Supreme Court Hits 9th Circuit in Pair of Opinions Upholding Defense Lawyer Decisions
In a case from Oregon and another from California, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that criminal defense lawyers provided adequate assistance of counsel and that their onetime clients were not eligible for habeas relief.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote both opinions overturning decisions by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. His opinion (PDF) in the California case, Harrington v. Richter, opens with a criticism of the federal appeals court.
“The writ of habeas corpus stands as a safeguard against imprisonment of those held in violation of the law. Judges must be vigilant and independent in reviewing petitions for the writ, a commitment that entails substantial judicial resources,” Kennedy wrote. “Those resources are diminished and misspent, however, and confidence in the writ and the law it vindicates undermined, if there is judicial disregard for the sound and established principles that inform its proper issuance. That judicial disregard is inherent in the opinion of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit here under review.”
Kennedy found that the lawyer for convicted murderer Joshua Richter was not deficient when he failed to seek forensic blood evidence before his client’s murder trial, SCOTUSblog says. Richter contended the blood should have been collected to test his claim that a co-defendant shot and wounded a drug dealer in self-defense, and killed another man in the cross fire by the bedroom doorway before moving him to the couch. At issue was whether the blood in the doorway belonged to the dead man, supporting Richter’s theory.
In the second opinion (PDF), Premo v. Moore, Kennedy found that a lawyer did not provide inadequate representation by failing to seek suppression of his client’s confession before he pleaded no contest to murder, KGW reports. The defendant, Randy Moore, got a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison. An Oregon state court ruled suppression would have been fruitless given other evidence in the case.
In both decisions, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg concurred in the judgment, and Justice Elena Kagan did not participate.
