Ninth Circuit Holding Affords Right to Psychiatric Assistance to Indigent Defendants When Mental Capacity May Be a “Significant Issue” During Sentencing
In Williams v. Ryan, 623 F.3d 1258 (9th Cir. 2010), Aryon Williams claimed that the Arizona trial court violated his due process rights by failing to provide funds for a mental health expert at sentencing to establish drug dependence as a mitigating factor. The federal district court and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the state court's rejection of this claim was not unreasonable but differed in their interpretation of Ake rights to psychiatric assistance. The Ninth Circuit held that an indigent defendant has a right to be provided with psychiatric and psychological expert assistance if he can demonstrate that his mental capacity is likely to be a “significant issue” at trial or capital sentencing. The Ninth Circuit also held that the Arizona Supreme Court erred in its refusal to consider Mr. Williams' addiction to crack cocaine as a mitigating factor at sentencing.
Facts of the Case
On January 27, 1990, Aryon Williams and Rita DeLao, a former girlfriend, had planned to spend the night together in his apartment. They got into a fight because Mr. Williams' current girlfriend, Michelle Deloney, was then in the apartment. Ms. DeLao pulled a gun on Mr. Williams, but he was able to disarm her. He then left his apartment and did not return until the following day.
On the next morning, a hunter discovered Ms. DeLao's body on a dirt road about 20 minutes from Mr. Williams' apartment. She had been shot three times, had been beaten, and had tire tracks across her stomach, indicating that she had been run over by a car. The bullets that were recovered matched the gun Mr. Williams had taken from Ms. DeLao earlier.
Ms. Deloney, testified that Mr. Williams confessed to her on January 29, 1990, that he was with several friends who killed Ms. DeLao, but that he had only kicked her. However, Ms. Deloney testified that two weeks after the murder, Mr. Williams confessed to shooting Ms. DeLao, hitting her with an iron, and running over her several times with his car. He told Ms. Deloney that he would kill her if she told anyone.
Five weeks after the murder, Norma Soto, a Circle-K convenience store clerk, was shot repeatedly during a store robbery. Ms. Soto identified Mr. Williams as her assailant and testified that, before shooting her, he told her to stop spreading the story that he had killed Ms. DeLao. He was arrested soon afterward for the robbery and attempted murder, as well as the murder of Ms. DeLao.
Mr. Williams was convicted in 1992 in a consolidated trial for Ms. DeLao's murder, armed robbery, and the attempted murder of Ms. Soto. He testified that he was not involved in either event. Although he did not have a criminal record, the state introduced evidence that he had abused crack cocaine and was physically abusive to Ms. Deloney. He testified that he had not used drugs on the day of the murder. He later sought to have the state provide a mental health expert to explore whether his drug use had affected his mental state when he killed Ms. DeLao. His claim was rejected.
Mr. Williams then offered his addiction to crack as mitigation, but the trial court refused to consider it at sentencing, making a determination that “without a showing of some impairment at the time of the offense, drug use cannot be a mitigating circumstance of any kind” (Williams, p 1281). He was sentenced to death.
After he filed two unsuccessful postconviction petitions regarding denial of his request for mental health expert assistance and consideration of addiction in mitigation, Mr. Williams filed a habeas corpus petition. While this petition was pending, an Assistant Attorney General for Arizona turned over letters that he reported were discovered “by a secretary during an annual house cleaning at the County Attorney's Office.” The letters were written by a jail inmate seeking early release in exchange for information about the murder of Ms. DeLao. This information implicated another man in the actual murder but also implicated Mr. Williams by alleging that he had hired this hit man.
The federal district court placed the proceedings in abeyance in order for Mr. Williams to exhaust a Brady claim in state court. Under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), the prosecution's withholding of information or evidence favorable to the defendant's case violates his due process rights. However, the district court denied Mr. Williams' petition for relief regarding his Brady claim. The district court issued a certificate of appealability (COA) regarding the Brady claim and another COA certifying the claim that addiction should have been considered a mitigating factor at sentencing.
Mr. Williams claimed that his due process rights were violated because the state refused to provide him expert psychiatric assistance at sentencing. The district court interpreted Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68 (1985), to require expert psychiatric assistance at sentencing only if the state planned to rely on psychiatric testimony.
Ruling and Reasoning
Regarding Mr. Williams' Ake claim, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial, explaining that the trial court was not required to appoint a mental health expert at sentencing because he did not make any showing that his mental state was at issue as a result of drug use at the time of the murder. His lack of a showing was contrasted with the defendant in Ake who met this threshold by relying on an insanity defense at trial, exhibiting bizarre behavior at arraignment, and establishing that he required heavy medication to control his illness. However, the court construed the right to expert psychiatric assistance to be broader, stating that in Ake, “The Supreme Court held that where an indigent defendant can demonstrate that his mental capacity is likely to be a ‘significant issue' at trial or capital sentencing, he has an absolute right to be provided with psychiatric and psychological expert assistance” (Williams, pp 1268–9).
The Ninth Circuit also remanded the case with instructions to grant the petition on Mr. Williams' claim of denial of due process at sentencing for failure to consider all mitigating circumstances. Regarding sentencing, the Ninth Circuit asserted that it “is clear that a sentencing court must consider all mitigating evidence” (Williams, p 1270). Thus, the ruling that drug use could not be considered as a mitigating factor “of any kind” is contrary to the Supreme Court's consistent decisions in capital cases beginning more than a decade before Mr. Williams' trial. The Ninth Circuit thus vacated the death sentence, reversed, and remanded for issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.
Dissent
Circuit Judge Sandra S. Ikuta dissented in part with the majority's analysis of Mr. Williams' Ake claim, indicating that the majority applied the Ake trial phase test erroneously to the sentencing phase. She interpreted Ake as requiring a different test during the sentencing phase: a defendant's due process entitlement to expert psychiatric assistance is limited to “when the State presents psychiatric evidence of the defendant's future dangerousness” (Williams, p 1280).
Discussion
The holding in this case expands the constitutional right of indigent defendants to psychiatric assistance during sentencing based on Ake. The Ninth Circuit holding also clarifies the constitutional requirement that potentially mitigating evidence be admissible.
Glen Ake was convicted of double murder and sentenced to death. He was indigent, behaved bizarrely during his trial, was initially found incompetent to stand trial, and presented insanity as his sole defense. There was no expert testimony regarding sanity, and the judge instructed the jury that Mr. Ake should be presumed sane unless he presented evidence sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt about his sanity. Upon appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, a constitutional right to free psychiatric assistance to indigent defendants was articulated. They also ruled that certain death penalty defendants had an additional right to psychiatric assistance when the state seeks death on grounds of dangerousness.
The Williams majority read the Ake requirement for psychiatric expert assistance to death penalty defendants more broadly by requiring only that a defendant's mental capacity be a significant issue at trial or capital sentencing. Other courts interpreted Ake more narrowly, as articulated by the dissent. Indeed, the U.S. district court, Arizona state courts, and other U.S. circuit courts of appeal have interpreted the Supreme Court's Ake holding to apply only during sentencing when the government plans to use expert testimony regarding determination of future dangerousness.
Justification for the Ninth Circuit's broader interpretation of the psychiatric expert requirement can be discerned, however, from the Supreme Court's dicta in Ake, stating that the state must provide a psychiatrist “to assist in evaluation, preparation, and presentation of the defense.” Further, the balancing test of Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), referenced by the Ake Court appears to support a broader right to a psychiatric expert, as the defendant's stake in a capital trial is “almost uniquely compelling,” and both the value of assistance and risk of error when assistance is denied may indeed be great.
- © 2012 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
