RECTOR v. BRYANT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF ARKANSAS, ET AL.
No. 90-7755
Supreme Court of the United States
1991
501 U.S. 1239
No. 90-5950. SPENCE v. TEXAS. Ct. Crim. App. Tex.; and No. 90-8175. WILLIAMS v. TEXAS. Ct. Crim. App. Tex. Certiorari denied.
JUSTICE MARSHALL, dissenting.
Adhering to my view that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 231 (1976), I would grant certiorari and vacate the death sentences in these cases.
No. 90-7755. RECTOR v. BRYANT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF ARKANSAS, ET AL. C. A. 8th Cir. Certiorari denied.
JUSTICE MARSHALL, dissenting.
In Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399 (1986), this Court recognized that “the Eighth Amendment prohibits а State from carrying out a sentence of death upon a prisoner who is insane.” Id., at 409-410. The full Court, however, did not attempt a comprehensive definition of insanity or incompetence in this setting. Seе id., at 407-408, 409-410; id., at 418 (Powell, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). This petition presents the question whether a prisoner whose mental incapacity renders him unable to recognize or communicate facts that would make his sentence unlawful or unjust is nonetheless competent to be executed. Because Ford leaves this question unanswered, and because this is an important and recurring issue in the administration of the death penalty, I would grant the petition.
I
After shooting and killing a police officer sent to investigate petitioner‘s involvement in another homicide, petitioner attempted to end his own life by shooting himself in the head. The gunshot did not kill petitioner. However, it did sever a three-inch section
Petitioner thereafter filed a petition for a writ of habeas corрus in federal district court, arguing that his deteriorated mental condition rendered him incompetent to be executed. The District Court ordered a mental evaluation of petitioner to be conducted by the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. The examiners reached two conclusions. First, the examiners determined “that no mental illness or defect prevents [petitioner] from being aware of his impending execution and the reason for it.” Id., at 572. Second, applying the competency standard adopted by the American Bar Association in its Criminal Justice Mental Health Standаrds,1 the examiners reported that
“[petitioner] would have considerable difficulty due to his organic deficits in being able to work in a collaborative, cooperative effort with an attorney. In our opinions it appears that he would not be able to recognize or understand facts which might be related to his case which might make his punishment unjust or unlawful.” Ibid. (emphasis added).
The District Court concluded that, for purposes of Ford v. Wainwright, supra, petitioner‘s competency to be executed turned solely on his appreciation of the nature of his punishment. Consequently, the court denied the writ. See 727 F. Supp. 1285, 1292 (ED Ark. 1990).
Petitioner appealed this determination to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Like the District Court, the Court of Appeals concluded that petitioner‘s inability to recognize or communi-
The lower courts clearly erred in viewing Ford as settling the issue whether a prisoner can be deemed competent to be executed notwithstanding his inability to rеcognize or communicate facts showing his sentence to be unlawful or unjust. Although the Court in Ford did emphasize the injustice “of executing a person who has no comprehension of why he has been singled out and stripped of his fundamental right to life,” 477 U. S., at 409, the Court stressed that this was just one of many conditions that were treated as rendering a prisoner incompetent (or insane) at common law, see id., at 407-408, 409-410. Indeed, the Court quoted with approval Blackstone‘s discussion of this topic, which clearly treats as a bar to execution a prisoner‘s inability to recognize grounds for avoiding the sentence:
“[I]f, after judgmеnt, [a capital prisoner] becomes of nonsane memory, execution shall be stayed: for peradventure, says the humanity of the English law, had the prisoner been of sound memory, he might have allеged something in stay of judgment or execution.” Id., at 407 (emphasis added), quoting 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *24-*25 (1769).
It is true, as the Court of Appeals noted, that Justice Powell addressed and rejected this definition of incompetence in his concurring opinion. See 477 U. S., at 419-421. But even he recognized that the full Court left the issue open. See id., at 418 (noting that Court does not resolve “the meaning of insanity in this context“).
In my view, a strong argument сan be made that Justice Powell‘s answer to this open question is the wrong one. As we have emphasized, the Eighth Amendment prohibits any punishment considered cruel and unusual at common law as well as any рun-
II
Adhering to my view that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 231 (1976) (MARSHALL, J., dissenting), I would grant the petition and vacate the death sentence even if I did not view the issue in this case as being independently worthy of this Court‘s plenary review.