Opinion ID: 202832
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the involuntary waiver claim

Text: We next address the petitioner's claim that the effects of the abuse, when combined with Loring's continued coercive control over her, forced her to forgo asserting battered woman's syndrome as a defense and, thus, violated her constitutional rights. The petitioner constructs this portion of her argument in two layers. The foundation is a line of Supreme Court cases that speak to an accused's constitutional right to present a defense. See, e.g., Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 51, 107 S.Ct. 2704, 97 L.Ed.2d 37 (1987); Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683, 690, 106 S.Ct. 2142, 90 L.Ed.2d 636 (1986); Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973); Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 18-19, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1967). But these cases are not directly applicable; the petitioner's right to present the battered woman's syndrome defense, if infringed at all, was infringed by Loring, not by the Commonwealth. In an effort to overcome this obstacle, the petitioner adds the next forensic layer. That layer builds on cases which, in her view, indicate that, even in the absence of state action, the right to present a defense may be abridged either by the conduct of a private party, see, e.g., Nichols v. Butler, 953 F.2d 1550, 1552 (11th Cir.1992) (en banc); United States v. Teague, 953 F.2d 1525, 1532 (11th Cir.1992) (en banc); United States v. Butts, 630 F.Supp. 1145, 1147-49 (D.Me.1986), or by an accused's own physical or mental condition, see, e.g., United States v. Ferrarini, 219 F.3d 145, 151 (2d Cir.2000). The district court voiced understandable skepticism about whether involuntary waiver of a particular defense could constitute a separate habeas claim. This may explain why the court did not specifically rule on this claim in its ore sponte denial of the habeas petition. We need not belabor the point. The availability of the claim as a ground for habeas relief is a question of law  and one that the state courts did not directly address. Accordingly, our review is de novo. See Fortini, 257 F.3d at 47. At first blush, this involuntary waiver claim may seem like nothing more than a recasting of the competence claim. But competence and voluntariness are separate (though complementary) inquiries. The focus of a competency inquiry is the defendant's mental capacity whereas the focus of a voluntariness inquiry is on whether the defendant actually does understand the significance and consequences of a particular decision and whether the decision is uncoerced. Godinez v. Moran, 509 U.S. 389, 401 n. 12, 113 S.Ct. 2680, 125 L.Ed.2d 321 (1993). Although the right to present a defense is of constitutional dimension, [8] it is not absolute. See, e.g., Nix v. Whiteside, 475 U.S. 157, 173, 106 S.Ct. 988, 89 L.Ed.2d 123 (1986) (recognizing that the right does not extend to committing perjury). Accordingly, the Supreme Court has tended to recognize the right in carefully defined contexts. See, e.g., Crane, 476 U.S. at 690, 106 S.Ct. 2142 (finding a violation of the right when the state precluded the defendant's use of competent, reliable evidence . . . central to the defendant's claim of innocence); Washington, 388 U.S. at 18-19, 87 S.Ct. 1920 (indicating that a denial of the right to compulsory process would be a denial of the right to present a defense). None of this gets the petitioner very far. Unless the accused's right to present a defense is infringed by state action, the infringement is not redressable by a federal court charged with vindicating federal constitutional rights. As a general proposition, the Fourteenth Amendment protects individuals exclusively against government action, leaving the conduct of private parties to regulation by statutory and common law. See, e.g., Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 U.S. 830, 837, 102 S.Ct. 2764, 73 L.Ed.2d 418 (1982); Logiodice v. Trs. of Me. Cent. Inst., 296 F.3d 22, 26 (1st Cir. 2002). This is an unsurmountable barrier to the petitioner's involuntary waiver claim. In mounting that claim, she does not assign the Commonwealth any responsibility for thwarting her right to present a defense. [9] She alleges only that Loring, a private party, interfered with her exercise of that right through his abusive and coercive behavior. That infringement, even if it transpired, does not pave the way for federal habeas relief. The several private party cases cited by the petitioner do not suggest a way around this barrier. Each of those cases involved coercion by the accused's attorney and turned on a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel. See Nichols, 953 F.2d at 1552; Teague, 953 F.2d at 1534; Butts, 630 F.Supp. at 1147-49. That is a recognized violation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and, thus, an independent basis for federal habeas relief. See, e.g., Strickland, 466 U.S. at 686, 104 S.Ct. 2052; Ouber v. Guarino, 293 F.3d 19, 35-36 (1st Cir.2002). The petitioner in this case makes no comparable claim. The petitioner's contention that a physical or mental condition, not attributable to state action, may work a violation of an accused's constitutional right to present a defense is wishful thinking. The single case that she cites in support of that proposition is far off the point. In that case, the defendant argued that the denial of his motion for either a severance or a continuance following a heart attack deprived him of his constitutional right to testify. See Ferrarini, 219 F.3d at 151. As such, the constitutional claim was focused not on the defendant's physical condition but, rather, on the district court's decision to forge ahead with the trial despite knowledge of the defendant's infirmity  a decision that plainly constituted state action. See Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 14, 68 S.Ct. 836, 92 L.Ed. 1161 (1948) (deeming long [ ] established the proposition that the actions of state courts and judicial officers in their official capacities constitute state action). The short of the matter is that the petitioner invites us to find a constitutional violation (separate and distinct from ineffective assistance of counsel) in the infringement of an accused's right to present a defense by a private party alone, without any awareness (actual or imputed) of that infringement by a state actor. We decline her invitation. [10] We emphasize that, in doing so, we do not hold that an infringement of this right by a private party may never result in a constitutional violation; this case does not require us to sweep so broadly. We do hold that the petitioner's involuntary waiver claim, as formulated here, is not cognizable as a separate and distinct ground for federal habeas relief.