Opinion ID: 768365
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Entitlement to Relief Under Ford

Text: 26 Coe argues that the Tennessee courts erred in deciding his competency to be executed because they evaluated his present competency rather than determining his future competency at the moment of execution. The thrust of Coe's argument is that, he claims, he suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which causes him to dissociate under stress, and that he will thus dissociate as his execution grows near and will not have the requisite competency at the time of his execution. 27 In Ford, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of a prisoner who is insane. See 477 U.S. at 409-10. If taken to its logical extreme, as suggested by Coe, a state would be obligated to determine whether a prisoner is competent to be executed at the exact moment of execution in order to comply with Ford. Justice O'Connor acknowledged that this problem is due to the nature of a competency-to-be-executed claim in her opinion in Ford: 28 By definition, [a Ford claim] can never be conclusively and finally determined: Regardless of the number of prior adjudications of the issue, until the very moment of execution the prisoner can claim that he has become insane sometime after the previous determination to the contrary. 29 Id. at 429 (O'Connor, J., concurring in the result in part and dissenting in part). 30 We do not believe that the Supreme Court in Ford meant to require a state to determine a prisoner's competency at the exact time of his execution. It would be impossible to follow the procedural protections identified in the opinions of Justice Marshall and Justice Powell in a meaningful way in the moments before execution; a state could not make a sound decision in accordance with due process regarding a prisoner's competency to be executed at this time. Nevertheless, a state must make its determination when execution is imminent. See Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal, 523 U.S. 637, 644-45 (1998). Whether the competency determination is made in the week or the month before the prisoner's scheduled execution, the state is entitled to exercise discretion in creating its own procedures [a]s long as basic fairnessis observed. Ford, 477 U.S. at 427 (Powell, J., concurring). 31 In the present case, on December 15, 1999, the Tennessee Supreme Court remanded the issue of Coe's competency to the Tennessee trial court after setting Coe's execution for March 23, 2000. The trial court held an evidentiary hearing on Coe's competency in late January 2000 and issued its decision on February 2, 2000. The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's decision on March 6, 2000. We conclude that the Tennessee courts' determination was made while Coe's execution, less than two months away, was imminent. The Tennessee courts' use of the phrase present competency did not constitute a misunderstanding of the proper issue under Ford of whether Coe is competent to be executed at his imminently scheduled execution date. 32 We acknowledge Coe's argument that, due to the special nature of his claimed DID affliction, he will degenerate as the execution looms and his condition will significantly worsen. The Tennessee Supreme Court expressly set forth a procedure in Van Tran to deal with this type of situation. The court stated, 33 If a prisoner is found to be competent, subsequent Ford claims will be disallowed unless the prisoner, by way of motion for stay, provides this Court with an affidavit from a mental health professional showing that there has been a substantial change in the prisoner's mental health since the previous determination of competency was made and the showing is sufficient to raise a substantial question about the prisoner's competency to be executed. 34 Van Tran, 6 S.W.3d at 272. This state procedure adequately addresses the situation in which a prisoner's competency changes after the Tennessee state courts make their competency determination by requiring the prisoner to establish a substantial change in his competency. In light of the fact that two state courts have already made a determination of Coe's competency to be executed, we conclude that Tennessee's requirement that he make a threshold showing of a substantial change comports with notions of basic fairness. 35 In sum, because the procedures followed by the Tennessee courts in this case satisfy the requirements of due process, we cannot conclude that they represent an unreasonable application of the Ford opinion.