Court Opinion

ID: 9496034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:16:28.452989+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:20.190958
License: Public Domain

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join in the grant of permission to file a successive writ because there is here enough merit to warrant further exploration by the district court. I am confessedly dubitante on that point, but I am persuaded to join given the “tentative” process this court had borrowed from the Seventh Circuit. See Bennett v. United States, 119 F.3d 468, 469-70 (7th Cir.1997), and Reyes-Requena v. United States, 243 F.3d 893, 898-99 (5th Cir.2001).
There is a conflict between the family’s description of Morris’s impairment in his childhood and school days and “other” evidence in this record, and we have no IQ. test. As the brief of the Harris County District Attorney’s office ably points out, the testifying expert at Morris’s trial did not think that he was retarded. On the other hand, that had not been his focus. And the trial psychologist never tested for mental retardation. While now vital school records, scant as they are, do not use the term “retarded,” that is not worth much, given the wide practice of social promotions and the reluctance of school officials’ use of the stigmatizing term “retarded.” There are more uncertainties. The family offers unqualified assertions that Morris could not read and write, but that evidence is cast in doubt by records in the file purporting to be in his writing and reflecting an ability to read.
It is difficult to make informed judgments without the development of the facts in some form of hearing. While skeptical of Morris’s ability to do so at a hearing, I will not dissent from an order allowing the district court to make a more informed judgment than is available to us, as a second gate to leave to file a successive writ.