Retroactive Changes to the Diminished-Capacity Defense: Reviewing the Effect on Due Process

Facts of the Case

On April 23, 1993, Burt Lancaster, a former Michigan police officer with a protracted history of psychiatric illness, shot and killed his girlfriend. He was charged with first-degree murder and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. At his Michigan state court jury trial in 1994, Mr. Lancaster presented a defense of diminished capacity, admitting that he had killed his girlfriend but asserting that he lacked the necessary mens rea to support a conviction for first-degree murder. At that time, a Michigan Court of Appeals precedent allowed a defendant to enter a diminished-capacity plea. Despite the defense's argument, the jury convicted Mr. Lancaster of both charges.

Mr. Lancaster unsuccessfully appealed in Michigan state court. However, his convictions were overturned in Lancaster v. Adams, 324 F.3d 423 (6th Cir. 2003), after Mr. Lancaster filed a petition in federal district court, in which he asserted that the prosecutor in his original case had improperly excluded a black juror on the basis of race.

Mr. Lancaster's retrial began in 2005. In this trial, Mr. Lancaster waived his right to a jury and again attempted to present a diminished-capacity defense. Before the retrial, the Michigan Supreme Court disapproved the use of the diminished-capacity defense in People v. Carpenter, 627 N.W.2d 276 (Mich. 2001). The trial court held that the Michigan Supreme Court ruling applied retroactively and, therefore, Mr. Lancaster could not assert a diminished-capacity defense. The court again convicted Mr. Lancaster of first-degree murder and the associated firearms charge, and imposed a sentence of life imprisonment for the first-degree murder conviction and a consecutive two-year sentence for the related firearms offense.

Mr. Lancaster appealed unsuccessfully to the Michigan Court of Appeals. The appeals court rejected Mr. Lancaster's argument that retroactive application of Carpenter violated his right to due process. The Michigan Supreme Court declined review of the case, thereby maintaining Mr. Lancaster's convictions.

Undeterred, Mr. Lancaster filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court, reasserting his due process claim. He argued that the abolition of the diminished-capacity defense was a substantive change in the law and that the trial court violated his Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights in retroactively applying the change to his case.

The district court denied the petition but granted a certificate of appealability. Mr. Lancaster appealed the denial, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals considered the case. A divided panel of the Sixth Circuit reversed the decision, noting that the Michigan Court of Appeals denied Mr. Lancaster his right of due process and “unreasonably applied clearly established federal law” (Lancaster v. Metrish, 683 F.3d. 740 (6th Cir. 2012), p 747). The Sixth Circuit concluded that the Michigan Supreme Court's decision was unforeseeable because of the “Michigan Court of Appeals' consistent recognition of the diminished-capacity defense; the Michigan Supreme Court's repeated references to this method of defense without casting a shadow of doubt on it; and the inclusion of the diminished capacity defense in the Michigan State Bar's pattern jury instructions” (Metrish, p 1786). The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Ruling and Reasoning

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court, supported the decision of the Michigan Court of Appeals to reject the defendant's use of the diminished-capacity defense on retrial, reversed the ruling of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Court considered whether the rejection of Mr. Lancaster's due process claim by the Michigan Court of Appeals represented an unreasonable application of the law as redefined by the Michigan Supreme Court. The Court reviewed the history of the diminished-capacity defense in Michigan, noting that the Michigan Supreme Court, in its decision to abolish the defense, emphasized that it had “never specifically authorized … use [of the defense] in Michigan courts” (Carpenter, p 281). The Court also cited the Michigan court's conclusion that the diminished-capacity defense was not compatible with the Michigan legislature's statutory scheme that “created an all or nothing insanity defense” (Carpenter, p 283).

The Court further concluded that the retroactive application of the Michigan court's ruling did not violate Mr. Lancaster's due process rights, given the foreseeability of the legal change. Justice Ruth Ginsberg noted that “fairminded jurists could conclude that a state supreme court decision of that order is not ‘unexpected and indefensible by reference to [exisiting] law’” (Metrish, p 1792). In her conclusion, Justice Ginsberg referred to a prior Court decision that addressed the retroactive application of legal statutes at the state level, Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451 (2001).

In Rogers, a second-degree murder conviction was appealed on grounds that the Tennessee homicide statute no longer included the common law year-and-a-day rule, which barred a murder conviction unless the victim dies within a year and a day of the act. The victim died one year and three months after the event. The Court concluded that the abolition of the year-and-a-day rule could apply retroactively to the crime, which was committed before the court abolished the rule. The Court asserted that where a change in the law is readily foreseeable, the retroactive application does not represent a due process violation.

In its application of Rogers to Metrish, the Court found that the decision to abolish the defense retroactively was, in fact, foreseeable based on existing Michigan statute, so due process was not violated. The U.S. Supreme Court has left it to the states to determine whether to permit the use of the diminished-capacity defense. In Metrish, the Court did not assert a constitutional right to a diminished-capacity defense, and it opined that state courts are within their rights to interpret statutes in a manner that abolishes the defense. In making its decision, the Court reviewed precedent in Rogers. The Court maintained a high standard for overturning the decision to deny Mr. Lancaster the diminished-capacity defense, that of unreasonable application of federal law.