In two pre-Christmas opinions this week, the Ninth Circuit denied relief to habeas corpus petitioners whose death sentences the California Supreme Court had affirmed. One opinion was on rehearing after a retiring judge was replaced on the panel that had vacated the death penalty in the case in May 2023.
The turnaround decision was in Waidla v. Davis. First, a 2-1 court affirmed a habeas grant that overturned the petitioner’s death sentence — although not his conviction — because of ineffective counsel during the penalty phase of his trial. (Waidla v. Davis (9th Cir. 2023) 68 F.4th 575; see here.) The majority concluded that, even under a standard of review that is highly deferential to state court decisions (required by the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act), the Supreme Court had “unreasonably applied” law about ineffective assistance of counsel and “could not reasonably have found that counsel’s failures were non-prejudicial.”
After one of the judges in the majority retired and was replaced by another circuit judge, the reconstituted panel granted rehearing and, on Monday, this time decided by another 2-1 vote that the Supreme Court’s finding of a lack of prejudice was not unreasonable after all. The new judge on the case wrote a concurring opinion and the remaining judge from the first majority filed a dissent.
On Tuesday, a Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the denial of habeas relief in Catlin v. Broomfield. The Supreme Court had affirmed Catlin’s death sentence over two decades ago for murders committed in 1976 and 1984. (People v. Catlin (2001) 26 Cal.4th 81.) The appeals court rejected various arguments, applying the AEDPA deferential standard of review even though the Supreme Court had denied some claims in summary denials of state habeas corpus petitions.
The Ninth Circuit usually, but not always, refuses to overturn Supreme Court death penalty decisions.
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