Opinion ID: 2789470
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Request for Stay Due to Incompetency

Text: Finally, we affirm the district court’s denial of Medina’s request for a stay of his habeas proceedings due to his incompetency. In Ryan v. Gonzales, 133 S. Ct. 696 (2013), the Court held that 18 U.S.C. § 3599(a)(2) does not provide a statutory right to competency during federal habeas proceedings, and the Court constrained the discretion of district courts to issue stays when there is no reasonable hope of a petitioner regaining competence in the foreseeable future. Medina asserts that Gonzales has no applicability to his preAEDPA petition. We disagree. As an initial matter, the Supreme Court’s holding that 18 U.S.C. § 3599(a)(2) does not provide a statutory right to competency in federal habeas proceedings is not limited to post-AEDPA cases. Indeed, Gonzales expressly overruled our decision in Rohan v. Woodford, 334 F.3d 803 (9th Cir. 2003), a pre-AEDPA case in which we held that “‘where an incompetent capital habeas petitioner raises claims that could potentially benefit from his ability to communicate rationally, refusing to stay proceedings pending restoration of competence denies him his statutory right to assistance of MEDINA V. CHAPPELL 25 counsel, whether or not counsel can identify with precision the information sought.’” Gonzales, 133 S. Ct. at 701 (quoting Rohan, 334 F.3d at 819). The pre-AEDPA/post-AEDPA distinction is relevant, however, as to Part III of Gonzales, in which the Court went on to “address only [the] outer limits” “of the district court’s discretion to issue stays.” Gonzales, 133 S. Ct. at 708. This portion of the Court’s opinion relies heavily upon Congress’s intent in enacting AEDPA and the practical consequences of stays for cases subject to AEDPA. See id. at 708–09. Consequently, the Court’s conclusion that “[w]here there is no reasonable hope of competence, a stay is inappropriate and merely frustrates the State’s attempts to defend its presumptively valid judgment,”6 id. at 709, is inapplicable to pre-AEDPA petitions such as this one. But the inapplicability of this portion of the Court’s holding does not aid Medina’s case. As the Court noted, defining the outer limits of district courts’ authority to grant stays does not affect our analysis in those cases, like Medina’s, in which the district court has denied a stay. In such a case, to grant relief, “we would have to conclude that the District Court abused its discretion in denying the stay.” Id. at 707 n.13. The district court did not abuse its discretion here. 6 Although the Court did not cabin its analysis to AEDPA, it roots its analysis in the congressional purpose in enacting AEDPA. Gonzales, 133 S. Ct. at 709 (“Without time limits [on stays], petitioners could frustrate AEDPA’s goal of finality by dragging out indefinitely their federal habeas review.” (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks omitted)). 26 MEDINA V. CHAPPELL Medina claimed that his competent assistance was relevant to his Marsden, court shackling, and ineffective assistance of counsel claims. The district court appropriately concluded that the first two claims were record based, and therefore, even under the statutory right to competence framework, no stay was necessary. See Blair v. Martel, 645 F.3d 1151, 1156 (9th Cir. 2011). With respect to the ineffective assistance of counsel claims, the district court correctly concluded that Medina failed to specify which of his ineffective assistance of counsel claims required his input. Further, Medina finds himself in the same position as the petitioner in Blair. He has not put forth a showing that there was evidence concerning his family background, not already in the record and which he could assist in uncovering if he were competent, that would support his claim that counsel conducted an inadequate investigation at the penalty phase. Thus, although the district court may have acted within its discretion had it issued a stay, it did not abuse its discretion in declining to do so.