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The Petitions of the Week column highlights some of the cert petitions recently filed in the Supreme Court. A list of all petitions we’re watching is available here.
People held in state prison can turn to federal court to challenge the validity of their conviction or sentence. But they face a high bar in doing so: They have to convince a federal trial judge that their state conviction or sentence was “unreasonable,” and if they fail in that endeavor, they need permission to appeal. This week, we highlight petitions asking the court to consider, among other things, whether a federal court can deny permission to appeal a request for post-conviction relief when at least one judge would grant it.
Missouri resident Lance Shockley crashed a pick-up truck belonging to his sister-in-law’s fiancé into a ditch. He left the truck to seek help for the fiancé, slumped over in the passenger seat. Shockley stumbled to a nearby home, where the owners called 911, and he called his wife.
Highway patrol officers soon arrived at the scene of the accident, where they found the injured passenger and several bottles of alcohol inside the truck. Shockley’s wife, her sister, and the homeowners were outside — but there was no sign of Shockley. No one identified Shockley as the driver, and he himself later denied involvement to the officers. His passenger did not survive the crash.
After months of investigation, patrol officers again questioned one of the homeowners Shockley had asked for help on the night of the crash. The officers falsely told her that Shockley had confessed to being the driver; in turn, she disclosed that Shockley had told her the same that night. The officers then questioned Shockley, who again denied involvement and claimed an alibi.
The next day, someone shot and killed the lead investigator on the case in his own driveway. Three days later, police arrested Shockley — not as a suspect in the investigator’s killing, but for fleeing the scene of the car accident. They soon charged Shockley with both crimes, however, and he was only prosecuted for murder. Shockley was convicted and sentenced to death.
The night after the jury’s verdict, Shockley’s attorney learned that the jury foreman had written a “fictionalized autobiography” in which he, as the main character, murdered the drunk driver who had killed his wife to get revenge after the driver only received probation. During jury selection, the foreman had said he was a self-published author, but Shockley’s lawyers didn’t ask him about it.
The foreman was removed from the jury before it debated Shockley’s sentence. Shockley’s attorneys still demanded a new trial, arguing that the foreman might have been biased against him. The judge invited Shockley’s attorneys to question the foreman and other jurors about the book and potential bias, but they declined. The request for a new trial was denied.
Shockley hired new lawyers to represent him. In speaking with the jurors, the new lawyers learned that the foreman had shared his book with several other jurors and court officials before and during the trial. Shockley filed for post-conviction relief, on the ground that his trial attorneys’ failure to question the foreman or any of the other jurors after learning about the book fell so short of professional norms that it violated his constitutional rights.
The Missouri Supreme Court ultimately rejected Shockley’s claim, but one judge dissented from that decision, writing that Shockley was entitled to a new trial.
Shockley then went to federal court, asking a federal district judge in Missouri to order a new trial. Under the high threshold for post-conviction relief in federal court, the judge denied Shockley’s request. He also denied Shockley permission to appeal — known as a “certificate of appealability” — concluding that his claims “lack debatable merit.”
In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit similarly refused to grant Shockley a certificate of appealability, as did the full 8th Circuit, with two judges dissenting.
In Shockley v. Vandergriff, Shockley asks the justices to send his case back to the 8th Circuit with instructions to let his appeal move forward. The Supreme Court has ruled that people seeking post-conviction relief in federal court are entitled to a certificate of appealability if they show that “reasonable jurists could debate” the strength of their claims, Shockley explains. The courts of appeals, he argues, are divided over whether this standard is met when at least one judge would grant the certificate. Shockley insists that he is entitled to an appeal because “reasonable jurists” quite literally did “debate” his case: Three federal judges would have let his appeal move forward, and a state supreme court judge agreed that his trial attorneys were constitutionally deficient and would have granted him a new trial.
The state urges the justices to stay out of the dispute. Federal law allows the courts of appeals to set their own procedures for certificates of appealability, Missouri explains. It argues that this includes whether to deny them over the dissents of some judges. Accordingly, the state maintains, Shockley’s case doesn’t implicate a divide among the circuits on a legal question, merely a difference in internal procedures ancitipated by Congress.
Last August, the Supreme Court refused to halt the execution of another man on Missouri’s death row, Johnny Johnson, who had argued he could not be put to death because a psychiatrist had diagnosed him with severe mental illness and found he was not competent to stand trial.
The full 8th Circuit overrode a decision by a three-judge panel of the court that had granted Johnson a certificate of appealability. Dissenting from the Supreme Court’s refusal to step in, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that “[b]ecause reasonable jurists could, did, and still debate whether” Johnson was entitled to relief from his death sentence, “the Eighth Circuit should have authorized an appeal.”
– SCOTUSblog.
