November 2016 Ballot: Yes on 62 and No on 66

In anticipation of the November ballot, my colleagues and I at UC Hastings made a series of nonpartisan informational videos explaining the 2016 propositions. Here’s the video I made on Prop 62:

On this blog I also make endorsements. It’s an unequivocal YES, YES, YES on 62.

It’s not a particularly well-kept secret that I vehemently oppose the death penalty for all the obvious reasons: it’s inhumane, there’s no good evidence that it deters murderers, there are grave concerns about the fairness of its application, and with social psychologists estimating that 5% of all convictions are wrongful, there is also the grave risk of mistake. Add to that the important factor I discuss in Cheap on Crime–the expenditure involved in capital punishment–and repeal should be an obvious choice.

But I’d like to address this post not to the folks who are convinced, for moral reasons, that repeal is the right choice. I’d like to talk to decent, reasonable people who are on the fence about the death penalty, because they feel that some people–serial murderers, people who kill and assault little children, etc.–should have an especially harsh sentence reserved for them. Even if you are such a person, you should vote yes on 62. Here’s why.

In November we’ll be voting not about the philosophical merits of the death penalty, but on whether to keep it as it is practiced here in California. Here are some facts, not opinions: we currently have 751 people on death row. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1978 we executed a grand total of 13 people. Meanwhile, 90 people died of natural causes. They spend decades on death row, during which they are held in expensive conditions in a dilapidated facility, and they also litigate. Their confinement, and especially their litigation, is costing us $150 million a year, which would be saved if all these people were to be transferred tomorrow to general population. And most of these death row inmates are not the “worst of the worst” for whom you’d like to reserve the death penalty.

I get that you think that in principle there should be something special for really heinous crimes. But we don’t live in a principle. We live in California. And in California, this is expensive and it doesn’t work.

“So the death penalty is broken,” you say. “Why not fix it? Why not make it cost-effective, and then I can continue to support it?”

There is a proposition on the ballot that argues just that–Prop 66. Its proponents, mostly county district attorneys, argue that adding lawyers and shortening procedures would save money and allow California to retain the death penalty. Here’s the informational video I made of Prop 66:

The two reforms proposed by 66 are unrealistic, expensive, and very risky. They would not solve the problem. I strongly oppose it and urge you to vote No on 66. 

Currently, each death row inmate receives two attorneys at the state’s expense to litigate his/her case. “Quelle luxe!” I hear you say. Well, not so much. The Habeas Corpus Resource Center has a whooping grand total of 34 attorneys, who get assigned the hundreds of cases on death row. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, as of September 2015, 57 individuals were awaiting appointment of counsel in direct appeals and 358 individuals were awaiting appointment of counsel in habeas corpus proceedings. Those are hundreds of people whose lives depend on a determination of their legal claims, who have to wait an average of 16 years to get an attorney. That’s why it takes so long to execute people in California.

Hiring and training more attorneys to take on capital cases would cost tens of millions of dollars a year–on top of the $150 million we’re already paying by having capital punishment. While I’d love for there to be more jobs for my students, this is an unnecessary expenditure we can ill-afford.

What’s worse, Prop 66 supporters propose to shorten the times for appellate and habeas proceedings. But there’s a reason why these procedures take time. It’s because they have the potential of diminishing the risk of horrible mistakes. When someone does life without parole and is found to be innocent, their life has been detailed, but amends can be made. When an innocent person has been executed, there are no amends. The risk of a mistake is graver than we can tolerate: remember, a conservative estimate puts wrongful convictions at 5% of all convictions.

There is no fix here that saves money and prevents injustice. And even if you think you’re willing to compromise, ask yourself–how much is it really worth to you to keep 751 people on death row? Is it really conscionable to pay $150 million annually to keep this going?

Yes on 62. No on 66.

Richard Glossip Granted Stay of Execution

Remember Glossip v. Gross? The Supreme Court decided it just this summer, where five Justices were in a big rush–unsupported, it seems, by science–to approve the sedative midazolam in executions, because European countries do not import the other drugs anymore, because they know what we do with them.

Apparently there was a big rush to execute Richard Glossip, who is likely innocent.

Today, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals granted Glossip a two-week stay. News Channel Four report:

“The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals did today, what elected officials have refused to do. We stand with the many Oklahomans and individuals around the world in expressing our gratitude to the court. For today, at least, the state of Oklahoma has avoided the execution of a man not guilty of any capital offense,” said Ryan Kiesel, the executive director of the ACLU of Oklahoma.

Sister Helen Prejean, who is publicly campaigning on behalf of Glossip, firmly believes his innocence. On CNN she provided the following summary:

On January 7, 1997, Barry Van Treese, the owner of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City, was bludgeoned to death by a man, Justin Sneed, who confessed to the killing. However, he claimed that Glossip, the manager of the motel, had offered him money to kill Van Treese. The jury apparently believed Sneed’s testimony, and despite the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals in 2001 describing the evidence in the first trial as “extremely weak,” the decision was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2013.

As a result of all this, the person who actually committed the murder is now serving a life sentence in a medium security prison, while Glossip, convicted of “murder-for-hire” — almost solely on Sneed’s word, and in the absence of physical evidence from the scene — now faces death by lethal injection.

Kudos to the Oklahoma appellate instance for doing the right thing, and fingers crossed that justice will come out.

In the SCOTUS decision regarding the drug, Justice Breyer expressed frustration with the fact that the bigger issue–should the United States execute people, or is it cruel and unusual punishment–was once more buried under the details. I deduce (and hope) that there’s some interest in reopening it for debate. This case should be a lesson to SCOTUS Justices that, before rushing to embrace new chemicals and execution paraphernalia, we should focus on the crux of the matter–in this case, the risk that an innocent man will be buried in the technicalities.

Death Penalty Oral Argument: Procedural Debate Belies Anger at State’s Dysfunction

This morning, the Ninth Circuit (Judges Graber, Rawlinson and Watford) heard oral argument in Jones v. Davis (formerly Jones v. Chappell). As you may recall, the original case was decided by District Court Judge Cormac Carney, who found the death penalty in California unconstitutional because of the severe delays in its application. The decision was appealed by the Attorney General, and nothing much happened since then in terms of addressing the delays on death row.

What did happen more litigation relying on Jones–notably, Andrews v. Davis before the Ninth Circuit and People v. Seumanu before the California Supreme Court.

At today’s hearing, the Government representative argued that Jones was barred from benefitting from the delay in his case for two reasons:

1. It is a claim purporting to create a new rule, not brought up before, and as such is barred by Teague v. Lane.



A little bit of background: New substantive rules apply retroactively. For example, if a certain behavior ceases to be a criminal offense, whoever is still doing time for that offense will probably be let out immediately. But for new procedural rules, appellants can benefit from them only if these rules come into being while their case is still “alive”, that is, still under direct review. In the diagram to the left, the rule change can benefit people in situations (1) and (2), but not (3). Note that, if the new rule came into being when (2) was still under direct appeal, but now (2) is arguing for it in a habeas proceeding, (2) still gets to benefit from the rule. (3), however, does not–his case became final before the rule change.

What about announcing a new rule on Habeas? According to Teague v. Lane (1989), the dilemma is as follows: the defendant who is asking for the new rule is, essentially, (3) from the previous diagram. That is, he would not be able to benefit from the new rule if it were announced today in someone else’s case. Which also means that all the people who are similarly situated to this defendant–whose cases are final and on habeas–will not benefit from the new rule. Since the court doesn’t want to just announce the rule and not enforce it, or to enforce it only in the particular case and not in those similarly situated (inequality), it reached the bizarre conclusion that it will simply not announce new rules on Habeas–unless these rules fundamentally change criminal justice, either in terms of legalizing previously prohibited behavior or being a “watershed rule of criminal procedure.”

Jones’ representative, Michael Laurence from the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, argued that the issue at stake here is substantive, not procedural. That is, the application of the death penalty is not merely a change in procedure, but rather a fundamental issue of applying the death penalty, as it was regarded in Furman v. Georgia (1972), Atkins v. VA (2001), and Schriro v. Summerlin (2003), the latter specifying that “rules that regulate the manner of punishment” are considered substantive, rather than procedural. Even if it is a procedural rule, it is essentially a reframing of the problem of arbitrariness, which led to the death penalty abolition in Furman, and therefore not a “new one” but merely the application of an old one.

In response, the government’s representative argued that the arbitrariness claim, in this context, is a “new rule”, and moreover, a procedural one. There hasn’t been precedent directly on point claiming that arbitrariness can manifest itself in delay, and since this is a new question, it cannot result in a new rule on Habeas under Teague.

There was some back and forth about whether the court’s decision in Andrews, which rejected a Jones-based claim, should be used to interpret whether the rule is new or old. 

2. Even if it’s a claim relying on an old rule, Jones has not exhausted his argument in state court (in fact, never brought this up in state court) and is therefore barred from raising it in federal court under the Habeas provisions in section 2254. As 2254(d)(1) says,

(d) An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim—

(1) 

resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States[.]

This was not the case here, claims the government; Jones didn’t even go to state court, and cannot therefore challenge the sentence at the federal court.

Jones’ representative argues that Jones benefits from an exception to the exhaustion clause, which appears in 2254(b)(2)(b)(ii):

(b)

(1)An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted unless it appears that—

(A)

the applicant has exhausted the remedies available in the courts of the State; or

(B)

(i)

there is an absence of available State corrective process; or

(ii)

circumstances exist that render such process ineffective to protect the rights of the applicant.

This may seem very technical, but there’s actually a lot of anger beneath the technicalities. As Jones argues through Laurence, the California Supreme Court would not have provided a cure to the delay, but rather delayed things even further. In 1997, the Ninth Circuit found that 140 people on death row were unrepresented, and released them from the timely submission obligations under AEDPA. Now, there are 358 unrepresented people. The wait for an attorney can be 16 (!!!) years, and after that, litigation can last 8-10 years (!!!)–all this time, obviously, spent by the applicant on death row. Amazingly, the only office limited in its number of lawyerly hires, the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, can only hire 34 (!!!) lawyers, which is a woefully inadequate number of people to handle 758 (!!!) cases. Before and after Jones, the California Supreme Court did nothing to remedy this situation, argued Laurence, and therefore there was no point in trying to “exhaust” the claim in state court. That would be, literally, exhausting.

In response, the government representative said that the prospective delays in state resolution of such issues is speculative.

There was also a bit of back and forth on the merits, with the government resisting the assertion that death penalty in California is “arbitrary” but rather that cases are carefully examined.

I’m hoping that, no matter the result in the Ninth Circuit, this case will go to the Supreme Court, where the dysfunctional application of capital punishment in the state might find a receptive ear in Justice Kennedy and in Justice Breyer, who explicitly said, in Glossip v. Gross, that he would welcome an opportunity to address the constitutionality of the death penalty on the merits.

Today! Live Argument in Jones v. Davis

Starting at 10am, Jones v. Davis, the case in which the death penalty in California was declared unconstitutional because of the delays, streams live here:

If you’re at Hastings, join me at my office at 10am. If not, tune in to the blog later today for fresh commentary.

Jones v. Chappell Oral Arguments Coming Up at the Ninth Circuit

Remember Jones v. Chappell?

At the time we were very excited: A federal District Court judge, Judge Cormac Carney of Orange County, declared the death penalty in California unconstitutional because of the decades-long delay in its administration. In fact, we were so excited that we organized a public petition to the Attorney General, asking her not to appeal the decision. We got some press and support from more than 2,000 signees (thank you!) and there were even a few surreal plot twists.  Much to our disappointment, the Attorney General decided to appeal the decision.

On August 31, the Ninth Circuit will hear oral arguments in the case (now called Jones v. Davis–change of wardens). CCC will be there to report. If you want to read up a bit in the meantime, here’s the amicus brief submitted by Death Penalty Focus.

BREAKING NEWS: Connecticut Supreme Court Finds Death Penalty Unconstitutional

Today, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, in a broad retroactive decision that removed all 11 inmates from death row and into general population. The Hartford Courant reports:

The majority decision, written by Justice Richard N. Palmer, found a host of flaws in the death penalty law, which banned “prospective” death sentences, those imposed after the effective date of the law. But the majority wrote that it chose to analyze capital punishment and impose abolition from a broad perspective.

After analysis of the law and “in light of the governing constitutional principles and Connecticut’s unique historical and legal landscape, we are persuaded that, following its prospective abolition, this state’s death penalty no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency and no longer serves any legitimate penological purpose,” Justice Richard Palmer wrote for the majority.

“”For these reasons, execution of those offenders who committed capital felonies prior to April 25, 2012, would violate the state constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.”

Congratulations, Connecticut! Come on, California Supreme Court!

Death Penalty Bind: The Price of Out-of-State Incarceration in Hawaii?

Recently, we blogged about the discontent in Massachusetts over the death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. For people living in an abolitionist state, this outcome from the federal system was quite a shock.

Today’s news bring a similar shock to Hawaii, which abolished the death penalty in 1944. As I learned during my sabbatical at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Hawaii houses more than a third of its inmates out of state, on the mainland. Hawaii’s former governor, Neil Abercrombie, was elected partly based on his promise to bring the inmates home, and found that doing so was more difficult than he expected.

One unexpected outcome of the horrendous Supreme Court decision in Glossip v. Gross is that two Hawaiian inmates, housed at a private facility in Arizona, are now realistic candidates for execution–for a crime committed during their incarceration on the mainland. The Civil Beat reports:

Because the Supreme Court on Monday upheld the use of a controversial drug that happens to be used in Arizona executions, the high court may have set the stage for Miti Maugaotea Jr. and Micah Kanahele to die from the effects of a drug whose use wouldn’t even be a consideration in their home state.

Kanehele and Maugaotea both face trial for the 2010 murder of another Hawaii prisoner, Bronson Nunuha. Trial is set for August of next year, and prosecutors will seek the death penalty, an official with the Pinal County (Arizona) Attorney’s Office confirmed Tuesday.

. . . 

The crimes that Kanehele and Maugaotea are accused of are horrific. Media accounts say their alleged victim was found stabbed 140 times, with the initials of Kanehele and Maugaotea’s prison gang carved into his chest.

But both inmates are only incarcerated in Arizona because Hawaii found outsourcing its prison needs to CCA a more cost-effective option than building more prisons of its own. While they and others are there, are we comfortable with them being subject to the penalties of Arizona — even a punishment so singular and controversial that we took the highly uncommon step decades ago of outlawing its use in Hawaii?

Our decision in 1957 would suggest we are not. As Chang said last year, Hawaii is a society that does not put people to death, no matter how heinous their crimes. And as Justice Breyer wrote on Monday, the death penalty may well violate the very basis for our democracy — the U.S. Constitution.

It may be too late for Hawaii to save the unfortunate lives of Kanehele and Maugaotea, whose previous violations and alleged brutal murder of Bronson Nunuha have set in motion wheels of justice that may be beyond this state’s control.

But if we really believe in the values that we claimed in 1957, we should think hard about putting Hawaii inmates in facilities where further crimes might result in a penalty we would never have imposed ourselves. Gov. David Ige, Attorney General Doug Chin and director of the Department of Public Safety Nolan Espinda should use Monday’s controversial Supreme Court decision to examine anew our options under the agreement with CCA and determine whether punishment by death was intended to be part of the incarceration bargain. 

This grim situation is a reminder that, as in the case of same-sex marriage before Obergefell, the state-by-state solution for the death penalty does not insulate some jurisdictions from the punitive decisions of others (and vice versa). While the depressing result in Glossip does not bode well for nationwide abolition, and while I still think that abolition will come, in my lifetime, from an aggregate of local decisions, this slow and low-key process has some unfortunate results.

——–
Props to Edi Kinney for alerting me to this article.

BREAKING NEWS: SCOTUS Allows Oklahoma to Use Midazolam for Executions

The Supreme Court has just issued its decision in Glossip v. Gross, a petition on behalf of Oklahoma inmates along the familiar lines of tinkering with the machinery of death. After the Court found the three-drug protocol constitutional in Baze v. Rees, many executions stopped because the first drug in the trio became scarce (partly because European countries, disgusted with our retention of the death penalty, stopped exporting it.) As a solution to the problem of not being able to kill people, Oklahoma has introduced a substitute, the anesthetic Midazolam. This morning’s decision sides 5:4 with the state, finding that the inmates have not proven that using Midazolam would violate the Eighth Amendment, nor shown an alternative method.

The “tinkering” line of death penalty cases stems from the post-Gregg convention that the death penalty is constitutional in principle, and therefore there must be a constitutional way to administer it. The problem is that, in the search for such a way, we have tried and abandoned several methods. As Austin Sarat shows us in Gruesome Spectacles, there really is no good way to kill people: approximately 3% of all executions are botched. The line between an execution that “went well” and one that didn’t becomes remarkably blurry with the modern, pseudomedical ways to kill people. Still, there are enough documented lethal injection cases in which things did not go as planned to remind us that, no matter how clean and medical they appear, all of these methods will essentially fail to achieve the impossible distinction between death and suffering.

You can’t divorce death from suffering: death is suffering. And it is clinging to the farce that the two are separable that makes court decisions on this matter farcical as well. Today’s decision complains about “activists” that have made the drug scarce–as if it is their obligation to mitigate the harm. It also finds that the inmates have not offered a better solution to the state, as if they should wrap the executioner’s ax with velvet: “here, this might be more comfortable for me.”

What would happen if we let go of the assertion that there must be a way to kill people? If we let go of incessant litigation about the technologies of death? If we let go of the immensely costly post-conviction mechanism in which death row attorneys, completely out of options that invoke a true fundamental conversations about the heart of the matter, have to juggle chemicals and contraptions arguing that no, this one ain’t good enough, either?

(I should say: I don’t fault litigators one bit for engaging in this chatter. You do what you can with what you have to zealously defend your client. The abolitionist movement contains multitudes, and it is okay to fight for one’s client’s life by any means necessary while others continue to tackle the death penalty itself.)

The tenor of today’s decision, which clings to the moral imperative to kill people in the face of medical and scientific evidence that doing so is truly not possible without flukes and without the suffering that goes with any inflicted death, further supports my conclusion from the last couple of years of this, namely, that the death penalty will not, itself, be executed. It will die a slow, costly death from a chronic disease–much like the inmates at San Quentin.

What Happens If the Court Disallowed Your Attorney from Attending a Batson Hearing?

The Sixth Amendment requires that defendants be tried by a jury of their peers; this raises serious questions when partisan interests bring racial considerations into the choice. Batson v. Kentucky, decided by the Supreme Court in 1986, limited the ability to use peremptory challenges (which allow each party to disqualify jurors without providing an explanation) when the pattern of challenges indicates racial (or, as later decided, gender) bias. The procedure under Batson requires three steps: the other party (typically the defense) points to a systematic pattern of racial exclusion; the excluding party (typically the prosecution) provides race-neutral explanations for the exclusion; and the court decides, based on totality of the circumstances, whether the challenges can stand.

Shortly after Batson, in 1989, Hector Ayala was convicted of a triple murder in the context of a robbery in San Diego. At the voir dire stage of his capital punishment trial, his attorney objected three times to repeated use of peremptory challenges by the prosecution against black and latino prospective jurors. Each time, the prosecution asked that the defense leave the room, arguing that they didn’t want to expose trial tactics to the defense. Their actual race-neutral explanations for the peremptory challenges were concerns about criminal record, concerns about unwillingness to apply the death penalty, and personal history in following and being involved in controversial trials. The judge agreed to let the peremptory challenges stand. Ayala was convicted and sentenced to death.

Today, the Supreme Court decided Davis v. Ayala, siding 5:4 against Ayala.

The Court was willing to accept, as a basic premise, that Ayala’s constitutional rights were violated; but that is not enough to merit a reversal. Under the law governing post-conviction remedies, Ayala had to also overcome the “harmless error” doctrine.

Here’s how harmless error works: On appeal or on habeas, when someone successfully establishes that their constitutional rights were violated, the court also cares about whether, had everything gone well, the result of the proceeding would have been different. The first distinction the court makes is between “structural errors” and “trial errors”. The former lead to immediate relief; with the latter, we’re concerned about how the error might’ve affected the outcome. It’s easier to prove that it did on appeal (where you only have to create reasonable doubt that it might have) than on habeas (where the burden of proof is higher.) Here’s a basic illustration (click on the graphic to enlarge):

If this was not complicated enough, let’s throw in an extra issue: in federal courts, where collateral review (habeas) happens, the procedure is also governed by AEDPA, which says, among other things, that the federal courts will not intervene in state court decisions unless they were “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” This standard is said to incorporate the heightened test for collateral reviews set in the diagram above.

The Court then examined whether the county court in the original trial was right in deciding that the challenges to the jurors were neutral. Here, it goes into the questioning of the jurors, finding that, even if there were white jurors who answered similarly to the voir dire questions, there were still differences in terms of how willing they were to apply the death penalty. Or, more accurately, these similarities are not enough to meet the burden of proof that the challenges were racial and resulted in a different verdict than if they hadn’t been allowed.

It is important to flag an important issue here: Under Witherspoon v. Illinois, it is perfectly okay to dismiss for cause jurors that are absolutely, 100% opposed to the death penalty, though it is not okay to dismiss for cause jurors that are merely reluctant to impose it. But, tactics-wise, if you have a juror that seems reluctant, albeit not reluctant enough to allow for a Witherspoon strike, you can certainly use your peremptory challenge on him. It’s not good enough for a for-cause challenge, but it is a race-neutral, and thus legitimate, excuse for a peremptory challenge.

But what about the defense attorney’s absence when the prosecutor articulated these race-neutral reasons for exclusion? The Court argues that, during the interrogation of the witnesses, the defense had ample opportunity to impact the record in a way that would indicate that the peremptory challenges were based on race. Before the prosecutor offered the explanation, the defense had an exchange with the court in which they sought to prove that the prospective jurors’ reactions did not differ from those of their fellow prospective jurors.

So, Ayala loses. But what is interesting here is that Justice Kennedy files a concurrent opinion, in which he talks about the “side issue” of Ayala having been in solitary confinement (“administrative segreagation”) on death row for more than twenty-five years. He says:

[I]f his solitary confinement follows the usual pattern, it is likely respondent has been held for all or
most of the past 20 years or more in a windowless cell no larger than a typical parking spot for 23 hours a day; and in the one hour when he leaves it, he likely is allowed little or no opportunity for conversation or interaction with anyone. . .  It is estimated that 25,000 inmates in the United States are currently serving their sentence in whole or substantial part in solitary confinement, many regardless of their conduct in prison.

. . . 

[D]espite scholarly discussion and some commentary from other sources, the condition in which prisoners are  kept simply has not been a matter of sufficient public inquiry or interest. To be sure, cases on prison procedures and conditions do reach the courts. . . Sentencing judges, moreover, devote considerable time and thought to their task. There is no accepted mechanism, however, for them to take into account, when sentencing a defendant, whether the time in prison will or should be served in solitary. So in many cases, it is as if a judge had no choice but to say: “In imposing
this capital sentence, the court is well aware that during the many years you will serve in prison before your execution, the penal system has a solitary confinement regime that will bring you to the edge of madness, perhaps to madness itself.” Even if the law were to condone or permit this added punishment, so stark an outcome ought not to be the result of society’s simple unawareness or
indifference.

Too often, discussion in the legal academy and among practitioners and policymakers concentrates simply on the adjudication of guilt or innocence. Too easily ignored is the question of what comes next. Prisoners are shut away—out of sight, out of mind. It seems fair to suggest that, in decades past, the public may have assumed lawyers and judges were engaged in a careful assessment of correctional policies, while most lawyers and judges assumed these matters were for the policymakers and correctional experts.

After citing numerous scholarly articles about the horrors of solitary confinement, Kennedy continues:

Of course, prison officials must have discretion to decide that in some instances temporary,
solitary confinement is a useful or necessary means to impose discipline and to protect prison employees and other inmates. But research still confirms what this Court suggested over a century ago: Years on end of near-total isolation exa cts a terrible price . . . [including “anxiety, panic, withdrawal, hallucinations,self-mutilation, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors”]. In a case that presented the issue, the judiciary may be required, within its proper jurisdiction and authority, to determine whether workable alternative systems for long-term confinement exist, and, if so, whether a correctional system should be required to adopt them.

Over 150 years ago, Dostoyevsky wrote, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” . . . There is truth to this in our own time.

This commentary, combined with his compassionate majority opinion in Brown v. Plata, in which he cited horrific neglect in California prisons and included photos, marks Kennedy as the guardian of dignity whenever prisons are concerned. In his recent book Mass Incarceration on Trial, Jonathan Simon predicts a “dignity cascade” that would hopefully lead to change in prison conditions. If that is true, Kennedy will be the herald of this cascade, and this segment indicates his intention to welcome such cases and provide real succor to those who need it most.

How to Determine Intellectual Disability for Death Penalty Purposes?

This morning, the Supreme Court decided Brumfield v. Cain, a Louisiana case that raised the question how to determine intellectual disability for death penalty purposes.

The facts are as follows: In 1993, Brumfield murdered off-duty police officer Betty Smothers. The crime, as recounted in Justice Thomas’ dissent, was a random, heartless shooting into a car in the process of a “hustle”, and can only be explained by Brumfield’s antisocial personality–he showed no remorse for it. Moreover, it was the culmination of a horrific two-week-long crime spree.

At the time of Brumfield’s trial, there were no constitutional limitations on executing mentally disabled inmates. At the sentencing phase of Brumfield’s trial, the Baton Rouge court heard mitigating evidence on Brumfield’s behalf: his mom, a social worker who compiled his personal history; and a neuropsychologist who examined him. The court psychologist examined him as well, but did not testify. The evidence, at the time, demonstrated that Brumfield had registered an IQ score of 75, had a fourth-grade reading level, had been prescribed numerous medications and treated at psychiatric hospitals as a child, had been identified as having some form of learning disability, and had been placed in special education classes.

In 2002, years after Brumfield had been sentenced to death, the Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, in which it ruled that the execution of the intellectually disabled was unconstitutional–a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In State v. Williams, the Louisiana Supreme Court interpreted Atkins as requiring, for a new hearing to establish a diagnosis of “mental retardation”, that the petitioner would have to raise a reasonable doubt that the following conditions might be met:

(1) subaverage intelligence, as measured by objective standardized IQ tests; 
(2) significant impairment in several areas of adaptive skills, which are: (i) Self-care. (ii) Understanding and use of language. (iii) Learning. (iv) Mobility. (v) Self-direction.
(vi) Capacity for independent living); and 
(3) manifestations of this neuro-psychological disorder in the developmental stage.

After Williams was decided, Brumfield, who was in the process of appealing his conviction and sentence, amended his petition to include a request to hold a hearing to establish that his mental capacity fell beneath the minimum required for execution. He also requested funds to help him procure evidence he could present at the hearing. The state court refused his request, and, relying on the original record at the time of his sentencing, stated that there was no evidence, rising to the level of a “reasonable doubt” that Brumfield was intellectually disabled, that justified such a hearing.

The Supreme Court, in a 5:4 decision authored by Justice Sotomayor, sided with Brumfield. The Court argued that an IQ of 75 could, within the margin of error expected of such tests, be consistent with a mental disability. Moreover, contrary to the decision that denied Brumfield’s petition, the evidence he presented at the original sentencing hearing suggested significant impairments in several areas of adaptive skills, including language and learning. Not that Brumfield had to positively prove any of these things; all he had to do was show reasonable doubt that they might be true. And given the indications in the original record, he would probably have had a much better chance to prove his disability in a full hearing.

Justice Thomas’ dissent, as mentioned above, went in depth into the particulars of the crime and the plight of the victim’s family, particularly her two eldest sons (she was a mother of six.) And while the victims understandably are enraged at the victim and his postconviction efforts–are we served, as a whole, by the clinging to dogmatic criteria in identifying who is fit to kill and who is not? Suppose Brumfield’s IQ had been 80, not 75–would that really make us more comfortable killing him? Suppose Brumfield’s IQ had been 70, not 75–would that have made the victim’s family’s loss easier to bear?

I’m sure that, for some victims, the prospect of the death penalty provides some closure. But I can think of nothing more demeaning and tiresome for many victims than the need to suffer through decades-long legal quibbles about the minutiae of their loved one’s murderer’s mental capabilities. The number of executions, even in Louisiana, is in decline. In the last twenty years, they consist of seven executions, the last one in 2010 and the one before that in 2002. Is it really worthwhile to continue tinkering with the machinery of death this way, rather than send convicted murderers, particularly those who might recidivate, to long prison sentences?