Court Opinion

ID: 9498733
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:26:34.907072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:02.358385
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur fully in the majority’s opinion. I write separately, and with all due respect to my good colleagues in dissent, to explain why I believe the dissent’s proposed test for determining sanity to be executed is flawed. The dissent would hold that “the Constitution, as a legal matter, requires that a condemned inmate understand that execution will result in the end of his physical life.” Post at 183. Application of this test would prevent Virginia from executing Walton — whom the district court has found understands that he is going to be executed, why he is going to be executed, and that his execution will cause him to die, see Walton v. Johnson, 306 F.Supp.2d 597, 600 (W.D.Va.2004) — unless the district court also finds that Walton “understand^] that his execution will [cause] the end of his physical life.” Post at 183. In my view, this additional test suffers from two significant deficiencies.
First, neither Justice Powell’s formulation of the legal test in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 106 S.Ct. 2595, 91 L.Ed.2d 335 (1986), nor the Court’s adoption of that test (albeit in dicta) in Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), abrogated on other *180grounds by Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002), required that a death-row inmate understand death to mean “the end of his physical life.” Rather, these cases required, as has the majority in this case, that the condemned inmate be “[ ] aware of the punishment [he is] about to suffer and why [he is] to suffer it.” Ford, 477 U.S. at 422, 106 S.Ct. 2595 (Powell, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment); Penry, 492 U.S. at 333, 109 S.Ct. 2934. Rather than apply existing Supreme Court precedent, the dissent rewrites that precedent. And to the extent the dissent argues that its test should be seen as an interpretation of Ford and not its rewriting, post at 183, the interpretation is without basis. None of the cases the dissent cites in support of its test, post at 184 -186, purports to define “death,” much less to define it as “the end of [one’s] physical life.” Instead, each of those cases states (or implies) only that the defendant must understand the “nature” of the death penalty and that the “nature” of the death penalty is that it causes death. Not one of the cases “examined precisely ... whether the inmate must understand that the execution will mean the end of his physical life,” post at 186: Not one of the dissent’s quotes from those cases contain any language to that effect. A test that has not appeared in any statute or case law in the 20 years since Ford was decided can hardly be as “obvious” as the dissent claims. Post at 186.
Moreover, deviation from Justice Powell’s formulation is doubly inappropriate in the Eighth Amendment context — an area of law that “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” as primarily evidenced by “the legislation enacted by the country’s legislatures.” Atkins, 536 U.S. at 311-12, 122 S.Ct. 2242 (internal quotation marks omitted). Despite the state-centric focus of the Eighth Amendment, the dissent’s test is unsupported by any statutory analogue. It is true, as the dissent asserts, that in addition to seeking guidance from state law, “federal courts must render their own judgment regarding constitutional limitations on execution.” Post at 186. But by relying on its own judgment, the dissent reveals that, ultimately, its' test is its own — and not Ford’s — creation.
Second, even if we were deciding this case on a clean slate, the dissent’s test both (1) fails to account for the fact that many understand death on non-scientific terms and (2) requires courts to evaluate the meaning of such non-scientific understandings. As noted, the dissent would hold that to be sane, a person must understand his death in purely scientific terms: “the end of [one’s] physical life.” In my view, this definition fails to account for the fact that, depending on the orientation of one’s Weltanschauung, a perfectly sane person can understand death — not just the afterlife, but death itself — in terms that are wholly religious, poetic, or metaphysical (or some combination thereof), and that do not involve a scientific underpinning at all. To give just one of the likely innumerable examples, think of the Solipsist, who, after many years of academic study, comes to believe that all things, including his own body, are merely illusions posited by his eternal mind. Does he view death on the dissent’s scientific terms? If not, is he therefore insane? I cannot subscribe to the view that a condemned inmate is insane simply because he does not view death through the dissent’s scientific lens. Indeed, given the many diverse visions of death, the abstract nature of the inquiry, and the state-centric nature of the Eighth Amendment, see Atkins, 536 U.S. at 311— 12, 122 S.Ct. 2242, I do not believe that we federal judges (not to mention we inferior-*181court judges) should be the ones deciding whether a condemned inmate who understands that he is going to die must understand more about his death in order to be sane. Cf. Atkins, 536 U.S. at 317, 122 S.Ct. 2242 (“To the extent there is serious disagreement about the execution of mentally retarded offenders, it is in determining which offenders are in fact retarded.... [Therefore,] we leave to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon [their] execution of sentences.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).1
The dissent attempts to buttress its test by claiming its focus on what happens to the inmate’s “physical” life at death is justifiable because “[execution is a punishment wrought [solely] upon the body.” Post at 187. The dissent fails to realize, however, that this statement is itself a metaphysical one. Execution is a punishment inflicted on the “body” alone only insofar as one sees a human being as comprised of “body” and something else, such as “soul” or “mind.” But take out the dualism, and it could just as easily be said that execution is a punishment of the “person.” My goal here, of course, is not to debate metaphysics, but to demonstrate that the dissent’s narrow view of what it means to die fails to do justice to those who do not view themselves, the world in which they live, or the implications their ultimate fate in precisely the same manner as my colleagues in dissent.
In addition to its failure to account for the fact that many do not understand death on scientific terms, the dissent’s test requires an inquiry into condemned inmates’ religious, poetic, or metaphysical views of death and the afterlife. Does a Christian who recites the Apostles’ Creed, with its claim to the “resurrection of the body,” see death as the end of his physical life? What of Thornton Wilder, whose Emily in Our Town is given the opportunity to relive her twelfth birthday despite her death? What of a member of any number of Eastern religions, whose belief in reincarnation presupposes that although death is the end of this physical life, it is not the end of his physical life? And what of the Solipsist, whose views presuppose that he does not even have a physical life? A test that could base a finding of insanity on such views seems far afield from the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of the execution of the insane.
The dissent suggests that “[i]t should be crystal clear that this case is not about the orientation of Walton’s Weltanshauung [and that it] is not about [Walton’s] religious or philosophical views about the afterlife.” Post at 187. As for the dissent’s first point, I could not agree more. Unless, however, my dissenting colleagues believe that their legal test should apply only in Walton’s case, this point affords the dissent no purchase. If a legal test founders in a hypothetical case that could come before the court — as the dissent’s would in the case of a condemned inmate who did not understand his death in scientific terms — this fact, in my view, is a good reason to reject the test.
As for the dissent’s second point, I agree that this case should not be about Walton’s views about the afterlife. Unfortunately, *182however, it is the dissent’s test that requires examination of such matters. Why else would the dissent ground its ultimate conclusion that remand is warranted on the facts that Walton believed that: (1) “he could come back to life and be with his honeys,” post at 189 (emphasis added and internal quotation marks omitted), (2) “electrocution is ... going to make him ... come back to life or something stronger,” post at 189 (emphasis added and internal quotation marks omitted); (3) “he might have special powers that would allow him to come back to life after execution,” post at 189 (emphasis added and internal quotation marks omitted); (4) he might “come back as a woman,” post at 190 (emphasis added and internal quotation marks omitted); and (5) “[death means that you s]Ieep for [the] rest of [your] life ... until someone comes to see you,” post at 189 (emphasis added and internal quotation marks omitted). The dissent’s actual analysis is more revealing than what it asserts this case is or is not about.2
To be sure, I share the instinct that undergirds the dissent’s search for a vision of death that everyone must hold in order to be considered sane: to understand the meaning of a word, a person must be capable of understanding the concept to which that word refers. To understand the meaning of the word “chair,” for example, a person must be capable of understanding the concept of “an object used for sitting” (or something similar). Likewise, to understand the meaning of the words “execution” or “die” a defendant must be capable of understanding the concepts to which those words refer. But the fact that I share this instinct does not lead me to believe either that we should be deciding the particular content of these abstract and contentious concepts or that the dissent’s test accurately captures them. -Applying Ford, then, I conclude that the district court’s findings that Walton knows that he is going to be “executed” and that his execution will cause him to “die”— findings that necessarily indicate Walton was capable of understanding the concepts to which these words refer-satisfied the requirement that Walton be “[ jaware of the punishment he is about to suffer.” 477 U.S. at 422, 106 S.Ct. 2595 (Powell, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). As the majority has ably demonstrated, the evidence in the record, and the expert testimony in particular, supports such a finding, and I cannot hold that the Eighth Amendment requires more.

. To be clear, I do not suggest that we federal judges are not well-suited to provide a definition of "death” in all areas of law. Rather, I suggest that we are not well-suited to define, for Eighth Amendment purposes, what every condemned inmate who is aware of the penalty he is about to suffer precisely must understand about his impending death in order to be sane. These are different arguments entirely: the first pertains to the running of a well-oiled legal system that must account for the fact that people stop living, while the second pertains to matters on which we have no special authority or insight.

. The dissent suggests that it does not rely on Walton's views of the'afterlife as “evidence of Walton's religious or metaphysical [beliefs]” but rather as "evidence that Walton may view death as merely a brief interruption of his current physical life,” and that it would remand for the district court to make the factual determination of whether Walton's views reveal the former or the latter. Post at 188. This suggestion, however, simply demonstrates my point — the dissent's test would require the district courts to make these very types of sensitive value judgments regarding a condemned inmate’s views of the afterlife in the first place.