[WCADP-list] US Supreme Court hears WA State case & case dealing with the death penalty and the insane.

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Earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in
two important death penalty cases.  The first case, that of Cal Brown,
focused on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to throw out Brown's
death penalty because of the removal of a potential juror who had expressed
some reservations about the death penalty.  The second case concerned the
administration of the death penalty on people who are profoundly mentally
ill.  Links to both arguments are below followed by some information and
analysis regarding the two cases.
 
Uttecht v. Brown:  Should juror have been excluded?
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/06-413.pdf
 
Panetti v. Quarterman:  The 8th Amendment and the insane.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/06-6407.pd
f
 
  _____  

US Supreme Court Considers Appeals Court's Decision to Throw Out the Death
Penalty for Cal Brown

By Sam Skolnik, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Friday, December 9, 2005

A federal appeals court overturned the death sentence Thursday of a man who
had been expected to be the next person executed in Washington.

The three-judge panel concluded that the King County judge in the case of
Cal Coburn Brown had unconstitutionally excluded a potential juror who had
expressed some reservations about the death penalty.

In 1991, Brown carjacked 21-year-old Holly Washa and drove her to a hotel
near Sea-Tac Airport. He held her hostage and raped and tortured her there
for two days. He left her to bleed to death in a parking lot.

Brown, 47, turned himself in after he raped and tried to kill another woman
in Palm Springs, Calif. He admitted to both crimes. In 1993, a King County
jury convicted him and sentenced him to die.

But three judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously found
that at least one of the bases for Brown's appeal, regarding the selection
of the jury in his case, was valid.

Brown's defense lawyers argued that prosecutors had erroneously objected to
three potential jurors being removed during jury selection because they were
against the death penalty. In two of the cases, the appeals judges said, the
jurors should have been excluded.

But in the case of a man identified as "Juror Z," the judges found that
although he agreed that such mitigating factors as childhood trauma or
mental illness could be taken into account when deciding a death case, he
had "expressed no antipathy toward the death penalty" and had been removed
from the panel unfairly.

King County Superior Court Judge Ricardo Martinez presided at his trial. He
is now a U.S. District Court judge in Seattle.

Martinez imposed the jury's death sentence in what he called at the time
"one of the most horrible, most brutal crimes" he had seen in his years as a
prosecutor and judge.

On Thursday, state Assistant Attorney General John Samson expressed
disappointment that the death sentence may not stand. Samson, who argued the
case on appeal, said the appeals judges had applied incorrect legal
standards when reviewing the claim.

Samson said the state likely will appeal the ruling to the full, nine-judge
appeals court, and to the Supreme Court if necessary. If the state loses all
its appeals, another King County jury would be chosen to sentence Brown a
second time.

The appeals judges were "just reaffirming that the state can't use the jury
selection process to stack the jury in favor of death," said Brown's
attorney, Suzanne Lee Elliott of Seattle. She added that Juror Z seemed
exactly like the type of fair-minded person citizens should want on a death
penalty jury.

The appeals panel did not address one of Brown's other appeals claims: that
his trial lawyers had not argued strenuously enough that he was mentally ill
and off his medication at the time of Washa's murder. 

  _____  

 
The 8th Amendment and the Insane
  
Nearly 21 years ago, the Supreme Court indicated strongly that convicted
murderer Alvin Bernard Ford was too insane to be executed for his crime. The
controlling opinion on the point in Ford v. Wainwright (477 U.S. 399,
decided June 26, 1986, by a 5-4 vote) was by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
"The Eighth Amendment forbids the execution...of those unaware of the
punishment they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it," Powell
wrote. Ford's claim of insanity, he added, "plainly fits within this
standard." Almost a quarter-century later, the Court on Wednesday will
examine whether to refine the "Powell standard," or to keep it as is,
perhaps leaving any refinements to state legislatures.

In the one-hour oral argument scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. in Panetti v.
Quarterman (06-6407), the Court will be examining a variety of formulations
of "insanity" in the Eighth Amendment context. (The Court may also spend
some time discussing with counsel whether Panetti's case should be dismissed
-- an issue the Court raised belatedly. This blog discussed that aspect of
the case is a post that can be found
<http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2007/04/will_the_panett.html
> here; that issue will not be further explored in this post.)

Scott Louis Panetti has a lengthy history of mental impairment. His lawyer,
in fact, told the Court that "evidence of incompetency runs like a fissure
through every proceeding in this case." As his lawyer further expressed it,
"Panetti is a captive to a malfunctioning brain that cannot tell the
difference between what is real and what is imagined...The hallmark of Mr.
Panetti's condition is his psychotic delusion of religion persecution. Mr.
Panetti believes that demonic forces, in league with the state of Texas,
have orchestrated his execution in a final effort to prevent him from
preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ." He "is in the grip of a delusion that
puts his execution at the center of his irrational beliefs," the merits
brief added.

The Fifth Circuit Court, however, has found him competent to be executed. In
that Court's view, applying its own Circuit precedent, Panetti need not
"rationally understand" why he would be executed; he need only be "aware"
that he is to be executed for his crime -- murdering his wife's parents as
she and their child stood by. He has that awareness, the Circuit Court
found. He was found competent earlier to stand trial; he defended himself at
the trial, with occasional flights of fancy and delusion and meandering
questioning and testimony. His appeal does not challenge his conviction nor
the sentence of death; it contends only that he is too mentally ill to be
executed at present.

Arguing for Panetti on Wednesday will be Gregory W. Wiercioch of San
Francisco through an affiliation with the Texas Defender Service. Texas will
be represented by its state Solicitor General, R. Ted Cruz.

The Court granted review on Jan. 5, on the question posed by his appeal:
whether the Eighth Amendment forbids the execution of an inmate "who has a
factual awareness of the reason for his execution, but who, because of
severe mental illness, has a delusional belief as to why the state is
executing him, and thus does not appreciate that his execution is intended
to seek retribution for his capital crime."

If the Court does reach and decide the insanity issue, Panetti wants it to
lay down this rule: the Eighth Amendment "does not permit the execution of a
person who is so lacking in rational understanding that he cannot comprehend
that he is being put to death because of the crime he was convicted of
committing," or that he is "too mentally ill to understand the connection
between the crime and the punishment."

A group of legal historians has filed a brief supporting Panetti's appeal,
and sharing its finding that "the common law would not have permitted the
execution of a mentally ill defendant suffering from conspiratorial
delusions regarding the reason for his sentence."

The American Bar Association has offered a variation of its own: "Execution
of a mentally ill offender should occur only if the offender not only is
aware of the nature and purpose of punishment but also appreciates its
personal application in the offender's own case -- that is, why it is being
imposed on the offender.'

Three other groups on Panetti's side -- the American Psychological
Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the National Alliance
on Mental Illness -- have offered this version: "A person is not competent
to be executed if he has a mental disorder or disability that significantly
impairs his or her capacity to understand the nature and purpose of the
punishment, or to appreciate the reason for its imposition in the prisoner's
own case."

The state of Texas suggests that the case should be disposed of without ever
reaching the insanity question. It suggests that the "dispositive" issue is
whether the state court's determination that Panetti was competent to be
executed is entitled to deference under the Antiterrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act of 1996 -- the habeas-limiting law. Thus, Texas argues,
Panetti's federal challenge is barred by statute.

It says that, while the Court has not yet resolved the standard for
measuring insanity in the execution context, "its approach to Eighth
Amendment questions leaves no doubt that 'rational understanding; is not the
constitutional threshold of execution competence." It argues that there is
no consensus in "contemporary values" on the point.

If the Court, using its own judgment, decides the issue, Texas goes on, it
should "hold that a mentally ill capital convict is incompetent to be
executed only if, because of his illness, he lacks the capacity to recognize
that his punishment (1) is the result of his being convicted of capital
murder and (2) will cause his death." Panetti, it contends, is competent
under that standard.

Supporting the state, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, an advocacy
group, urges the Court to leave the "line-drawing" to state legislatures. If
there is a national consensus now on the key legal point, the Foundation
argues, is it limited to the view of Justice Powell in the Ford case -- that
is, "the need to require that those who are executed know the fact of their
impending execution and the reason for it."

That brief concludes that "the last thing we need is a new frontier for
last-minute litigation under a broad and vague standard."

The Court is expected to decide the case before its summer recess.

Posted by Lyle Denniston at 06:35 PM


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