Opinion ID: 3154164
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Teague bars Petitioner’s claim.

Text: Subject to two exceptions, Teague prohibits the application of a “new rule” on collateral review.3 Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348, 351–52 (2004). “A new rule is defined as a rule that was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U.S. 406, 416 (2007) (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted). “And a holding is not so dictated . . . unless it would have been apparent to all reasonable jurists.” Chaidez v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 1103, 1107 (2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). We must ask “whether a state court considering the defendant’s claim at the time his conviction became final would have felt compelled by existing precedent to conclude that the rule he seeks was required by the Constitution.” Caspari, 510 U.S. at 390 (brackets omitted). Petitioner’s conviction became final in 2003.
Petitioner contends that the Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), dictates the relevant rule to apply here. He formulates the relevant rule as the district court did: “[A] state may not arbitrarily inflict the death penalty.” Jones, 31 F. Supp. 3d at 1068. 3 Contrary to Petitioner’s argument, the State has not waived the defense that Teague bars relief on Petitioner’s claim. The State fully briefed the Teague argument to us on appeal. The State also raised the Teague bar to the district court at the hearing on July 16, 2014. And the district court addressed the issue in its written order. Jones, 31 F. Supp. 3d at 1068. Accordingly, we must decide the issue. Horn, 536 U.S. at 272. JONES V. DAVIS 17 In Furman, 408 U.S. at 239–40, the Supreme Court considered capital sentences imposed under Georgia’s and Texas’ criminal statutes. In a short per curiam opinion joined by five justices, the Court held that “the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty in these cases constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.” Id. Each of the five concurring justices filed a separate opinion in support of the judgments, but each opinion received only one vote—the author’s. Id. at 240–57 (Douglas, J., concurring); id. at 257–306 (Brennan, J., concurring); id. at 306–10 (Stewart, J., concurring); id. at 310–14 (White, J., concurring); id. at 314–74 (Marshall, J., concurring). Justices Brennan and Marshall thought that the death penalty is unconstitutional in all its applications. Id. at 305 (Brennan, J., concurring); id. at 359 (Marshall, J., concurring). The other three justices focused primarily on the fact that the state statutes provided no guidance to the factfinder as to when the death penalty is appropriate, thus raising the possibility of discriminatory and arbitrary imposition. See, e.g., id. at 253 (Douglas, J., concurring) (“[W]e deal with a system of law and of justice that leaves to the uncontrolled discretion of judges or juries the determination whether defendants committing these crimes should die or be imprisoned. Under these laws no standards govern the selection of the penalty. People live or die, dependent on the whim of one man or of 12.”); id. at 310 (Stewart, J., concurring) (“I simply conclude that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed.”); id. at 311 (White, J., concurring) (stating that he would hold unconstitutional “capital punishment statutes under which (1) the legislature authorizes the imposition of the death penalty for murder or rape; (2) the legislature does not itself 18 JONES V. DAVIS mandate the penalty in any particular class or kind of case (that is, legislative will is not frustrated if the penalty is never imposed), but delegates to judges or juries the decisions as to those cases, if any, in which the penalty will be utilized; and (3) judges and juries have ordered the death penalty with such infrequency that the odds are now very much against imposition and execution of the penalty with respect to any convicted murderer or rapist”). Four years later, in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), the Supreme Court held that an amended version of Georgia’s criminal statutes survived constitutional scrutiny. The Court described its decision in Furman as concerning primarily the earlier statutes’ lack of guidance given to the fact-finder in determining whether to impose the death penalty. See id. at 188–89 (plurality opinion) (“Furman held that [the death penalty] could not be imposed under sentencing procedures that created a substantial risk that it would be inflicted in an arbitrary and capricious manner. . . . Furman mandates that where discretion is afforded a sentencing body on a matter so grave as the determination of whether a human life should be taken or spared, that discretion must be suitably directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.”); id. at 220–21 (White, J., concurring) (“In Furman, this Court held that as a result of giving the sentencer unguided discretion to impose or not to impose the death penalty for murder, the penalty was being imposed discriminatorily, wantonly and freakishly, and so infrequently that any given death sentence was cruel and unusual.” (footnotes omitted)). The Court in Gregg held that the amended Georgia statutes—which provided new substantive standards to guide the fact-finder’s selection of punishment and new procedures, such as bifurcated guilt and penalty trials—met the concerns JONES V. DAVIS 19 expressed in Furman. Id. at 206–07 (plurality opinion); id. at 208, 220–26 (White, J., concurring). We have held that Teague bars a delay-based Lackey claim founded on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Furman and Gregg. In Smith v. Mahoney, 611 F.3d 978, 998 (9th Cir. 2010), the petitioner cited Furman and Gregg in support of his argument that “his four sentences in combination with his twenty-five years on death row satisfied any need for retribution and deterrence and that any penalty beyond such punishment violates the Eighth Amendment.” We noted that we previously had determined, “in the context of AEDPA, that ‘[t]he Supreme Court has never held that execution after a long tenure on death row is cruel and unusual punishment.’” Id. (alteration in original) (quoting Allen v. Ornoski, 435 F.3d 946, 958 (9th Cir. 2006)). We concluded that “a state court considering [the petitioner’s] Eighth Amendment claim at the time his conviction became final would not have felt compelled by existing precedent to conclude that the rule sought was required by the Constitution.” Id. at 998–99. Smith arguably controls here. Although the conviction in Smith became final in 1986 and Petitioner’s conviction became final in 2003, both convictions became final well after the Supreme Court’s decisions in Furman and Gregg. Both Petitioner here and the petitioner in Smith asserted that Furman created a constitutional rule holding that extended delay in carrying out an execution violates the Eighth Amendment because it serves no retributive or deterrent purpose. We are bound by Smith to conclude that Teague bars Petitioner’s claim to the extent that his claim is the same as the petitioner’s claim in Smith. 20 JONES V. DAVIS On the other hand, both the district court and the parties have portrayed Petitioner’s claim as different than an ordinary Lackey claim like the one discussed in Smith. An ordinary Lackey claim focuses on the delay experienced by the petitioner personally, without regard to the fate of others; and it asserts the legal theory that his continued imprisonment on Death Row does not meet the purposes of “retribution and deterrence.” Smith, 611 F.3d at 998. Petitioner’s amended claim 27, by contrast, focuses on the delay inherent in the system itself and on the fate of capital prisoners generally, without particular regard to Petitioner’s personal situation; and it asserts the legal theory that the delay in carrying out executions among all capital prisoners represents a form of arbitrary infliction of the death penalty. In short, the parties argue that, although both types of claims—the ordinary individualized claim and Petitioner’s systemic claim—stem from Furman and Gregg, the claims present materially different legal theories. Our recent decision in Andrews casts some doubt on that conclusion. See 798 F.3d at 789–90 (“[T]he state argues that a Lackey claim is an individual challenge, . . . while [the district court’s opinion in] Jones was based on the theory that the California system itself creates the constitutional infirmity . . . . We disagree.”). But, for purposes of the Teague analysis, we need not decide whether the claims differ. As we explain below, even if Petitioner’s claim rests on a legal theory different than the theory advanced in Smith, Teague bars it. In particular, we assume that, although Smith rejected as Teague-barred the theory that delay undermines the purposes of “retribution and deterrence,” Smith did not JONES V. DAVIS 21 address the theory that systemic delays have led to results that are unconstitutionally “arbitrary.”4 We next consult the Supreme Court’s guidance on formulating the relevant “rule” for Teague purposes. In Sawyer, 497 U.S. at 229, the Court considered whether it previously had announced a new rule for purposes of the Teague analysis when it decided Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U.S. 320 (1985). The petitioner cited the Court’s preCaldwell cases “in support of the argument that Caldwell was ‘rooted’ in the Eighth Amendment command of reliable sentencing.” Sawyer, 497 U.S. at 235–36. The Court agreed that those earlier cases stood “for the general proposition that capital sentencing must have guarantees of reliability.” Id. at 235. But the Court rejected the petitioner’s attempt to define the rule in such a broad fashion: “In petitioner’s view, Caldwell was dictated by the principle of reliability in capital sentencing. But the test would be meaningless if applied at this level of generality.” Id. at 236. Instead, the Court considered the context of Caldwell and asked whether the rule—conceived at a more specific level—was “dictated by existing law at the time petitioner’s [conviction] became final.” Id. at 237. 4 The district court’s opinion could be read to rest on two independent constitutional theories: “arbitrariness” and lack of “retribution and deterrence.” Perhaps in recognition of our decision in Smith, the district court’s Teague analysis covered the arbitrariness theory only; it did not discuss the theory of a lack of retribution and deterrence. Jones, 31 F. Supp. 3d at 1068. Before us, Petitioner has argued only that the “arbitrariness” theory survives the Teague bar; he does not argue that an independent theory of a lack of retribution and deterrence survives the Teague bar. 22 JONES V. DAVIS Similarly, in Beard v. Banks, 542 U.S. 406, 408 (2004), the Court considered whether it had announced a new rule for Teague purposes when it decided Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. 367 (1988). The court of appeals in Beard had considered decisions such as Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586 (1978), and “distilled the rule that the ‘Eighth Amendment prohibits any barrier to the sentencer’s consideration of mitigating evidence.’” Beard, 542 U.S. at 409. So formulated, the court of appeals had concluded that Lockett compelled the result in Mills and, accordingly, that Mills did not announce a new rule within the meaning of Teague. Beard, 542 U.S. at 410. The Supreme Court rejected that formulation: “The generalized Lockett rule (that the sentencer must be allowed to consider any mitigating evidence) could be thought to support the Court’s conclusion in Mills and [a second case]. But what is essential here is that it does not mandate the Mills rule.” Beard, 542 U.S. at 414; see also id. at 416 (rejecting as insufficient, for purposes of the Teague analysis, that “the Lockett principle—conceived of at a high level of generality—could be thought to support the Mills rule”). Instead, the Court asked whether, considering the more specific rules announced in Lockett and Mills, “reasonable jurists could have concluded that the Lockett line of cases did not compel Mills.” Beard, 542 U.S. at 416; see also Gray v. Netherland, 518 U.S. 152, 169 (1996) (rejecting as too broad the formulation of a rule that “a capital defendant must be afforded a meaningful opportunity to explain or deny the evidence introduced against him at sentencing”: “the newrule doctrine ‘would be meaningless if applied at this level of generality’” (quoting Sawyer, 497 U.S. at 236)); Gilmore v. Taylor, 508 U.S. 333, 344 (1993) (rejecting as too broad the formulation of a rule that “the right to present a defense includes the right to have the jury consider it, and that JONES V. DAVIS 23 confusing instructions on state law which prevent a jury from considering an affirmative defense therefore violate due process”: “the level of generality at which [the habeas petitioner] invokes this line of cases is far too great to provide any meaningful guidance for purposes of our Teague inquiry”). With that guidance in mind, we must reject Petitioner’s proposed formulation of the rule: “[A] state may not arbitrarily inflict the death penalty.” We agree with Petitioner that Furman and Gregg “articulate a general Eighth Amendment standard that the death penalty is unconstitutional if imposed arbitrarily.” Andrews, 798 F.3d at 790. But the Supreme Court precedent discussed above does not allow us to define the “rule” for Teague purposes at such a high level of generality. Just as the Supreme Court rejected the proposed rule in Sawyer—“reliability in sentencing”—even though its prior cases supported that general proposition, we must reject as too broad a rule that prohibits “arbitrariness” in imposing the death penalty. Although Furman condemned one specific form of arbitrariness related to the death penalty, it does not necessarily follow that Furman dictates the result in all other challenges to the death penalty under the banner of “arbitrariness.” Instead, we must examine whether, in 2003, reasonable jurists would have been compelled to conclude that the Eighth Amendment prohibited not only the form of arbitrariness prohibited by Furman, but also the form of arbitrariness alleged by Petitioner. In Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 362 (1988), the Court wrote: “Since Furman, our cases have insisted that the channeling and limiting of the sentencer’s discretion in imposing the death penalty is a fundamental constitutional 24 JONES V. DAVIS requirement for sufficiently minimizing the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.” The rule that Petitioner seeks to establish differs from Furman in two important respects. First, unlike the prisoners in Furman, Petitioner does not allege arbitrariness at sentencing. Instead, he alleges that the State “arbitrarily” determines when to carry out a lawfully and constitutionally imposed capital sentence. Second, Petitioner does not contend that the State has granted unfettered discretion to a fact-finder to decide on an execution date. Nor does he contend that the State intentionally chooses an execution date through a truly random selection process, such as a lottery. Instead, he contends that the delays in processing capital prisoners’ statutorily guaranteed appeals are long, such that few prisoners are ever actually executed, a result that Petitioner describes as “arbitrary” because it is hard to predict which prisoners in fact will be executed. In sum, Petitioner asks us to apply a rule that a state’s post-sentencing procedures are unconstitutionally “arbitrary” if they produce long delays resulting in few actual executions and uncertainty as to which prisoners will be executed. Furman did not dictate such a rule. In 2003, reasonable jurists could have differed as to whether Furman applied to challenges to the delays caused by a state’s post-sentencing procedures. As an initial matter, we know of no other case in the four decades since Furman was decided that has invalidated a state’s post-sentencing procedures as impermissibly arbitrary under the Eighth Amendment, strongly suggesting that the rule is novel. See Sawyer, 497 U.S. at 236 (“It is beyond question that no case prior to Caldwell invalidated a prosecutorial argument as impermissible under the Eighth Amendment.”). We have little doubt, of course, that Furman and Gregg would inform JONES V. DAVIS 25 the analysis of Petitioner’s claim, but Teague requires much more: “Even were we to agree with [the petitioner’s] assertion that [Furman and Gregg] inform, or even control or govern, the analysis of his claim, it does not follow that they compel the rule that [he] seeks.” Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 491 (1990). Importantly, there is a “simple and logical difference” between Furman’s rule prohibiting unfettered discretion by a jury deciding whether to impose the death penalty and a rule prohibiting systemic lengthy delays resulting from a state’s post-sentencing procedures in the carrying out of that sentence when permissibly imposed. Id. at 490; see id. (“There is a simple and logical difference between rules that govern what factors the jury must be permitted to consider in making its sentencing decision and rules that govern how the State may guide the jury in considering and weighing those factors in reaching a decision.”). We and other courts previously have rejected a foundation of Petitioner’s proposed rule—that delay in resolving post-conviction proceedings has constitutional significance: “It would indeed be a mockery of justice if the delay incurred during the prosecution of claims that fail on the merits could itself accrue into a substantive claim to the very relief that had been sought and properly denied in the first place.” McKenzie v. Day, 57 F.3d 1461, 1466 (9th Cir. 1995); see, e.g., Chambers v. Bowersox, 157 F.3d 560, 570 (8th Cir. 1998) (“We believe that delay in capital cases is too long. But delay, in large part, is a function of the desire of our courts, state and federal, to get it right, to explore exhaustively, or at least sufficiently, any argument that might save someone’s life. . . . [W]e do not see how the present situation even begins to approach a constitutional violation.” (footnote omitted)); Seumanu, 355 P.3d at 442 (“[S]uch delays are the product of a 26 JONES V. DAVIS constitutional safeguard, not a constitutional defect, because they assure careful review of the defendant’s conviction and sentence.” (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted)).5 Although the rule sought by Petitioner concerns not simply the delay that he has experienced personally but the allegedly “arbitrary” systemic results caused by delay, we cannot conclude, in light of the existing precedent rejecting the constitutional significance of delay, that Petitioner’s proposed rule would have been “apparent to all reasonable jurists” in 2003. Lambrix, 520 U.S. at 528. Similarly, one might reasonably conclude that systemic delays of the sort alleged by Petitioner are not “arbitrary” in the ordinary sense of the word. See Seumanu, 355 P.3d at 442 (“[A]llowing each case the necessary time, based on its individual facts and circumstances, to permit this court’s careful examination of the claims raised is the opposite of a system of random and arbitrary review.”). In sum, we conclude that Petitioner seeks to apply a “new rule,” which Teague prohibits.
Petitioner contends, in the alternative, that Teague’s first exception—for substantive rules—applies.6 See Summerlin, 542 U.S. at 351 (“New substantive rules generally apply 5 “Constitutional law is not the exclusive province of the federal courts, and in the Teague analysis the reasonable views of state courts are entitled to consideration along with those of federal courts.” Caspari, 510 U.S. at 395. 6 The second exception applies to a “watershed rule of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceedings.” Whorton, 549 U.S. at 417 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). Petitioner does not argue that his proposed rule falls within that “extremely narrow” exception. Id. JONES V. DAVIS 27 retroactively.”). In particular, he argues that his proposed new rule is substantive because it would “prohibit imposition of a certain type of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status.” Sawyer, 497 U.S. at 241 (emphasis added). For example, the Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of a capital prisoner who is insane, Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 410 (1986), or intellectually disabled, Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 321 (2002). Courts have held that those rules fall within the exception for substantive rules. E.g., Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 329–30 (1989), abrogated in other part by Atkins, 536 U.S. at 321; Davis v. Norris, 423 F.3d 868, 879 (8th Cir. 2005). Petitioner does not assert that he fits into one of the traditionally recognized classes of persons whose “status” is an intrinsic quality, such as insanity or intellectual disability. Instead, Petitioner argues that he—and all California capital prisoners—belong to a class of persons with the “status as individuals whose sentence ‘has been quietly transformed’ from one of death to one of grave uncertainty and torture and one that ‘no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.’” Pet’r’s Br. at 54 (emphasis omitted) (quoting Jones, 31 F. Supp. 3d at 1053). Petitioner’s expansive description of this exception finds no support in the cases. Nor is it supported by logic. Under Petitioner’s view, almost any procedural rule could be characterized as substantive merely by defining the petitioner as belonging to a class of persons with the “status” of those whose convictions or sentences were obtained through an unconstitutional procedural rule. We reject Petitioner’s unconventional interpretation of the exception for substantive rules. 28 JONES V. DAVIS