Court Opinion

ID: 9482013
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:37:51.756236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:42.832958
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
joined by BEAM, Circuit Judge, concurring.
I concur in the denial of the motion for stay of execution, as well as the suggestion for rehearing en banc. As the author of the most recent panel opinion, I desire to add a few words of explanation in view of the points made by the dissent.
The dissenting opinion’s principal reliance is on the contention that the panel opinion in the present case is in conflict with Pilchak v. Camper, 935 F.2d 145 (8th Cir.1991). In my view, Pilchak is distinguishable. There, the panel held, on the facts of the record before it, that the constitutional errors claimed had led to the imposition of a sentence (life without parole) that would not otherwise have been imposed on the petitioner. This is an entirely reasonable variation on the factual-innocence exception to the normal rules of procedural bar. The record in the present case does not support such an argument. In fact, the main point made in the motion for stay of execution is that the existence of a Swain violation, in and of itself, renders a conviction fundamentally unjust and therefore eligible for an exception to the normal procedural-bar doctrine. This argument is squarely contrary to controlling Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court focuses on probable factual innocence, not the mere existence of a constitutional violation.
It is also worth noting that in Pilchak there were multiple constitutional violations. Not only did the Sheriff’s office hand pick the jury, but defendant’s counsel was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which, the panel found, caused him to make *1235the improvident decision to call Pilchak as a witness, thus opening the floodgates to extremely damaging rebuttal evidence.
For these reasons, I cannot agree that any supposed conflict with Pilchak supports either a stay of execution or a rehearing en banc.