Sorry for the brief blogging hiatus, which means I have failed to post some very good recent opinions; I will try to update this blog with them.
Today there were two great opinions, two death penalty convictions reversed! Mistakes made: improper removal of juror by the trial court (Cal Sup Ct case) and application of wrong standard of Strickland prejudice by the California Supreme Court (9th Cir. case).
First the reversal from the California Supreme Court. The Supremes held that judge improperly removed a juror for failing to deliberate. In some ways this opinion is remarkable because the trial court explicitly discredited the kicked juror’s statements (a finding adopted by the Supremes) and one juror said the kicked juror refused to listen to their points. It seems the critical issue was that the juror initially deliberated but when they reached an impasse it became difficult for that juror to continue to engage. Good good law.
The 9th Circuit reveral. Remarkably, they held the California Supreme Court applied the wrong Strickland standard of prejudice. Who does that with arguably the most well-known standard of prejudice ever?! The erroneous standard applied, as described by the 9th Cir., was that there was “substantial” evidence of guilt. The underlying IAC was the failure to investigate a third party culpability defense and introduce evidence of it. Sidebar–I think it is interesting that the 9th Cir. pointed out that the trial attorney did not give an opening and did not present a defense case. It makes me wonder if one should always, at least, give an opening about keeping an open mind and the presumption of innocence to the extent a person can do so without sounding like he is making an argument.
Anyway, kind of shocking that the Supremes made that mistake which was incredibly beneficial to the defendant because it meant the 9th Cir. did not apply the highly deferential AEDPA standard. To that end, I’m not sure how forcefully this case could be used as precedent for future prejudice arguments where the correct standard was applied.
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