Court Opinion

ID: 9493237
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:01:46.255105+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:43.458386
License: Public Domain

BIRCH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I join in Judge Barkett’s comprehensive, persuasive, and record-relevant dissent. Given the current and continuing concerns about the reliability and, hence, the viability of the death penalty, it is critical for the courts to set a standard of attorney performance which merits the public’s confidence. In this case, the majority places the acceptable level of attorney assistance so low as to risk undermining the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system. The result of this opinion may be to make David Ronald Chandler the first federal prisoner executed by the government of the United States in 37 years.1
Chandler is the first person to be sanctioned with the death penalty as enacted by Congress in 1988 under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, 21 U.S.C. §§ 848(e) et seq. Therefore, it represents a unique opportunity for the federal courts to prescribe the minimum requirements for the Government’s taking of a life. Defense counsel’s entire penalty phase effort, from the minute that he asked Deborah Chandler to find mitigation witnesses until the arguments concluded, consisted of less than 24 hours. Before we, as a civilized society, condemn a man to death, we should expect and require more of an advocate.
For all of the reasons that I set forth in the panel opinion in this case, see Chandler v. United States, 193 F.3d 1297 (11th Cir.1999), reh’g en banc granted and opinion vacated, Dec. 3, 1999, I continue, as I did *1344then, to be convinced that the record in this case compels the conclusion that Chandler received ineffective assistance of counsel during his penalty phase, in violation of the Sixth Amendment guarantees as set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Williams v. Taylor, — U.S. -, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000), only strengthens my conviction that we should vacate Chandler’s death sentence and remand for re-sentencing.

. See Linda Greenhouse, In Test of New U.S. Law, Death Sentence is Upheld, N.Y. Times, June 22, 1999, at A22 (noting that last federal execution occurred in 1963).