Court Opinion

ID: 9490795
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:55:10.902247+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:19.661222
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Time is unfortunately not available in the imminence of the execution date to address in detail all the arguments raised by the majority. But a few general observations are appropriate.
We have before us a filing styled Motion to Recall the Mandate of August 22, 1997 in a Capital Case. This was the mandate relating to our opinion issued in Burris v. Parke, 116 F.3d 256 (7th Cir.1997), from which I dissented. The majority attempts to charac*786terize the present motion as a “second or successive” application for a writ of habeas corpus for purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b).1
I think it is nothing of the sort; instead it is an unexceptional motion connected to a habeas corpus application, which was denied over my dissent.2 This is not a case like Nevius, in which the petitioner asked the Ninth Circuit to recall its mandate so that he could present new claims that he was barred from addressing in a subsequent habeas petition. Here no new claim has been made. No new issue has been raised. See Thompson, 120 F.3d at 1051 (“in Nevius, we explicitly stated that ‘Nevius wants us to recall our mandate ... not to nullify an erroneous decision, but to reopen the proceeding so that he may present new claims that cannot be addressed in a subsequent petition.’ This statement recognizes ... that the mandate may be recalled to correct an erroneous decision which would result in a manifest injustice.”) (citation omitted).
The question here is — as it has been all along — whether there should be an evidentia-ry hearing to examine the medical facts underlying Mr. Burris’ claim of ineffective assistance of counsel in his capital sentencing proceeding. One new element has been added by the present motion, which is important but which merely underlines and clarifies the claims and arguments that have been before us all along. The new material consists of testimony that was not available until it was given on November 3,1997.
On that date, Dr. Michael Gelbort, a Clinical Neuropsychologist, testified at a clemency hearing for Mr. Burris held in Indianapolis. Dr. Gelbort is Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of the Brain Injury Association of Illinois and a member of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Brain Injury and Spinal Cord Injury. Dr. Gelbort testified in part as follows:
Mr. Burris, as far as I can tell from the information provided to me, has had a gunshot wound near his head and neck. He also has suffered from migraine headaches and blurry vision; he’s had blackouts and tinnitus, which is ringing in the ears. These are all signs of neurological dysfunction or can relate to neurological dysfunction. They are things that when presented to me in my office practice typically result in a neuropsychological examination.
•I* i¡! ‡
A neuropsychological examination is one that looks at behavior and problems with behavior and allows you to infer or understand if there’s brain dysfunction present. Because of the nature of Mr. Burris’ defi*787cits, something like an EEG might be indicated, and, in fact, one was ordered, although I never saw the results from that. Some physician at some point in time decided that there was a high unlikelihood [sic] of there being brain dysfunction to order such a test. Other tests, because of his fairly normal-appearing behavior, were deemed by physicians who are not necessarily trained to appreciate or to recognize with a diagnosed brain dysfunction — other tests were not ordered. But if he had come to someone like me or to physicians who I work with, almost certainly he would have had a neuropsychological examination ordered because that’s the appropriate type of testing to look for the type of damage that he may demonstrate.
Dr. Gelbort also addressed the contention that Mr. Burris’ apparent intelligence might be inconsistent with brain injury:
... [Y]ou can have fairly significant neu-roeognitive or brain dysfunction present and you can also have damage that doesn’t show up, just in normal interaction. For simplicity’s sake, you can bring cognitive functioning into the thinking skills which is when people say “He talks well,” they’re talking about thinking skills. You also have to recognize that a deeper portion of the brain, the older portion of the brain, the limbic system, has to do with emotional behavior. It has to do with the ability to recognize threatening situations and respond appropriately to them.
The gunshot wound, or other things in this man’s history, certainly could have had effects on the limbic system which wouldn’t be appreciated with people just interacting with him and which is the system that has a lot to do with how we respond to stress situations, and when dangerous behavior occurs, a good bit of it arises from the limbic system. That’s not a system that the psychiatrist interacting with him is necessarily going to recognize as having problems with.
The long and the short of it is, is that many of the patients that I see in my clinical practice have deficits in terms of brain functioning that their physicians typically don’t appreciate, don’t recognize----
In my dissent from the principal opinion in this matter I made the following observation:
Judge Sharp [the court below] ruled that the Indiana courts have “failed to provide Burris with a full and fair hearing on his ineffective assistance claims.” Burris v. Parke, 948 F.Supp. 1310, 1323 (N.D.Ind.1996). As Judge Sharp realized, Townsend therefore mandates that the district court hold an evidentiary hearing. The majority reverses this, based on unsound law and fragmentary facts.
Burris v. Parke, 116 F.3d 256, 262 (7th Cir.1997) (Cudahy, J., dissenting in part and concurring in part) (footnote omitted).
I therefore respectfully dissent and would grant the motion.

. With the logic pursued in the majority opinion, few aspects of routine motions practice could escape the black hole of the AEDPA.

. The majority seeks to apply the strictures of Rule 60(b), which tightly constrain the district courts, to an appellate motion to recall a mandate. Such an application has scant legal support. Mathenia and Felker II do not equate a motion under Rule 60(b) with a motion to recall a mandate. In Ruiz, the Eighth Circuit simply assumes that a "motion to recall the mandate to allow consideration of a new ground or contention is the functional equivalent of a second or successive habeas petition” and is therefore subject to the AEDPA, see Ruiz, 104 F.3d at 164 (emphasis added), and does not consider the implications of confining the discretion of a court of appeals to that of a district court under Rule 60(b). Notably, the court in Ruiz felt compelled to justify its decision on the merits as well. Finally, Felker I, Hill and Sapp, which treat certain claims filed in a district court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 as successive habeas applications, do not deal with post-judgment motions at all. Thus whether the same considerations apply to a motion to recall the mandate in an appellate court as apply to a motion under Rule 60(b) is an open question. The Ninth Circuit has noted, "[T]he authority of a Court of Appeals to recall its mandate is not conferred by statute, it exists as part of the court’s power to protect the integrity of its own processes.” Nevius v. Sumner, 105 F.3d 453, 460 (9th Cir.1996) (quoting Zipfel v. Halliburton Co., 861 F.2d 565, 567 (9th Cir.1988)). Moreover, "[wjhether the power is exercised at all falls within the discretion of the court, but such discretion should be employed to recall a mandate only when good cause or unusual circumstances exist sufficient to justify modification or recall of a prior judgment.” Zipfel, 861 F.2d at 567. While the recall of a mandate may resemble in some respects a post-judgment motion in the district court, we do not and should not bind ourselves to the statutory restrictions placed upon the district courts under Rule 60(b). Cf. Felker, - U.S. at -, 116 S.Ct. at 2339 (declining to find that the Supreme Court is bound generally by § 2244(b), but allowing the statute to "inform” the Court's consideration of an original habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241).