Court Opinion

ID: 7007704
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-24 03:55:39.915833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:10:07.318062
License: Public Domain

FERGUSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur. However, I question whether defendant’s counsel was constitutionally competent at the guilt and penalty phases of the trial. The state trial judge’s statements regarding the number of death penalty reversals issued by the California Supreme Court under then Chief Justice Rose Bird were improper, especially considering that three Justices of the Court had been recently recalled due to their decisions on death penalty cases. There is no question that the state trial judge made a drastic error by injecting politics and speculation into a capital case.
However, the defendant has not contended in his federal habeas corpus petition that trial counsel was incompetent by failing to move for a mistrial and demand a new jury not prejudiced by the political statements of the judge. If there was such an allegation, I would have argued that counsel was constitutionally deficient and applied the rule of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), to both phases of the trial — guilt and penalty.
Nevertheless, because there has been no such contention made before us nor the district court, I am procedurally barred. In death penalty cases, we should not be prohibited from deciding an issue presented in the record and not be limited by the inability of counsel.