Supreme Court Reverses Ninth Circuit in Capital Case (Again)

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in an Arizona death penalty case today.  Schriro v. Landrigan, No. 05-1575.  Writing for a five-member majority, Justice Thomas ruled that the defendant instructed his attorney not to present mitigating evidence at his sentencing hearing and that therefore the admitted errors his trial attorney made in failing to develop a mitigation case were harmless.  Thus, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying an evidentiary hearing on the defendant's federal habeas petition.  An en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit came to the opposite conclusion last year, holding that the defendant’s instructions to his trial attorney were taken out of context and, in any event, any such instructions by the defendant were neither informed nor knowing.  The Ninth Circuit held further that evidence of organic brain damage discovered after defendant’s trial warranted a new sentencing hearing in state court.  Justice Stevens, writing for the dissenting Justices, “emphatically” agreed with the Ninth Circuit en banc court, concluding with the cynical observation that “[i]n the end, the [majority’s] decision can only be explained by its increasingly familiar”—but misguided—“effort to guard the floodgates of litigation.”