core due process concepts of notice and foreseeability.” Id. at 211 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Put differently, the Mississippi court’s failure to follow its own procedures, which it applied in similar cases before and after Wiley’s, constituted an “unreasonable application of federal law [specifically due process], as a predicate for adjudicating a defendant’s claim, [and] undermine[d] the AEDPA deference given to the state court adjudication.” Id. at 207 (emphasis added). 9 Case: 11-70010 Document: 00511707653 Page: 10 Date Filed: 12/27/2011 No. 11-70010 Hines’s situation is not similar to Wiley’s because Texas law is different from Mississippi law. Under the Mississippi law at issue in Wiley, a prima facie case of mental retardation guaranteed a prisoner a live evidentiary hearing. No such guarantee exists under Texas’s Atkins procedures. At the habeas stage in Texas courts, Atkins claims are governed by the same procedures as other habeas claims and there is no explicit requirement for a live evidentiary hearing. Ex parte Briseño, 135 S.W.3d 1, 7–9 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004); see, e.g., Ex parte Simpson, 136 S.W.3d 660, 663 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004) (explaining that while “it is advisable to have a[] [live] evidentiary hearing to determine mentalretardation claims raised for the first time in post-Atkins habeas applications, it is not necessary where . . . the habeas applicant relies primarily upon trial testimony”); see also id. at 663 n.8 (“[D]uring this writ proceeding, both parties could, and did, present whatever additional evidence they believed supported or negated the fact of mental retardation. It was only after consulting with the attorneys that the trial judge determined that a live evidentiary hearing was not necessary.”). Thus, while a live evidentiary hearing may be recommended in some Atkins cases in Texas, a thorough presentation of evidence at the state habeas proceeding can obviate the need for such a hearing. The CCA properly explained in reviewing Hines’s case that, under Texas law, “[w]hile we have said that the better practice is to conduct a live hearing in cases [such as Hines’s], . . . the evidence before the trial court was extensive and we did not specify that a live hearing was necessary when we remanded the case.” Hines, 2005 WL 3119030 at  (citation omitted). Unsurprisingly, Hines can cite no Texas authority to support the proposition that a live evidentiary hearing is required to adjudicate a habeas Atkins claim, the key requirement that would be necessary to make his own situation comparable to that of Wiley. Indeed, the central problem in Wiley—that the Mississippi Supreme Court behaved inconsistently in Wiley’s case with respect to its own precedents—is 10 Case: 11-70010 Document: 00511707653 Page: 11 Date Filed: 12/27/2011 No. 11-70010 vitiated in this case because the CCA has specifically labeled Atkins hearings as “advisable” measures. Simpson, 136 S.W.3d at 663. Accordingly, the decision of the CCA to decide Hines’s case on the basis of a paper record does not fall within the ambit of Wiley. Thus, the district court’s decision to apply AEDPA deference could not be debated among reasonable jurists. Hines, however, further urges that Panetti and Rivera, the cases on which we based our decision in Wiley, demanded of their own force that the district court review the state court’s decision de novo. Again, he is mistaken. The petitioner in Panetti made a “substantial threshold showing of insanity,” but was denied a constitutionally adequate opportunity to make his insanity case, as required by Ford, in state court. Panetti, 551 U.S. at 949–50. These Ford requirements “include an opportunity to submit ‘evidence and argument from the prisoner’s counsel, including expert psychiatric evidence that may differ from the State’s own psychiatric examination.’” Id. at 950 (quoting Ford, 477 U.S. at 427 (Powell, J., opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment)). However, there is no indication that a live hearing, Hines’s key complaint with regard to the state court’s procedures, is required in an Atkins claim as a matter of either federal or state law.4 Likewise, Rivera cannot support Hines’s claim. In that case,the CCA’s “finding that Rivera had not made a prima facie showing [of mental retardation] deprived Rivera of the opportunity to develop fully the substance of his claim before the state courts.” Rivera, 505 F.3d at 357. In light of this, we held that: Even though Atkins did not specifically mandate any set of procedures, it was decided against the backdrop of the Supreme 4 Even the utility of such hearings was questioned by Justice Powell in the insanity context in Ford. See Ford, 477 U.S. at 426 (“Th[e] combination of factors [involved in adjudicating insanity] means that ordinary adversarial procedures—complete with live testimony, cross-examination, and oral argument by counsel—are not necessarily the best means of arriving at sound, consistent judgments as to a defendant’s sanity.”). 11 Case: 11-70010 Document: 00511707653 Page: 12 Date Filed: 12/27/2011 No. 11-70010 Court’s and lower court’s due process jurisprudence. The lesson we draw from Panetti is that, where a petitioner has made a prima facie showing of retardation as Rivera did, the state court’s failure to provide him with the opportunity to develop his claim deprives the state court’s decision of the deference normally due. Id. at 358 (emphasis added and footnote omitted). In contrast, here there is no indication that the absence of a live hearing at the state court prevented Hines from developing his mental retardation claim. To the contrary, Hines has had ample opportunities to develop this claim. Therefore, neither Panetti nor Rivera provide grounds for debating the district court’s conclusion. Our foregoing analysis reveals that reasonable jurists could not debate the district court’s decision to apply AEDPA deference. Texas state law recommends but does not require the use of a live hearing in cases such as Hines’s, in which a substantial evidentiary record suffices to present a mental retardation claim. Nor was Hines denied an opportunity to develop his claim throughout the course of the state proceedings. Accordingly, we hold that reasonable jurists could not disagree with the district court’s application of AEDPA deference to the state court’s findings and conclusions in Hines’s case.