Will the Panetti case be decided, or dismissed?
on Apr 13, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Lawyers for the state of Texas this week urged the Supreme Court to order the dismissal of a significant death penalty case that is scheduled for argument next Wednesday afternoon, April 18 — Panetti v. Quarterman (06-6407). Lawyers for the death-row inmate, Scott Louis Panetti, countered that the case does not run afoul of federal limits on legal challenges by state inmates.
The Court had granted review of the case on Jan. 5, to clarify the standard for “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment when a mentally impaired individual has been sentenced to death for murder. The question is whether the Eighth Amendment forbids execution “of a death row 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?”
The briefs in the case focus on that issue. But, after briefing was completed, and the records of lower court proceedings had been sent to the Court, one or more Justices discovered a potential jurisdictional question — one that actually has lingered in the case since Panetti’s federal habeas challenge to the planned execution was filed in January 2004. Neither lower court had confronted the issue. On April 2, the Court told lawyers for both sides to file new briefs on whether Panetti’s habeas challenge must be dismissed as a “second or successive” plea under federal habeas law. Those briefs were filed on Wednesday; the supplementaal brief of Panetti can be downloaded here, while that of the state of Texas here.
The state argued that the current habeas plea is Panetti’s second; in his first, filed in 1999, he did not raise the question of his competency to be executed, the state noted. When defense lawyers did file that challenge in early 2004, the claim could proceed, Texas contended, only if the Fifth Circuit Court had granted permission to raise it in a new habeas plea. That permission was not sought, the state said. But, even if that permission had been obtained, Panetti’s competency issue could not be raised under federal habeas law as a “second” habeas application.
According to the state’s brief, the Supreme Court had spelled out in a 1998 decision, Stewart v. Martiniez-Villareal, a path for inmates claiming that their mental state barred their execution under the Eighth Amendment. It must be raised in the first habeas challenge, and then “reopened” after an actual execution date has been set. This, according to the state, “provided Panetti with a clear road map for preserving the execution-competence claim.”
The state conceded, though, that the Court in the 1998 decision left undecided the precise issue that Panetti is now raising — whether a prisoner who raises the execution-competence question after an initial habeas plea had been rejected would have the new filing barred as a second application. Still, the state added, “the language and reasoning” of that decision strongly suggest that Panetti’s case should now be dismissed.
Panetti’s lawyers, however, argued that the challenge to his execution is not a challenge to the judgment of conviction, or even the imposition of a death sentence. Rather, their brief contended, the present plea “contests the state’s attempt to carry out Mr. Panetti’s death sentence while he is incompetent.” The carrying out of the sentence does not involve the same state court judgment as his initial, 1999 habeas plea, the brief went on.
The challenge now before the Court could not have been advanced in the initial petition, his brief asserted, because it was not a live issue until some four years later when his execution was scheduled and was imminent. In addition, the brief said, Texas law does not allow the filing of such a claim until the execution date is set.
The Panetti brief reads the Martinez-Villareal decision to allow his present claim. The reasoning behind that decision, his lawyers said, is that the claim was not ripe until execution was scheduled and imminent. To require inmates with such a claim to make it in their first habeas application, in every case, “would encumber habeas practice with wasteful, burdensome, and purposeless pleadings, benefiting no one.”
Statistics show, the brief said, that such claims are raised in only about six percent of habeas cases in federal court. Treating the claim, when raised as Panetti has done, as a second and thus barred application “would impose a de facto obligation on federal habeas counsel for the remaining 94 percent of death row inmates to insert [such a] claim in the inmate’s first federal petition.” At that point, attorneys cannot be sure that, years later, the client would not develop mental illness or otherwise become incompetent, the brief argued.
The Court, when it holds its hearing next Wednesday, is likely to explore this jurisdictional issue as part of the argument, but is not likely to decided that question at once. A ruling on jurisdiction probably would come when the final decision emerged.
