The Washington Post

Wednesday, April 19, 2000

Court Limits Federal Reviews In Capital Cases

By Joan Biskupic

Ruling in a Virginia murder case with nationwide ramifications, the Supreme Court yesterday curtailed the power of federal judges to override state court decisions against death row prisoners who claim their trials were tainted.

The 5-4 decision, arising at a time of new national scrutiny of capital punishment, was the first major interpretation of a 1996 federal law designed to limit inmate appeals and hasten executions.

With the five most conservative justices joining in a critical portion of the splintered decision, the court limited federal judges' authority to review a prisoner's claim that his conviction or sentence was constitutionally flawed--for example, that his lawyer was incompetent, or that prosecutors had failed to turn over helpful evidence.

In an opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the court said that even if a federal judge independently believes a state court was wrong to reject the inmate's claim, the federal judge can reverse it only if the state court used an "unreasonable" interpretation of federal law.

The new standard diminishes the federal courts' role in death penalty appeals but does not shut them out entirely. The justices spurned a harsher view of the 1996 law adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit--which covers Virginia, Maryland and three other states--that could have eliminated all meaningful federal review.

Despite the tougher new standard, the court in a separate 6-3 vote threw out the death sentence for convicted murderer Terry Williams and ruled he deserves a new hearing. Williams, who has been on Virginia's death row for 14 years for the slaying of an elderly Danville man, contended his lawyer so mishandled his sentencing trial that it violated his right to effective assistance by counsel.

Yesterday's case was closely watched as the first significant test of federal courts' power under the law Congress passed in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, in part to address long-held concerns that condemned prisoners were circumventing the system by dragging out their appeals.

The case also arises during renewed national debate over the fairness of capital punishment and whether innocent people have been wrongly condemned to death. In one of the most high-profile demonstrations of concern, Illinois Gov. George H. Ryan (R) in January imposed a moratorium on executions after concluding that 13 people had been unjustly sentenced to death since 1977.

Still, states continue to vigorously push for finality in their death sentences. Last year, 98 inmates were executed, more than in any single year since the Supreme Court permitted the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. As of Jan. 1, there were 3,652 prisoners on death row across the United States.

The ruling granting Williams a new hearing marked the first time that the court has found that someone was denied the effective aid of an attorney since its 1984 decision setting out standards for such claims.

"Terry said he couldn't believe it," Brian Powers, Williams's lawyer, said yesterday. "For the first time in 14 years, he can go to bed without fearing that he will be executed."

But David Botkins, a spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, said the case was "far from over" and that Williams may again be sentenced to death rather than life in prison.

On the larger question, legal experts said it is important that the justices left the door open to some federal scrutiny of state court decisions.

While the court retreats from "the view that federal judges should always maintain control," said Columbia University law professor James Liebman, "it leaves intact more federal habeas corpus power" than some appellate courts had read into the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.

Liebman also observed that the ruling, and another issued separately yesterday that coincidentally involves a Virginia defendant named Michael Williams, repudiate the famously conservative 4th Circuit's narrow interpretations of inmate appeals. "There is a message," Liebman said, "that there are limits to what the Supreme Court will tolerate."

In an effort to curb protracted appeals, the 1996 statute says federal judges cannot intervene unless a state court decision on the prisoner's constitutional claim was "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law."

A federal court may not step in, Justice O'Connor wrote, "simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Rather that application must also be unreasonable."

She said that would occur only if a state court "arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by this court on a question of law" or if the state court "identifies the correct governing legal principle from this court's decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case." O'Connor was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Dissenting on that portion of the opinion were Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. They read the 1996 law to cover "erroneous" rulings by state courts and said federal judges' independent conclusions should prevail so that federal constitutional law is interpreted uniformly nationwide.

Those dissenters in Williams v. Taylor were joined by O'Connor and Kennedy in the decision that Terry Williams was denied his right to effective legal help. Writing for the court in that part, Stevens noted that Williams's lawyer failed to tell the sentencing jury about the defendant's abusive childhood or his low intelligence and other mitigating factors that might have urged the jury to vote against death.

In the Michael Williams case, also called Williams v. Taylor, the court ruled 9-0 that death row defendants may raise issues at federal appeals even if they were unable to develop enough information to bring them during state court appeals, as long as defendants were diligent in seeking the information.