Court Opinion

ID: 9487092
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:08:01.574839+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:05.615622
License: Public Domain

NOONAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
On January 18, 1979, Chischilly was indicted on four counts of unlawful “sexual contact” with four separate women during 1978 and 1979. On April 9, 1979, a competency hearing was held in the Superior Court of Yavapai County, Arizona, at the end of which the court ruled “that the defendant is incompetent, that he does not understand these acts, and that he cannot assist counsel in his defense.” Therefore the judge dismissed the charges of sexual contact without prejudice.
On October 14, 1983, Chischilly was sentenced in a state court in New Mexico for aggravated battery and attempted murder. He was ordered to be imprisoned for six years; the court recommended that he also be moved as early as possible to the state hospital for long-term mental health treatment.
On February 21, 1990, he was indicted in this case for murder and aggravated sexual abuse. The case came on for trial before the federal judge who, as an Arizona state judge in 1979, had found him incompetent, unable to understand the nature of his acts, and unable to assist in his own defense. Chischilly asked this judge to determine that he was incompetent to stand trial in this case. In the course of preparing for argument on the motion, counsel discovered the judge’s previous rulings. Chischilly then filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 455 asking the judge to disqualify himself. Counsel for Chischilly argued that the standard is an objective one, which requires recusal when a reasonable person with knowledge of all the facts would conclude that the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned. Counsel reminded the judge of his 1979 decision and observed that the charges in 1979 were similar in nature to the offenses with which he was charged here. Counsel also observed that since 1979 Chischilly had been “involved in a continuing series of similar incidents.” Counsel argued that “it would be normal for any judge” to look back and rethink the decision made in 1979 and that “it would be virtually impossible” for the judge to ignore what he had done then. No other judge, counsel contended, would have to ask himself, “Did I do the right thing?”
The government opposed the motion. The prosecutor argued that the judge was “in a better position than any other judge to handle this matter.” Counsel for Chischilly responded that what had happened was “probably a judge’s worst nightmare,” having to look back and say, “If only I hadn’t released this person, maybe we wouldn’t be here.”
After hearing the arguments, the judge said that he had not released Chischilly, that “there is a statutory procedure provided for the determination of competency and the court followed that, and so there would be no worry on the court’s part that it made the right — wrong determination at that time. It did not.” The judge said that he had no independent recollection of the 1979 proceedings and “only vague recollection of the name Chischilly.” He added, “The one way you can survive in this business is by making your decisions and moving on down the line and not reflecting on them as the years go by.” Finally, the judge noted that the nature of the job was “to see the same defendant in different circumstances in different cases.... If the logic of this motion were carried far enough, it would mean that a judge could only sit on the case of one defendant once_” The judge denied the motion to recuse himself.
Analysis. The standard to be applied is determined by 28 U.S.C. § 455. Subsection (a) of the statute declares, “Any justice, *1163judge or magistrate of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Subsection (b), in relevant part provides, “He shall also disqualify himself in the following circumstances: (1) Where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or a personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding.”
Precedent instructs us, “Section 455(a) and (b)(1) are to be construed together when the ground for recusal is the bias or partiality of the trial judge.” United States v. Winston, 613 F.2d 221, 222 (9th Cir.1980); United States v. Olander, 584 F.2d 876, 882 (9th Cir.1978), vacated on other grounds sub nom. Harrington v. United States, 443 U.S. 914, 99 S.Ct. 3104, 61 L.Ed.2d 878 (1979). Under the statute the standard is “an objective one.” Winston, 613 F.2d at 222. That is, the trial judge is required to recuse himself only when “a reasonable person with knowledge of all the facts would conclude that the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Id. Under the statute, and using the established standard, our inquiry is not as to the subjective state of mind of the judge. Our inquiry is as to whether a reasonable person would conclude that the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
What we are required to do as a court reviewing the judge’s exercise of discretion in a matter where the statute speaks peremptorily is not to determine what this particular judge thought or experienced. We are asked to determine what a reasonable person would believe as to the personal bias of such a judge in such circumstances. The judge’s own comments, like the arguments of counsel, are only clues to help us in making such a determination — a determination doubly difficult because bias involves an emotional inclination as well as a mental outlook, and it is not easy to determine objectively what emotions a reasonable person might reasonably feel.
Suffice it to say that a reasonable person here would note that this is not a case where the judge’s bias, if it existed, would have arisen from the performance of his duties as a federal judge. It would have arisen from the performance of his duty as a state judge. In that way the source of the putative bias was extrajudicial, that is, outside the judicial system in which the judge was acting. Logic would not require a federal judge in this situation to recuse himself where he had earlier dealt with the defendant in a federal case. See Liteky v. United States, — U.S. -, -, 114 S.Ct. 1147, 1157, 127 L.Ed.2d 474 (1994) (expression of anger by “imperfect men and women, even after having been confirmed as federal judges,” does not constitute extrajudicial bias or show such a high degree of favoritism or antagonism as to make fair judgment impossible). Logic, however, would require recusal if a judge had presided over a defendant’s state trial and the defendant later sought federal habeas corpus from the same judge now translated to the federal sphere.
A reasonable person would note that the bias, if it existed, did not arise “during the course of the proceeding.” Pau v. Yosemite Park and Curry Co., 928 F.2d 880, 885 (9th Cir.1991). It does not come “solely from information gained in the course of the proceedings.” Matter of Beverly Hills Bancorp, 752 F.2d 1334, 1341 (9th Cir.1984). It was not knowledge “obtained in the course of earlier participation in the same case.” Winston, 613 F.2d at 223.
A reasonable person would also note that this is not a case where the judge had presided at a state competency hearing, forgotten it, and later presided unselfconsciously at a federal competency hearing. The circumstances of the state hearing were here brought forcefully to the judge’s mind.
A reasonable person would further note that denial of responsibility is normally a sign of conflict and embarrassment and that here the judge denied responsibility for Chis-chilly’s release. It was the procedure not the judge that was responsible. “It is the law, not I, condemn your brother” — Angelo’s words to Isabella in Measure for Measure are classic in denying responsibility for what has to be the act of the judge, however much that act is in conformity with law. The denial suggests suppressed tension and turmoil. A reasonable person would infer that any judge in these circumstances would ex*1164perience the tension and turmoil of conflicting emotions.
A reasonable person would note that this is not a cáse where one competency hearing followed another with nothing intervening. Here, after being released in Arizona, Chis-chilly committed heinous crimes in New Mexico. But for the Arizona release, would he have been in a position to commit them? The question is a fair one, one that would occur to anyone. The question does not reflect upon the lawfulness of the release but does suggest that the release had significant costs of which a reasonable judge would personally now be aware.
A reasonable person would ask if he would want to be tried in such circumstances by a judge who already had once let him go, and the reasonable person would answer that it would be a misfortune to come again before a judge who, following statutory procedure, had once before released him. The ordinary person’s reluctance to come before such a judge under such circumstances is a reflection of the normal belief that such a judge would not be impartial. The prosecutor’s claim that the judge was “in a better position than any other judge” would not be reassuring.
A reasonable person would observe that Chischilly was now charged with awful crimes and dismissal of these charges on the grounds of competency would put him in a. position where he would have the opportunity, not available if he were convicted of the crimes, of convincing some official of his recovered sanity and again gaining freedom. A reasonable person would infer that a judge in such circumstances was under pressure to reaffirm his original findings as to a man who had only gotten worse with the passage of time, and that he was also under pressure not to let Chischilly free to commit some new outrage as he had in New Mexico after being released from criminal custody in Arizona. One pressure would make him overly responsive to Chischilly, the other overly responsive to the prosecution. A reasonable person would say these pressures were not imaginary and speculative but psychological and moral — what any ordinary, decent human being sitting as a judge would be expected to feel in such an odd situation. A reasonable person could not say whether one pressure would balance out the other. A reasonable person would conclude that one or the other pressure might predominate and, whichever did, the judge’s impartiality was reasonably open to question.
The judge was being called upon to make an extremely difficult and delicate judgment affecting a defendant accused of horrible conduct. The circumstances of the ruling he was being asked to make made bias as to the defendant’s competency peculiarly dangerous. The judge’s discretion was limited by the peremptory language of the statute. The judge, the statute says, “shall disqualify himself’ once the objective facts are present. The duty of disqualification was not an option he could choose to exercise or not exercise.
Blackstone took the position that the judges of England were beyond recusal. “For the law will not suppose a possibility of bias or favour in a judge, who is already sworn to administer impartial justice, and whose authority greatly depends upon that presumption and idea.” 3 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, *361. In the United States the law supposes the possibility. The statute has shattered the judge’s freedom from question. We should apply the statute.
As I do not believe the trial should have gone forward under the judge to whom it was assigned, I do not reach the other difficult discretionary questions raised on this appeal.