Court Opinion

ID: 9497230
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:46:18.264234+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:04.075119
License: Public Domain

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
When Matheney was initially brought to trial for this crime, his lawyers sought a determination of his sanity and his competency. The court, however, ordered only a determination of his sanity, and none of the trial attorneys in the case appeared to even notice. In fact, examination of the record in this ease reveals repeated instances in which attorneys and judges involved in that trial and his subsequent appeals blur the two, as if the determination that he was not legally insane at the *750time of the offense somehow also established that he was competent to stand trial.
As the majority points out, the competency issue eventually was addressed by the post-conviction court in its seventy-nine page “Findings of Facts and Conclusions of Law”. The length resulted' from the sheer quantity of issues raised by Matheney and his counsel in that proceeding. There were 96 in all. The portion addressing the competency issue spans only a few pages and in fact has been reproduced in its entirety in the majority’s opinion. In it, the court considered Matheney’s competence at trial and post-trial. The court properly identified the test as whether (1) Matheney understood the nature of the proceedings and (2) was able to assist in the preparation of his defense. I will discuss only the second factor, as the record sufficiently supports the finding that Matheney understood the nature of the proceedings. However, in determining that Matheney was able to assist in his defense, the post-conviction court rejected the only psychiatric testimony on that issue.
Dr. Morrison conducted a psychiatric examination of Matheney at the time of the trial (and in fact testified at trial that Matheney was not legally insane at the time of the offense because he could distinguish between right and wrong even though he could not conform his conduct.) Post-Conviction Record (PCR) at 1592. She diagnosed Matheney as suffering from paranoid disorder with psychosis delusion. She testified at length regarding details of that diagnosis as well as its impact on his thought processes and its progression over time. She further stated that in her professional opinion, Matheney would not be able to rationally consult with his lawyers. Id. at 1590. In so stating, she emphasized that the delusion he maintained interfered with any ability to look at the realistic facts of his case and what was necessary for the trial because everything to him remained a conspiracy. She further declared that over time she would expect the delusions to become even more fixed and to include more individuals, and that his attorneys would become part of the paranoid conspiracy. Id. at 1595-96.
Similarly, at the time of the post-conviction proceeding, Dr. Smalldon examined Matheney over a 2-day period, and submitted a 16-page report to the post-conviction court with his assessment. He concluded that Matheney’s thinking was delusional, and his paranoid and persecu-tory ideas were fixed and rigid, completely refractory to logical or persuasive appeals. Dr. Smalldon further stated that one effect of that delusional worldview was his inability to rationally discuss his legal situation except in terms of his own rigid, delusional version of reality. Dr. Small-don concluded that it was his professional opinion that Matheney was not competent to assist his post-conviction attorneys. In fact, Dr. Smalldon testified that Mathe-ney’s “willingness to work with me at all, not only to collaborate with formal testing, but even to engage with me in a discussion of this case was entirely contingent on my willingness to remain within his extremely cramped, claustrophobic view of his case and to refrain from challenging in any way his beliefs about the reality of his situation.” Id. at 1260.
The post-conviction court provided very little reasoning in rejecting the only psychiatric testimony on the issue. The court stated that the one trial attorney who had the best rapport with Matheney and represented him on appeal found him frustrating and single-minded, but that Matheney was able to provide counsel with details of everything that preceded and followed the murder even if not the murder itself. *751That was the extent of the court’s analysis of the second factor. The only other clue as to the court’s reasoning appears in an earlier statement that “[m]ost significantly, counsel has stated that petitioner was substantively involved in the trial process even if he wasn’t as helpful as another client might have been.”
Under the AEDPA, the competency determination cannot stand if it is an unreasonable application of the law to the facts, or if it is based upon an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented to the state court. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) & (2); Harding v. Walls, 300 F.3d 824, 828 (7th Cir.2002); Ward v. Sternes, 334 F.3d 696, 703-04 (7th Cir.2003). “A state court decision that rests upon a determination of fact that lies against the clear weight of the evidence is, by definition, a decision ‘so inadequately supported by the record’ as to be arbitrary and therefore objectively unreasonable.” Ward, 334 F.3d at 704, quoting Hall v. Washington, 106 F.3d 742, 749 (7th Cir.1997). That standard is met here. A number of attorneys testified in this case. All of them provided testimony consistent with the diagnoses by Drs. Morrison and Smalldon.
Scott King was the lead counsel in the trial and appeal’s to be the attorney referenced by the post-conviction court when determining that Matheney was able to assist in his defense. It is curious that King’s testimony is the only evidence relied upon by the court in making the assessment of Matheney’s competence at the time of the trial, particularly given the procedural history of this case. King was not appointed as counsel for Matheney until February 1990, and the trial took place a mere two months later. Nevertheless, the post-conviction court mentions only King — by description rather than by name — in finding competency, with no mention of the testimony provided by other counsel and the investigator who worked with Matheney for nearly a year more than King, from March 1989 through the trial.
Setting that aside for the moment, King’s testimony provides no basis for rejecting the psychiatric testimony and concluding that Matheney was competent at the trial. King testified as to Matheney’s persistent belief that his ex-wife and Barnes had been engaged in a conspiracy against him, and that if people outside the conspiracy learned of that conspiracy, they would find that his ex-wife’s death was justified. King referred often to Mathe-ney as being unhelpful in discussing the murder or the merits of the case, further stating that communication with Matheney was helpful in one way — in that his written and verbal statements and inability to focus on matters outside that delusion provided support for the insanity defense. For instance, when asked whether Mathe-ney was involved in devising the defense, King responded that his time spent with Matheney and reading what Matheney wrote was “a primary factor in the defense ultimately relied on [insanity] .... In terms of him being at all helpful, in terms of the merits of the allegations that he killed his wife, no.” PCR at 1626. Similarly, when asked if Matheney was able to help in preparing for cross-examination, King noted that “in addition to lacking the typical objectivity, he also had a particular dent [sic] completely away from the case” focused on the conspiracy with Michael Barnes and his ex-wife. Id. at 1628. As a result, King testified that he was not helpful in preparing for cross-examination of state witnesses, but “[i]n the sense of between his writings and between his conduct, okay, supporting the use of the insanity defense, yeah, that was helpful to dictate that.” That cannot support the post-conviction court’s decision that *752Matheney could assist in his defense. It would be ironic indeed if a defendant’s irrational behavior was interpreted as “assisting in his defense,” thus rendering him competent to stand trial, because it gave counsel further evidence that he was insane. King recounts repeatedly Mathe-ney’s fixation on his delusion, and his inability to engage in discussions outside of that delusion. There is in fact little in King’s testimony to support the court’s conclusion that Matheney provided substantial assistance. Because the post-conviction court provided no details as to what testimony supported its finding of competency, it is difficult to address precisely the issue, but the testimony by King contains nothing that would support the court’s dismissal of the psychiatric opinions. In fact, King testified on a number of occasions that he concurred with Dr. Morrison’s assessment of Matheney. King’s ultimate assessment of Matheney was that he was “singularly focused on the case as he defined it. Which was an ongoing saga of injustice promulgating from his then incarceration. And that’s his definition of the case.” That portrayal meshes with the analyses of Dr. Morrison and Dr. Small-don, and does not provide a basis for a finding of competency:
Moreover, the testimony of others involved in the trial and post-trial process further contradict the competency determination. Although the post-conviction court appeared to rely solely on King’s testimony, other counsel including Charles Lahey also testified. He was counsel for Matheney from March 1989, nearly a year before King joined the defense team. Significantly, Lahey was the person whom King identified as the one he relied upon for insight into Matheney.
Lahey testified extensively about the inability to communicate with Matheney outside his delusion. For instance, Lahey testified that Matheney was actively planning his defense, but that defense was that his ex-wife “deserved it” because of the conspiracy between herself and Barnes, and that if the information would just be made public, then he would be vindicated. Id. at 1500. Lahey was unable to reason with him regarding the effectiveness of that defense. Id. Lahey stated that the decision to pursue the insanity defense was partly based on Matheney’s inability to assist him in any defense other than the one. upon which Matheney was focused. Id. at 1514.
One illustration of Matheney’s singular focus on that defense was his insistence on a change of venue. Lahey argued against the motion with Matheney, based in part on his view that no jury in St. Joseph County had ever returned a capital punishment verdict, and that the judge in the case was as compassionate and reasonable a person as he could hope to have deciding the issue. Id. at 1528. Lahey felt that obtaining a change in venue to Lake County, which was one of only two counties that had returned capital punishment verdicts, was signing his own death warrant. Id. Lahey was unable to reason with Mathe-ney, however, who believed that the court system in St. Joseph County was controlled by Barnes, the prosecutor in that county, and that if he could be tried in an outlying county, the jury would hear what he had to say and decide that his actions were justified. Id. at 1520. Matheney ultimately succeeded in obtaining that change of venue. Lahey thus provides a concrete example of a defense decision by Matheney made based on his conspiracy delusion, impervious to the rational advice of his attorneys. Lahey further recounted that after his opposition to that motion, Matheney no longer trusted him, which is also consistent with Dr. Morrison’s prediction that his attorneys would eventually be added to the conspiracy, perpetuating the *753delusion. Lahey concluded that Matheney was obsessed with his conspiracy defense, unable to work with him on any evidence other than along those lines, and was of no assistance whatsoever on the legitimate issues that existed in the case. Id. at 1543. Lahey appeared to be unfamiliar with the second prong of the competency test, stating that he did not label it as a problem of competence, because “maybe a psychiatrist would say that was because of his obsessive behavior but it wasn’t because he was bouncing off the walls and didn’t know what day it was or who I was,” which of course relates to the first part of the test. Id. Lahey’s testimony establishes that Matheney met the first factor of competency, that he understood the nature of the proceedings, but not the second one, that he was able to assist in his defense.
In addition, the record contained an affidavit from Steven Radde, a private investigator who worked for 10-13 months for the defense in the Matheney case, and who spent a considerable amount of time with Matheney. Id. at 2056. One of Radde’s assignments was to locate and interview numerous witnesses brought to the defense team’s attention by Matheney. Rad-de stated that in their conversations, Matheney
talked almost exclusively about proving there was a conspiracy between Lisa Bianco and Michael Barnes. Virtually all of the witnesses he requested we find were witnesses he said would help prove the conspiracy. He insisted that no other issues existed or mattered. I do not believe that Mr. Matheney ever understood that his theory of defense was irrational and unsympathetic. He insisted to the end that his conduct was justified, and that if the existence of the conspiracy against him was shown, the world would agree and he would be exonerated. Mr. Matheney was unable to assist me in my role as part of the defense team in any meaningful way. His assistance was limited to providing lengthy lists of names of people he believed would provide support for his own theory of how the case should be tried.
Id. at 2056-57.
Finally, the two attorneys for Matheney in post-conviction relief also testified that Matheney was unable to assist in his own defense. Yet the same post-conviction court held that he was competent in that proceeding as well. Steven Schutte — co-counsel with Jeffrey Merryman, Jr., testified as to Matheney’s intractable fixation with the conspiracy, and the difficulties in trying to establish trust with Matheney. Schutte declared that his representation of Matheney was a constant balance between conducting the investigation that the case required and gaining enough trust with Matheney to proceed properly. Id. at 1334. Each step in one direction cost him in the other. Id. at 1334. Schutte testified that to try and establish trust with Matheney, he investigated some of Mathe-ney’s “conspiracy” claims. Id. at 1332. He further noted that Matheney had tens of thousands of pages of documents in his possession, but would not let his lawyers see all of them. Matheney decided when Schutte would view them and in what order, because Matheney feared that if Schutte viewed them out of order or out of context, Schutte might not understand the significance to his conspiracy case. Id. at 1332-33. Trust issues impacted Schutte in other ways as well. For instance, Mathe-ney signed some authorization and release forms early in the representation, but later refused to sign any more. Id. at 1333. Furthermore, Matheney acted on his own, filing, for example, a witness list that contained 206 names, and trying to control who Schutte contacted. Schutte’s attempts to investigate the case properly by contacting relevant persons would have the *754problematic effect of adversely impacting his efforts at gaining Matheney’s trust. He testified that Matheney was not competent.
His co-counsel, Merryman, represented Matheney for three years and also concluded that Matheney was unable to speak with him rationally about his case. Mathe-ney refused to discuss with Merryman anything that he did not consider relevant to the his case, which he defined as the conspiracy between his ex-wife and the prosecutor. That -included information about what Matheney did the day of the crime and his background, both of which related to his mental health. Id. at 1332-33. Along similar lines, Matheney would not tell them who his friends were and instructed his family not to cooperate with his lawyers. Id. at 1326. Merryman concluded by trying to provide some perspective on the problem. He stated .that he had practiced law for nine years and had been a trial level Public Defender. As a result, he was familiar with difficult clients and clients who elected not to cooperate for various reasons; however, he had never litigated competency before. As he put it, he had
never felt that [his] client’s obstreperousness or difficulty ha[d] been a result of anything other than a free will of decisions. Mr. Matheney’s case, I truly believe that he does not. have the free will to make the decisions on whether or not to talk to me about any issues involved in this case. This is not a difficult client. I have had difficult clients before. This is a sick, client, unfortunately. He’s a very, very sad man.
Id. at 1334-35.
The post-conviction court did not find the trial attorneys, post-conviction attorneys, or investigator incredible. The court did not weigh the testimony of the'witnesses, determining that some were in a better position to assess Matheney’s ability to assist in his defense. In fact, the court did not even identify with precision the testimony that convinced it to find competency despite the psychiatric testimony. Instead, the court merely focused on one attorney, King, without distinguishing or discrediting the testimony of the other persons who represented Matheney. King had, by far, the least amount of time on the case- before trial — 2 months — as opposed to the nearly 13 months that co-counsel had worked with Matheney, and a similar amount for the investigator who testified regarding competency. Moreover, King repeatedly testified that Mathe-ney was unable to aid in his defense on the merits, and that he was helpful only in that his behavior cemented the notion that the best defense was insanity. King further testified, on multiple occasions, that he agreed with Dr. Morrison’s assessment. Dr. Morrison testified to the post-conviction court that based on her examination of Matheney at trial, he was not able to rationally consult with his attorneys. The decision of the post-conviction court finding competency was an unreasonable application of the law to the facts, and was based upon an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented to the State court. Therefore, that decision cannot stand even under the more deferential AEDPA standard.
Although the majority relies primarily on the post-conviction court’s finding in denying habeas relief, the other court decisions on the issue fare no better under scrutiny. First, as the majority points out, the Indiana Supreme Court held that: “Given the psychiatrists’ determinations before trial, trial counsel’s own opinions of Matheney’s competency, and Dr. Berk-son’s earlier determination of Matheney’s competency, trial counsel were not ineffective for failing to follow up their request *755for a determination of competency with a formal motion for a hearing on Matheney’s competency.” Matheney II, 688 N.E.2d at 899. None of the psychiatrists in the trial, however, rendered any opinion regarding competency, and the Indiana Supreme Court provides no explanation as to why their opinions regarding whether he was legally insane at the time of the crime should impact the determination of whether he was presently able to assist in his defense. This is especially true considering that at least two of those psychiatrists ultimately recognized a mental illness, paranoid personality disorder, and the other did not only because he astonishingly believed that hallucinations were a necessary symptom of every mental illness. Moreover, the determination by Dr. Berkson two years prior in an unrelated criminal proceeding that he was competent provides no support for a decision to forego the competency determination in this trial. That earlier determination reflected concerns at that time as well about his competency. In fact, an attorney who worked with Matheney at that time wrote to the St. Joseph Probation department prior to Matheney’s sentencing, expressing his opinion that Matheney’s personality had deteriorated “since and due to his incarceration.” PCR at 2068. By that deterioration, he:
meant that Alan had become less rational than he had been in the months before his incarceration. His questioning of me was less relevant to his specific legal problems the more I saw him, and he seemed to become increasingly unable to focus on the real issues in his legal difficulties. He had also become obsessed with the wrongs he perceived Lisa Bianco was perpetrating on him.
Id. at 2069. Considering that the mental illness diagnosed by Dr. Morrison at trial was one that results in progressive deterioration, that earlier question of competence should have cautioned his trial attorneys as to the need for a competency determination, rather than absolving them of that issue as the Indiana Supreme Court held. Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, his attorneys did not determine that a competency determination was unnecessary. They determined that it was necessary, and sought it from the court. When the court failed to instruct the psychiatrists to render an opinion on competency, however, they failed to follow up and obtain that opinion. Instead, they appeared to operate from the mistaken belief that the decision regarding Mathe-ney’s legal sanity was dispositive of the competency issue. Those are two very different, unrelated inquiries. Moreover, even in their subsequent testimony, these attorneys indicated a fundamental misunderstanding of the two prongs of the competency determination, believing that Matheney was competent if he understood the nature of the proceedings even though repeatedly also testifying that he could provide no assistance whatsoever on the legitimate issues that existed in the case because he was singularly focused on the conspiracy delusion. The Indiana Supreme Court accepted those legal conclusions as evidence of his competence, without addressing that their testimony in fact established that the second part of the competency test was not met. The record demonstrates that Matheney’s attorneys simply “dropped the ball” on the competency issue, failing to pursue it even though they had already raised the necessity of a competence determination with the trial court. The Indiana Supreme Court’s decision is unsupported by the record, and an objectively unreasonable application of the law.
Finally, the district court’s decision cannot support the majority’s holding in this case. In determining that Matheney was *756competent, the district court rejected Dr. Morrison’s testimony as not addressing the “accurate test of competency.” Dist. Ct. 2/18/03 Order at 35. According to the district court, Dr. Morrison opined that the delusions rendered Matheney incapable of rationally assisting in his defense. The court then stated: “However, the test does not require that a defendant be able to rationally assist in his defense, just that he possess a present ability to consult with counsel with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.” Id. at 36. That seems a meaningless distinction in that it is difficult to conceive of a situation in which a defendant can consult with rational understanding but cannot assist in his defense, but the district court relied on that distinction alone to reject the testimony of Dr. Morrison. The use of that wording as a basis for rejecting her testimony would be questionable in any case, given that the clear import of Dr. Morrison’s substantial testimony was that Matheney was unable to operate outside his delusion and therefore could not assist in addressing the real issues in the case. Nevertheless, even within that literal approach to testimony, the district court’s holding cannot stand. First, Dr. Morrison in fact testified that Matheney was unable to rationally consult with his lawyers because the delusion that he maintained interfered with his ability to look at the realistic facts of the case and the reality of what was necessary for his defense. PCR at 1590. Additionally, even if the district court had been right in characterizing Dr. Morrison’s testimony, that would have been a proper opinion of competency. In Drope v. Missouri, 420 U.S. 162, 171, 95 S.Ct. 896, 43 L.Ed.2d 103 (1975), the Supreme Court stated that “[i]t has long been accepted that a person whose mental condition is such that he lacks the capacity to understand the nature and object of the proceedings against him, to consult with counsel, and to assist in preparing his defense may not be subjected to a trial.” [emphasis added]. Therefore, a defendant may not be subject to trial unless he can both consult with counsel and assist in preparing the defense, contrary to the district court’s contention. See also Matheney II, 688 N.E.2d at 899 (“A defendant is not competent to stand trial when he is unable to understand the proceedings and assist in the preparation of his defense. Ind.Code Ann. § 5-36-3-l(a) (West 1986).”) Because the district court relied on an unsupported legal distinction in rejecting the only psychiatric testimony on the issue of Matheney’s trial competence, its decision is erroneous as a matter of law.
In conclusion, the testimony in the record by Matheney’s attorneys, his trial investigator and the psychiatrists provide significant, even overwhelming, evidence that he was unable to rationally consult with them and assist in his defense. The post-conviction court’s reliance on isolated statements by one attorney to find competence is against the clear weight of the evidence. That court failed to reconcile its holding with the consistent testimony of that attorney, co-counsel, the investigator and the psychiatrist that Matheney was unable to assist counsel on any legitimate issues in that case. The trial attorneys in fact recognized that Matheney’s competence was at issue, but failed to follow through at trial. Moreover, their testimony on post-conviction revealed their misunderstanding as to the standards of competency, with a belief that he was competent if he could understand the nature of the proceedings, even though he was totally incapable of assisting them on the legitimate issues in the case. Matheney has met the Strickland standard, demonstrating a “reasonable probability” that the result would have been different if his attorneys had pursued the competency issue, *757and accordingly I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the prejudice prong of Strickland was not met. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.