SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
JOHN MARSHALL, WARDEN
v. OTIS LEE
RODGERS
on petition for writ of certiorari to the
united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit
No. 12–382. Decided April 1,
2013
Per Curiam.
Respondent Otis Lee Rodgers, challenging his
state con- viction, sought a writ of habeas corpus from the United
States District Court for the Central District of California. He
claimed the state courts violated his Sixth Amendment right to
effective assistance of counsel by declining to ap- point an
attorney to assist in filing a motion for a new trial
notwithstanding his three prior waivers of the right to counseled
representation. The District Court denied respondent’s
petition, and he appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit, which granted habeas relief. 678 F.3d 1149, 1163 (2012).
Because the Court of Appeals erred in concluding that
respondent’s claim is supported by “clearly established
Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United
States,” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1), its judgment
must be reversed.
I
In 2001, the State of California charged
respondent with making criminal threats, assault with a firearm,
and be- ing a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Before his arraignment, respondent executed a valid waiver of his
Sixth Amendment right to counsel, electing to represent himself.
See
Faretta v.
California,
422
U.S. 806, 807 (1975). By the time of his preliminary hearing,
however, respondent changed his mind and retained counsel. Then,
two months later, he fired his lawyer and again waived his right to
counsel. Two months after that, respondent again changed his mind
and asked the court to appoint an attorney. The court did so.
Shortly before trial, however, respondent for the third time
surrendered his right to counsel. He proceeded to trial
pro se. On June 27, 2003, the jury returned a verdict
of guilty.
After the verdict was read, respondent asked the
state trial court to provide an attorney to help him file a motion
for a new trial. The trial judge deferred ruling on the motion to
appoint counsel, and respondent later renewed the request in
writing. Neither the oral nor the written motion included reasons
in support of his request; and when offered a chance to supplement
or explain his motion at a later hearing, respondent declined to do
so. The trial court denied the request for counsel.
Respondent’s
pro se motion for a new trial was
likewise denied.
On direct review the California Court of Appeal
affirmed respondent’s convictions and sentence. As relevant
here, it concluded that his history of vacillating between
counseled and self-representation, the lack of support for his
motion, his demonstrated competence in defending his case, and his
insistence that he “ ‘c[ould] do the motion
[him]self’ ” but “ ‘just need[ed]
time to perfect it,’ ” App. to Pet. for Cert.
129–130, justified the trial court’s denial of his
post-trial request for counsel. The state appellate court also
distinguished its decision from that of the Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit in
Menefield v.
Borg, 881 F.2d 696
(1989), reasoning that the habeas petitioner in
Menefield
had stated reasons justifying his request for counsel, whereas
respondent’s request was unreasoned and unexplained. The
state appellate court concluded that “[b]ecause the [trial]
court was not given any reason to grant [respondent’s]
motion, we cannot find that the court abused its discretion in
declining to do so.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 130.
Having failed to obtain relief in state court,
respondent filed a federal habeas petition, arguing that the
California courts had violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel
by not providing an attorney to help with his new-trial motion. The
District Court denied the petition but granted a certificate of
appealability. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that
respondent’s “ Sixth Amendment right to counsel was
violated when the trial court denied his timely request for
representation for a new trial motion.” 678 F. 3d, at
1163.
To reach the conclusion that respondent’s
right to counsel in these circumstances was clearly established by
the Supreme Court of the United States, the Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit invoked certain Sixth Amendment precedents from
its own earlier cases and from cases in other Circuits. From those
precedents, the panel identified two relevant principles that it
deemed to have been clearly established by this Court’s
cases: first, that a defendant’s waiver of his right to trial
counsel does not bar his later election to receive assistance of
counsel at a later critical stage of the prosecution, absent proof
by the State that the reappointment request was made in bad faith,
see
id., at 1159–1162; and, second, that a new-trial
motion is a critical stage, see
id., at 1156–1159.
Combining these two propositions, the court held that respondent
had a clearly established right to the reappointment of counsel for
purposes of his new-trial motion, and that the California
courts—which vest the trial judge with discretion to approve
or deny such requests based on the totality of the circumstances,
see
People v.
Lawley,
27 Cal. 4th 102, 147–151, 38 P.3d 461, 493–495
(2002)—violated that right by refusing to order the
reappointment of counsel. 678 F. 3d, at 1162–1163.
II
The starting point for cases subject to
§2254(d)(1) is to identify the “clearly established
Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United
States” that governs the habeas petitioner’s claims.
See
Williams v.
Taylor,
529 U.S.
362, 412 (2000);
Knowles v.
Mirzayance,
556 U.S.
111, 122 (2009). As indicated above, the parties here dispute
whether two principles of law are clearly established under this
framework. One is whether, after a defendant’s valid waiver
of his right to trial counsel under
Faretta, a post-trial,
preappeal motion for a new trial is a critical stage of the
prosecution. For purposes of analysis here, it will be assumed,
without so holding, that it is.
The other disputed question is whether, after a
defendant’s valid waiver of counsel, a trial judge has
discretion to deny the defendant’s later request for
reappointment of counsel. In resolving this question in
respondent’s favor, the Court of Appeals first concluded
(correctly) that “the Supreme Court has never explicitly
addressed a criminal defendant’s ability to re-assert his
right to counsel” once he has validly waived it. 678
F. 3d, at 1159 (internal quotation marks omitted). It then
(also correctly) recognized that the lack of a Supreme Court
decision on nearly identical facts does not by itself mean that
there is no clearly established federal law, since “a general
standard” from this Court’s cases can supply such law.
Yarborough v.
Alvarado,
541 U.S.
652, 664 (2004). The Court of Appeals erred, however, in its
application of this latter proposition to the controlling issues
here.
It is beyond dispute that “[t]he Sixth
Amendment safeguards to an accused who faces incarceration the
right to counsel at all critical stages of the criminal
process.”
Iowa v.
Tovar,
541 U.S.
77, 80–81 (2004); see
United States v.
Cronic,
466 U.S.
648, 653–654 (1984);
Gideon v.
Wainwright,
372 U.S.
335, 344 (1963). It is just as well settled, however, that a
defendant also has the right to “proceed
without
counsel when he voluntarily and intelligently elects to do
so.”
Faretta, 422 U. S., at 807.
There can be some tension in these two
principles. As the
Faretta Court observed, “[t]here
can be no blinking the fact that the right of an accused to conduct
his own defense seems to cut against the grain of this
Court’s decisions holding that the Constitution requires that
no accused can be convicted and imprisoned unless he has been
accorded the right to the assistance of counsel.”
Id.,
at 832. California has resolved this tension by adopting the
framework under review. Under that approach, trial judges are
afforded discretion when considering postwaiver requests for
counsel; their decisions on such requests must be based on the
totality of the circumstances, “includ[ing] ‘the
quality of [the defendant’s] representation of [himself], the
defendant’s prior proclivity to substitute counsel, the
reasons for the request, the length and stage of the proceedings,
and the disruption or delay [that] might reasonably be expected to
follow the granting of such a motion.’ ”
Lawley,
supra, at 149, 38 P. 3d, at 494 (quoting
People v.
Windham,
19 Cal. 3d 121, 128, 560 P.2d 1187, 1191–1192 (1977);
final alteration in original). The state appellate court applied
those rules to the case at bar, concluding that the totality of the
circumstances—and especially the shifting nature of
respondent’s preferences, the unexplained nature of his
motion, and his demonstrated capacity to handle the incidents of
trial—supported the trial court’s decision. App. to
Pet. for Cert. 128–131.
The Court of Appeals, however, has resolved that
tension differently in its own direct-review cases. It has adopted
a “ ‘strong presumption that a defendant’s
post-trial request for the assistance of an attorney should not be
refused,’ ” 678 F. 3d, at 1160 (quoting
Robinson v.
Ignacio,
360 F.3d 1044, 1058 (CA9 2004); emphasis deleted), as well as a
default rule that, “ ‘in the absence of
extraordinary circumstances,’ a defendant’s post-trial
revocation of his waiver should be allowed unless the government
can show that the request is made ‘for a bad faith
purpose,’ ”
id., at 1058 (quoting
Menefield, 881 F. 2d
, at 701; emphasis
deleted).
It is unnecessary for present purposes to judge
the merits of these two approaches or determine what rule the Sixth
Amendment in fact establishes for postwaiver requests of
appointment of counsel. All this case requires—and all the
Court of Appeals was empowered to do under
§2254(d)(1)—is to observe that, in light of the tension
between the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of “the right
to counsel at all critical stages of the criminal process,”
Tovar,
supra, at 80–81, and its concurrent
promise of “a constitutional right to proceed
without
counsel when [a criminal defendant] voluntarily and intelligently
elects to do so,”
Faretta,
supra, at 807, it
cannot be said that California’s approach is contrary to or
an unreasonable ap- plication of the “general
standard[s]” established by the Court’s
assistance-of-counsel cases.
Alvarado,
supra, at
664.
The Court of Appeals’ contrary conclusion
rested in part on the mistaken belief that circuit precedent may be
used to refine or sharpen a general principle of Supreme Court
jurisprudence into a specific legal rule that this Court has not
announced.
Parker v.
Matthews, 567 U. S. ___,
___ (2012) (
per curiam) (slip op., at 12–13)
(“The highly generalized standard for evaluating claims of
prosecutorial misconduct set forth in
Darden [v.
Wainwright,
477 U.S.
168 (1986)] bears scant resemblance to the elaborate, multistep
test employed by the Sixth Circuit here”); see 678
F. 3d, at 1155, 1157. The error in this approach is subtle,
yet substantial. Although an appellate panel may, in accordance
with its usual law-of-the-circuit procedures, look to circuit
precedent to ascertain whether it has already held that the
particular point in issue is clearly established by Supreme Court
precedent, see,
e.g., Tolliver v.
Sheets, 594
F.3d 900, 916, n. 6 (CA6 2010) (“We are bound by prior
Sixth Circuit determinations that a rule has been clearly
established”);
Chambers v.
McDaniel, 549 F.3d
1191, 1199 (CA9 2008), it may not canvass circuit decisions to
determine whether a particular rule of law is so widely accepted
among the Federal Circuits that it would, if presented to this
Court, be accepted as correct. See
Parker,
supra, at
___ (slip op., at 12–13);
Renico v.
Lett,
559 U.S.
766, 778–779 (2010). The Court of Appeals failed to abide
by that limitation here. Its resulting holding was erroneous and
must be reversed.
III
The Court expresses no view on the merits of
the underlying Sixth Amendment principle the respondent urges. And
it does not suggest or imply that the underlying issue, if
presented on direct review, would be insubstantial. This opinion is
instead confined to the determination that the conclusion of the
California courts that there was no Sixth Amendment violation is
not contrary to “clearly established Federal law, as
determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.”
§2254(d)(1).
The petition for a writ of certiorari and
respondent’s motion to proceed
in forma pauperis are
granted. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.