SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 13–1433
_________________
KEVAN BRUMFIELD, PETITIONER
v.BURL
CAIN, WARDEN
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the fifth circuit
[June 18, 2015]
Justice Thomas, with whom The Chief Justice,
Justice Scalia, and Justice Alito join as to all but Part I–C,
dissenting.
Federal collateral review of state convictions
interrupts the enforcement of state criminal laws and undermines
the finality of state-court judgments. The Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) addresses that
interference by constraining the ability of federal courts to grant
relief to state prisoners. Today, the Court oversteps those limits
in a decision that fails to respect the Louisiana state courts and
our precedents. I respectfully dissent.
I
This case is a study in contrasts. On the one
hand, we have Kevan Brumfield, a man who murdered Louisiana police
officer Betty Smothers and who has spent the last 20 years claiming
that his actions were the product of circumstances beyond his
control. On the other hand, we have Warrick Dunn, the eldest son of
Corporal Smothers, who responded to circumstances beyond his
control by caring for his family, building a professional football
career, and turning his success on the field into charitable work
off the field.
A
Given that the majority devotes a single
sentence to a description of the crime for which a Louisiana jury
sentenced Brumfield to death, I begin there.
Corporal Smothers, a 14-year veteran of the
Baton Rouge Police Department, was working a second job to support
her family when she was murdered just after midnight on January 7,
1993. Following a 10-hour shift at the department on January 6,
Corporal Smothers reported to a local grocery store, where she
served as a uniformed security officer with the official
authorization of the department. She monitored the security of the
grocery store and waited to escort the assistant manager, Kimen
Lee, to a local bank to make the store’s nightly deposit.
Corporal Smothers followed her usual practice of
driving Lee to the bank in her police cruiser. Shortly after
midnight, they arrived at the bank’s night depository. As Lee
leaned out of the passenger side door to make the deposit, she
heard the racking of the slide on a handgun. Brumfield and his
accomplice, Henri Broadway, then opened fire on the two women.
Brumfield fired seven rounds from a .380-caliber
handgun at close range from the left side of the cruiser, while
Broadway fired five rounds from a .25-caliber handgun from the
right rear of the cruiser. Brumfield hit Corporal Smothers five
times in the forearm, chest, and head. Lee was hit multiple times
as well, causing 11 entrance and exit wounds, but she somehow
managed to slide over on the bench seat and take control of the
police car. She drove to a nearby convenience store, where she was
able to call for help and to describe Broadway to police. Emergency
responders transported both women to the hospital. Corporal
Smothers was pronounced dead on arrival. Lee survived.
On January 11, 1993, Baton Rouge police arrested
Brumfield for Corporal Smothers’ murder. After several hours of
police interrogation, during which he denied involvement in the
murder, Brumfield eventually gave a videotaped confession.[
1] He admitted that, after riding
around at night looking for a “hustle,” he had come up with the
idea to steal the grocery store’s deposit. He described how he and
Broadway hid in the bushes waiting for the car to arrive, and how,
when Lee looked back while trying to make the deposit, he started
shooting. He admitted that he had fired seven rounds from his
.380-caliber handgun, that Broadway had fired five shots with the
.25-caliber handgun, and that a third man had served as the getaway
driver.
A Louisiana jury convicted Brumfield of
first-degree murder. In addition to his videotaped confession, the
State introduced evidence that Brumfield had spoken about
committing a robbery to several people in the weeks leading up to
the murder. He was facing sentencing on unrelated charges and had
promised his pregnant girlfriend that he would obtain money to
support her, their baby, and her child from a previous relationship
while he was in jail. The State also introduced evidence that
Brumfield had told an acquaintance right after the murder that he
had just killed “a son of a bitch.” Record 3566.
B
At the penalty phase, the State sought a death
sentence. It reintroduced the evidence from the guilt phase, along
with evidence of Brumfield’s other criminal acts.[
2] The felony convictions for which Brumfield
was awaiting sentencing when he murdered Corporal Smothers were for
attempted possession of cocaine and felony theft of a gun.
Brumfield had worked only three months in his adult life because,
as he had admitted to his psychologist, he found drug dealing a far
more effective way to make money. In fact, he had been involved a
few years earlier in the fatal shooting of a fellow drug dealer in
a deal gone bad. And 10 months after he murdered Corporal Smothers,
Brumfield battered another police officer while in prison.
The State also explained that Brumfield’s murder
of Corporal Smothers was the culmination of a 2-week crime spree.
On Christmas Day 1992, Brumfield robbed Anthony Miller at gunpoint
after giving him a ride. He forced Miller out of the car, put a gun
to Miller’s head, and pulled the trigger. Fortunately for Miller,
the gun misfired, and he survived. One week later, Brumfield robbed
Edna Marie Perry and her daughter Trina Perkins at gunpoint as they
were walking along the side of the road. Brumfield pulled alongside
them, pointed a sawed-off shotgun at Perry, and said, “Hand it
over, bitch.”
Id., at 3790. Perry turned over her purse, but
pleaded with Brumfield to give back the pictures from her deceased
son’s funeral that she carried in the purse. He responded none too
courteously, “Bitch, you dead,” and drove away.
Ibid.
The State also introduced evidence about the
murder’s broader impact. In addition to serving as a police
officer, Corporal Smothers was a single mother to six children and
a volunteer coach at a local track club. Her children, who ranged
from 10 to 18 years old, went to live with their grandmother after
the murder. The loss of their mother weighed heavily on all of
them. It was particularly hard on Corporal Smothers’ eldest son,
Warrick, who had been especially close to his mother, and on her
second eldest son, Derrick Green, who had been hoping to spend more
time with her after Warrick went off to college. Derrick was
deprived of that chance, and he and Warrick had to take on extra
responsibilities to care for their younger siblings.
For his part, Brumfield introduced evidence that
his crimes were “beyond his control,” a product of his
disadvantaged background.
Id., at 3927. He was born at a low
birth weight, and his mother testified that he spent sev-eral
months in the hospital shortly after his birth. His father left the
family, and his stepfather would make him sit in the corner on hot
rice, whip him, and hit him over the head with a telephone book.
His brother eventually decided to go live with their biological
father. Brumfield opted to stay with his mother and stepfather.
When he was around seven or eight years old,
Brumfield began to have behavioral problems. He had trouble staying
in his seat at school, was disruptive, easily distracted, and prone
to fighting. He was eventually taken to a psychiatric hospital to
address his hyperactivity. Although he was a straight-A student
until the third grade, his time in four or five group homes
educated him in the criminal lifestyle, and his grades began to
suffer.
Dr. Cecile Guin, a social worker, testified that
Brumfield’s hyperactivity and acting out could be traced largely to
his low birth weight, lack of a supportive home environment, and
abusive stepfather. Although she was not a medical doctor, she
concluded that Brumfield had a “neurologically based hyperactive or
learning disability problem.”
Id., at 3886. She
acknowledged, however, that his school records described him as
having a behavior disorder—“a pattern situation or inappropriate
behavior extended over a long period of time which cannot be
explained by intellectual, sensory, neurological or other general
factors.”
Id., at 3882. She also admitted on
cross-examination that a psychologist, Brian T. Jordan, had not
diagnosed Brumfield as suffering from any neurological disorder,
but instead from “a sociopathic personality disorder, antisocial
type, poor impulse control, especially in the area of aggression.”
Id., at 3897–3898.
Dr. John Bolter, a clinical neuropsychologist,
testified on behalf of the defense that Brumfield suffered from an
antisocial personality disorder. Based on a battery of tests
employed to determine whether Brumfield suffered from “any kind of
neurological deficits in cognitive functions,” Dr. Bolter concluded
that Brumfield early on in life “manifest[ed] . . . a
conduct disorder with extreme levels of aggressivity and a
disregard for the basic rights of others,” along with “an attention
deficit disorder of some type.”
Id., at 3904. Over time, he
“emerged into what looks more like an antisocial personality,” and
he continued to have “attention difficulty” and “borderline general
level of intelligence.”
Ibid. Brumfield’s IQ score was a 75,
placing him at about the seventh percentile of the general
population or “on the low end of intelligence.”
Ibid. His
reading skills were at about a fourth-grade level, while his math
and spelling skills were at about a sixth-grade level. On the other
hand, Dr. Bolter concluded that Brumfield’s “problem solving,
judgment and reasoning skills [we]re sufficient to meet the demands
of everyday adulthood and he [wa]s not showing any decrement in the
types of problems one would assume to see if they were suffering
from an underlying organic basis or mental illness.”
Id., at
275. Dr. Bolter had also reviewed Dr. Jordan’s report, and he
testified that the only inconsistency in their conclusions was that
Dr. Jordan rated Brumfield’s intelligence “just a little higher
than” he did.
Id., at 3907.
The jury unanimously recommended that Brumfield
be sentenced to death. It found three statutory aggravators that
made him eligible for that penalty: He was engaged in the attempted
perpetration of an armed robbery; he knowingly created a risk of
death or great bodily harm to more than one person; and the victim
was a peace officer engaged in her lawful duties. The jury found no
statutory mitigators.
C
Brumfield’s argument that his actions were the
product of his disadvantaged background is striking in light of the
conduct of Corporal Smothers’ children following her murder. Most
widely known is that of Warrick. Though he had turned 18 just two
days before Brumfield murdered his mother, he quickly stepped into
the role of father figure to his younger siblings.[
3] In his view, it “was up to [him] to make
sure that everybody grew up to be somebody.” W. Dunn & D.
Yaegar, Running for my Life: My Journey in the Game of Football and
Beyond 37 (2008).
To that end, Warrick led by example, becoming a
star running back at Florida State University and then in the
National Football League (NFL). During his time at Florida State,
he set records on the field while coping with the loss of his
mother.
Id., at 71, 111, 117. Though separated from his
family in Louisiana, he called his brothers and sisters
regularly,[
4] sought parenting
advice from his coach, and returned home when he could.
Id.,
at 111–113. He kept his mother’s pearl earrings, stained with her
blood from the night she was murdered, in a box on his dresser.
Id., at 71. After four years at Florida State, Dunn was
drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Concerned that some of his
siblings were struggling in Baton Rouge, he moved the three
youngest into his home in Tampa Bay.
Id., at 139. Although
the strain of playing for the Buccaneers and raising his family
weighed on him, he “accepted it as [his] responsibility
. . . to make sure they stayed on the right path.”
Ibid.
While balancing football and family, Dunn still
found time for others. He started Homes for the Holidays,a
charitable organization that decorates and fully fur-nishes—down to
the toothbrush—homes obtained by single mothers through first-time
homeowner assistance programs. Dunn was inspired by his own mother,
who spent years working toward the purchase of a home for her
family, but, thanks to Brumfield, did not live to reach her goal.
Id., at 152.
Dunn’s contributions did not end there. After
joining the Atlanta Falcons in 2002, he expanded the reach of Homes
for the Holidays,
id., at 157; traveled overseas to visit
our Armed Forces,
id., at 200–201; led an effort to raise
money from the NFL to help respond to the tragic effects of
Hurricane Katrina,
id., at 202–205; and became a founding
member of Athletes for Hope, an organization dedicated to helping
athletes find and pursue charitable opportunities,
id., at
207–208. Following his retirement from professional football in
2008, Dunn launched two more charitable organizations in honor of
his mother: Betty’s Hope, a mobile bereavement program that offers
no-cost grief counseling services to children in the Baton Rouge
area, and Homes for Service, a program dedicated to helping service
members, police officers, and firefighters achieve home ownership.
As Dunn once remarked, “I knew that was what my mother would have
been most proud of: not my records, not my awards, but the way I
used my worldly success to give something back.”
Id., at
157.
D
Brumfield, meanwhile, has spent the last 20
years engaged in a ceaseless campaign of review proceedings. He
raised numerous challenges on direct appeal to the trial court’s
discovery orders, admission of evidence, jury instructions, and
preservation of the record; the prosecutor’s references during the
penalty phase; and the alleged deficiencies of his trial counsel.
The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected each of these claims,
State v.
Brumfield, 96–2667 (La. 10/20/98), 737
So. 2d 660, and this Court denied his petition for a writ of
certiorari,
Brumfield v.
Louisiana, 526 U. S.
1025 (1999) .
In 2000, Brumfield filed his first petition for
state post-conviction relief. In that petition, among other things,
he alleged 9 instances of prosecutorial misconduct, over 18
instances of ineffective assistance of counsel, and at least 17
constitutional errors in the jury instructions at the guilt phase
of his trial.
Brumfield sought and received multiple
extensions of time before finally filing his amended petition for
state postconviction relief in 2003. He raised many of the same
claims as he had in his initial petition, but also asserted for the
first time that he was mentally retarded and therefore ineligible
for the death penalty under
Atkins v.
Virginia, 536
U. S. 304 (2002) . In support of that claim, he alleged that
his IQ score was 75, that his reading level was that of a fourth
grader, that he was born prematurely with a low birth weight and
indications of slower responses than normal babies, that he had
suffered seizures and been prescribed a variety of medications
since childhood, that he was twice treated in psychiatric hospitals
during childhood and adolescence, and that he had been diagnosed
with a learning disability.
The state court denied Brumfield’s petition. In
a ruling from the bench, the court explained that not every
defendant who requests an evidentiary hearing on an
Atkins
claim is entitled to one. Based on its review of “the application,
the response, the record, portions of the transcript on that issue,
and the evidence presented, including Dr. Bolter’s testimony, Dr.
Guin’s testimony, which refers to and discusses Dr. Jordan’s
report,” App. to Pet. for Cert. 171a, it concluded that Brumfield
had not met his burden to make a threshold showing of mental
retardation. In particular, the court noted that Brumfield had an
IQ score of 75 or higher and had demonstrated no impairment in
adaptive skills. Although Brumfield had requested fees to develop
his
Atkins claim, the trial court did not explicitly rule on
the motion, and Brumfield’s counsel did not prompt him to do
so.
Brumfield then sought federal collateral review.
In his first habeas application, he repeated many of his claims,
including the claim that he is ineligible to be executed under
Atkins. He requested funds to develop that claim in an
evidentiary hearing. The District Court dismissed all of his claims
except for the
Atkins one and ordered an evidentiary
hearing. As the majority describes, the District Court eventually
granted a writ of habeas corpus. It concluded that the state court
had based its denial of Brumfield’s
Atkins claim on an
unreasonable determination of the facts and had unreasonably
applied clearly established Supreme Court precedent in denying him
funds to develop the claim. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the
Fifth Circuit reversed, concluding that the District Court should
not have conducted an evidentiary hearing and that AEDPA did not
afford relief on either of the grounds identified by the District
Court. 744 F. 3d 918, 926–927 (2014).
II
AEDPA limits “the power of a federal court to
grant an application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a
state prisoner.”
Cullen v.
Pinholster, 563 U. S.
170 , ___ (2011) (slip op., at 8). As relevant here, 28
U. S. C. §2254(d) provides that a federal court may not
grant an application
“with respect to any claim that was
adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the
adjudication of the claim—
“(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary
to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established
Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United
States; or
“(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an
unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence
presented in the State court proceeding.”
In applying this “highly deferential standard
for evaluating state-court rulings, . . . state-court
decisions [must] be given the benefit of the doubt.”
Pinholster, 563 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9)
(internal quotation marks omitted). They must be reviewed solely on
“the record that was before the state court that adjudicated the
claim on the merits.”
Id., at ___, ___, and n. 7 (slip
op., at 9, 12, and n. 7). And the prisoner must rebut any
state court factual findings he seeks to challenge by clear and
convincing evidence under §2254(e)(1).
Burt v.
Titlow, 571 U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 5).
Brumfield presents two grounds for relief under
this framework. First, he argues that the Louisiana state court
denied his
Atkins claim based on an unreasonable
determination of the facts, §2254(d)(2).[
5] Second, he argues that the Louisiana state court
violated clearly established federal law as determined by this
Court when it denied him funding to develop evidence for that
claim, §2254(d)(1).
III
The majority resolves the case solely on
Brumfield’s first ground, so I begin there.
A
The Louisiana state court’s decision to deny
Brumfield’s
Atkins claim was not based on an unreasonable
determination of the facts. “[A] state-court factual determination
is not unreasonable merely because the federal habeas court would
have reached a different conclusion in the first instance.”
Wood v.
Allen, 558 U. S. 290, 301 (2010) . Where
the record supports a state court’s factual determinations, the
prisoner cannot make that showing. See,
e.g., Titlow,
supra, at ___–___ (slip op., at 6–7). Here, the state court
rejected Brumfield’s
Atkins claim in an oral ruling as
follows:
“Dr. Bolter in particular found
[Brumfield] had an IQ of over—or 75. Dr. Jordan actually came up
with a little bit higher IQ. I do not think that the defendant has
demonstrated impairment based on the record in adaptive skills. The
doctor testified that he did have an anti-social personality or
sociopath, and explained it as someone with no conscience, and the
defendant hadn’t carried his burden [of] placing the claim of
mental retardation at issue.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 171a–172a.
That statement contains three factual
determinations: (1) Brumfield’s IQ was at least 75; (2) Brumfield
had not demonstrated impairment in adaptive skills; and (3)
Brumfield has an antisocial personality disorder. Each of these
facts is amply supported by the state-court record.
To begin, the record justifies a finding that
Brumfield’s IQ is 75, if not a bit higher. Dr. Bolter testified,
without contradiction, that Brumfield scored a 75 on the IQ test he
administered and that “Dr. Jordan rated [Brumfield’s] intelligence
just a little higher than I did.” Record 3907. Dr. Bolter’s report
similarly shows that Brumfield’s test results were “lower than
estimated by Dr. Jordan in January of this year,” but it notes that
“Dr. Jordan was using a screening measure which proves to be less
reliable.”
Id., at 272. The parties dispute whether Dr.
Jordan’s report was made part of the record, but to the extent it
was, it confirms Dr. Bolter’s testimony. Although it does not
specify an IQ score, Dr. Jordan’s report states that Brumfield’s
“intellectual function is slightly limited but gener-ally close to
the Average Range” and that a psychological test showed him “to be
intellectually functioning generally in the low Average Range.”
App. 428a–429a. Because two thirds of all IQs are expected to lie
between 85 and 115, a fair reading of Dr. Jordan’s statements would
suggest an IQ score closer to 85. See American Association on
Mental Retardation, Mental Retardation: Definition, Classification,
and Systems of Supports 37 (9th ed. 1992).
The record likewise supports the state court’s
finding that Brumfield is not impaired in adaptive skills. Under
Atkins, the relevant adaptive skill areas are
“ ‘communication, self-care, home living, social skills,
community use, self-direction, health and safety, functional
academics, leisure, and work.’ ” 536 U. S., at 308,
n. 3. Dr. Bolter reported that Brumfield’s speech was
“intelligible and prosodic” without “evidence of thought
derailment,” Record 271, and that his writing appeared “normal,”
id., at 273. Brumfield lived independently before his
arrest, often staying with his pregnant girlfriend and had been
able to maintain a job for approximately three months before
quitting “because his earnings were better through distributing
drugs and selling firearms.”
Id., at 271. Although Brumfield
reads at a fourth-grade level and spells and performs arithmetic at
a sixth-grade level, Dr. Bolter concluded that he “has a normal
capacity to learn and acquire information when given the
opportunity for repetition.”
Id., at 276.
Finally, the record supports a finding that
Brumfield has an antisocial personality disorder. Dr. Bolter
testified, without contradiction, that what manifested in childhood
as a conduct disorder had developed in adulthood into an antisocial
personality disorder. He described that disorder as “an absence of
a conscience” and “the ability to disregard the rights and feelings
of others in favor of what you want” without any “sense of
compunction or remorse.”
Id., at 3909. Dr. Guin acknowledged
that Dr. Jordan had reached a similar diagnosis. Brumfield
presented no medical evidence disputing it. That the majority
disputes “[t]he relevance of this diagnosis,”
ante, at 14,
does not make it any less supported by the record.
Brumfield thus not only has failed to rebut the
state court’s factual findings by clear and convincing evidence,
§2254(e)(1), he has failed to show that they were anything other
than eminently reasonable. Under any fairminded application of
§2254(d)(2), he would not be entitled to relief.
B
1
The majority reaches the opposite result with
a bit of legerdemain, recasting
legal determinations as
factual ones. It contends that the state court erred in
denying Brumfield’s claim because the evidence Brumfield presented
“was entirely consistent with intellectual disability” as defined
in Louisiana and thus sufficient to entitle him to an evidentiary
hearing.
Ante, at 8–9. That argument betrays the legal
nature of the majority’s dispute with the state court’s decision:
The majority does not—because it cannot—disagree that each of the
state court’s factual findings was supported by the record. See
ante, at 9–10 (not disputing Brumfield’s IQ score);
ante, at 14 (not disputing Brumfield’s diagnosed antisocial
personality disorder);
ibid. (acknowledging that “evidence
in the record before the state court may have cut against
Brumfield’s claim of intellectual disability”);
ante, at 15
(acknowledging that “the underlying facts of Brumfield’s crime
might arguably provide reason to think that Brumfield possessed
certain adaptive skills”). Instead, the majority disagrees with the
state court’s
conclusion that Brumfield had not made a
sufficient threshold showing of mental retardation to be entitled
to an evidentiary hearing on his claim.
Ante, at 15–16.
That conclusion, however, is properly
characterized as one based on the application of law to fact, not
on the determination of the facts themselves.[
6] As we have explained, “The question whether a
state court errs in determining the facts is a different question
from whether it errs in applying the law.”
Rice v.
Collins, 546 U. S. 333, 342 (2006) . No one can dispute
that Brumfield’s IQ score, adaptive skills, and antisocial
personality disorder are facts. By contrast, the question whether
Brumfield has met the legal standard for relief on, or at least an
evidentiary hearing with regard to, his
Atkins claim
requires the application of law to those facts. See
Panetti
v.
Quarterman, 551 U. S. 930 –952 (2007) (applying
§2254(d)(1) to conclude that a state court unreasonably applied
clearly established federal law when it failed to provide a
prisoner with a competency hearing after he made “ ‘a
substantial threshold showing of insanity’ ”).[
7] Indeed, in discussing each of these
“factual determinations,” the majority turns first to state law to
determine what showing a prisoner must make to qualify as mentally
retarded.
Ante, at 9, 11 (citing
State v.
Williams, 2001–165 (La. 11/1/02), 831 So. 2d 835). If
the majority’s disagreement with the state court’s decision were
truly based on “factual determinations,” it is hard to understand
what relevance state law would have.
2
Even on its own terms, the majority’s
so-called “factual” analysis fails. The majority holds that the
record sup-ported a finding that Brumfield qualified for a hearing
on mental retardation under
state law. To reiterate, even if
true, this state-law-based
legal analysis cannot overcome
AEDPA’s bar to relief under §2254(d)(2). To make matters worse, the
majority gets the state law wrong.
The Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision in
Williams instructed state courts to use the statutory
standard for determining when a pretrial competency hearing is
necessary—when there is “ ‘reasonable ground to doubt the
defendant’s mental capacity to proceed.’ ” 831 So. 2d
,
at 858, n. 33 (quoting La. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 643
(West 2003)).[
8] It made clear
that “reasonable ground to doubt” is “
not a reference to
proof beyond a reasonable doubt in the guilt phase of the trial,”
831 So. 2d, at 858, n. 33 (emphasis added),[
9] and that the burden was on the prisoner to
bring forward objective evidence to put his mental retardation at
issue.
Brumfield’s IQ test score failed to meet the
standard for significantly subaverage intellectual functioning
under Louisiana law. As
Williams explained, Louisiana
statutes defined “ ‘significantly subaverage general
intellectual functioning’ ” as “ ‘more than two standard
deviations below the mean for the test of intellectual
functioning,’ ” and a person with intellectual functioning two
standard deviations below the mean “would have an IQ of 70 using
the Wechsler scale.”
Id., at 853, and n. 26. Accounting for
the standard error of measurement,
Williams explained that
the requisite IQ could range “from 66 to 74.”
Id., at 854,
n. 26.[
10] The majority
prefers to avoid this language, focusing instead on “[t]he sources
on which
Williams relied in defining subaverage
intelligence.”
Ante, at 9. But the way to apply a state
court’s decision is to apply what the state court said, and, at 75
and higher, Brumfield’s IQ scores exceeded the cutoff for
significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning under
that decision.
Brumfield’s evidence of alleged deficits in
adaptive skills similarly failed to meet the requisite standards
under Louisiana law.
Williams defined deficits in adaptive
skills as “ ‘substantial functional limitations in three or
more of the following areas of major life activity:’ ” (1)
self-care, (2) understanding and use of language, (3) learning, (4)
mobility, (5) self-direction, and (6) capacity for independent
living. 831 So. 2d, at 853 (quoting then La. Rev. Stat. Ann.
28:381(12) (repealed 2005)). The only evidence Brumfield presented
that is even potentially relevant to these factors was evidence of
his poor reading skills and behavioral problems in school. But,
once again, Dr. Bolter’s report confirmed that he had “a normal
capacity to learn and acquire information when given the
opportunity for repetition” and that Brumfield’s behavioral
problems were attributable to “a conduct disorder that
. . . progressed into an antisocial personality
disorder.” Record 276. The majority places special weight on
Brumfield’s placement in “special education” classes,
ante,
at 4, 13, n. 7, 14, 15, but the record explains that he was
placed in
behavioral disorder classes not because he had a
low capacity to learn, but because he had a high capacity to make
trouble, Record 3846–3847.[
11] The state court could reasonably have found that
Brumfield had not provided evidence of “substantial functional
limitations” in any of these categories, let alone the
three
required by state law.
Absent objective evidence of either
significantly subaverage intellectual functioning or deficits in
adaptive behavior, Brumfield was not entitled to an evidentiary
hearing under
Williams. The majority’s analysis is
erroneous: It takes a meritless state-law claim, recasts it as two
factual determinations, and then awards relief, despite ample
evidence in the record to support each of the state court’s
actual factual determinations.
C
The majority engages in such maneuvering
because Brumfield argued
only that the state court based its
decision to deny his
Atkins claim on an unreasonable
determination of the facts, §2254(d)(2), not an unreasonable
application of clearly established federal law as determined by
this Court, §2254(d)(1). Brumfield, for his part, presented his
claim in this way to avoid AEDPA’s additional restrictions on
relief for alleged legal errors. As explained below, overcoming
§2254(d)(1)’s bar based on an alleged legal error is particularly
demanding. Brumfield’s arguments, even if presented properly as
legal ones, would not meet the bar.
Under §2254(d)(1), a federal court may not award
relief for a claim adjudicated on the merits in state court unless
that adjudication “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or
involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established
Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United
States.” “Clearly established Federal law for purposes of
§2254(d)(1) includes only the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of
this Court’s decisions.”
White v.
Woodall, 572
U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 3) (internal quotation
marks and alteration omitted). A state court’s decision is
therefore not “contrary to” our decisions unless its holding
contradicts our holdings, or it “ ‘confronts a set of facts
that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of this Court
and nevertheless arrives at a result different from our
precedent.’ ”
Mitchell v.
Esparza, 540
U. S. 12 –16 (2003) (
per curiam). A state court’s
decision is not “ ‘an unreasonable application’ ” of our
decisions if it merely “ ‘decline[s] to apply a specific legal
rule that has not been squarely established by this
Court
.’ ”
Harrington v.
Richter, 562
U. S. 86, 101 (2011) . Instead, the Court must evaluate the
application of our holdings in the context of the rule’s
specificity: “The more general the rule, the more leeway courts
have in reaching outcomes in case-by-case determinations.”
Ibid. (internal quotation mark omitted). “[W]here the
precise contours of [a] right remain unclear, state courts enjoy
broad discretion in their adjudication of a prisoner’s claims.”
Woodall,
supra, at ___ (slip op., at 9) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
“If this standard is difficult to meet, that is
because it was meant to be.”
Richter, 562 U. S., at
102. “ ‘Federal habeas review of state convictions
. . . disturbs the State’s significant interest in repose
for concluded litigation, denies society the right to punish some
admitted offenders, and intrudes on state sovereignty to a degree
matched by few exercises of federal judicial authority.’ ”
Id., at 103. Although AEDPA “stops short of imposing a
complete bar” on this type of review, it does require “a state
prisoner [to] show that the state court’s ruling on the claim being
presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that
there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law
beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.”
Id., at
102–103. Brumfield cannot meet this standard.
1
The state court’s decision to deny Brumfield’s
Atkins claim was not contrary to any holding of this Court.
The state court recognized that
Atkins precludes the
execution of mentally retarded offenders and then concluded that
Brumfield did not qualify as a mentally retarded offender. Because
this Court has never confronted a set of facts that are materially
indistinguishable from the facts in this case and arrived at a
different result, the state court’s decision was not “contrary to”
clearly established federal law as determined by this Court.
Nor is the decision of the state court to deny a
hearing on the claim contrary to such clearly established
law. In
Atkins, this Court held that the Eighth Amendment
precludes the execution of mentally retarded offenders, but “le[ft]
to the States the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce
the constitutional restrictions upon their execution of sentences.”
536 U. S., at 317 (internal quotation mark and brackets
omitted). This Court did not so much as mention an evidentiary
hearing, let alone hold that prisoners raising
Atkins claims
are entitled to one. To be sure,
Atkins cited this Court’s
decision in
Ford v.
Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399
(1986) , when it explained that it was leaving the enforcement of
the right to the States. See 536 U. S.
, at 316–317.
Justice Powell’s controlling concurrence in
Ford required a
court to afford a prisoner a hearing on the claim that he is insane
and therefore ineligible to be executed after a prisoner made a
“substantial threshold showing of insanity.” 477 U. S.
,
at 426 (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment). The
citation in
Atkins, however, not only was not to that
portion of
Ford, it was not even to Justice Powell’s
opinion in
Ford. Compare
Atkins,
supra,
at 317 (citing
Ford,
supra, at 405 (majority
opinion), 416–417 (opinion of Marshall, J.)), with
Ford,
supra, at 426 (opinion of Powell, J.).
Atkins thus
did not imply—let alone hold—that a prisoner is entitled to a
hearing on an
Atkins claim. There being no mention of a
hearing, the state court’s decision to deny Brumfield such a
hearing could not be “contrary to . . . clearly
established Federal law.” §2254(d)(1).
Even if
Atkins did establish a right to
an evidentiary hearing upon a threshold showing of mental
retardation, the state court’s decision to deny Brumfield a hearing
would not be contrary to that rule. After all, the state court took
the position that Brumfield would have been entitled to an
evidentiary hearing if he had made a threshold showing of mental
retardation; it simply concluded that he had not made that showing.
This Court has never confronted a set of materially
indistinguishable facts and found the threshold showing satisfied.
Thus, as with its rejection of the
Atkins claim itself, the
state court’s decision to deny Brumfield an
Atkins hearing
was not contrary to clearly established federal law as determined
by this Court.
2
The state court’s decision here likewise was
not an unreasonable application of
Atkins. The
Atkins
Court did not clearly define the category “of mentally retarded
offenders about whom there is a national consensus.” 536
U. S., at 317. It offered guidance in the form of several
clinical definitions of mental retardation as “ ‘subaverage
intellectual functioning’ ” accompanied by “significant
limitations in adaptive skills such as communication, self-care,
and self-direction that became manifest before age 18.”
Id.,
at 318. It gave conflicting indications of the IQ score necessary
for “subaverage intellectual functioning,” defining mild mental
retardation as the term used to de-scribe “people with an IQ level
of 50–55 to approximately 70,”
id., at 308, n. 3; and
citing one source that reports70 or less as the statistical
criterion for mental retardation,
id., at 309, n. 5;
see 2 Kaplan & Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry
2589 (B. Sadock & V. Sadock eds., 7th ed. 2000); but commenting
that “an IQ between 70 and 75 or lower . . . is typically
considered the cutoff IQ score for the intellectual function prong
of the mental retardation definition,” 536 U. S.
, at
309, n. 5. It offered no greater specificity with respect to
“significant limitations in adaptive skills,” though it remarked
that, “by definition,” mentally retarded offenders “have diminished
capacities to understand and process information, to communicate,
to abstract from mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in
logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand the
reactions of others.”
Id., at 318.
The state court here reasonably applied the
general rule announced in
Atkins when it rejected
Brumfield’s claim. Brumfield achieved a 75 on the IQ test
administered to him by Dr. Bolter, 5 points above the score
identified by
Atkins as the upper end of
“ ‘[m]ild’ ” mental retardation,
id., at 308,
n. 3, and by clinical definitions as the criterion for mental
retardation. He also scored somewhat higher on the IQ tests
administered to him by Dr. Jordan. In addition, he demonstrated no
impairment in adaptive skills. To the contrary, his test results
“indicate[d] that his problem solving, judgment and reasoning
skills are sufficient to meet the demands of everyday adulthood and
he is not showing any decrement in the types of problems one would
assume to see if they were suffering from an underlying organic
basis or mental illness.” Record 275. Based on this record, the
state court reasonably concluded that Brumfield had not come
forward with evidence that he fell within the category of mentally
retarded offenders about whom a national consensus against
execution had developed.
For the same reasons, even if one were to
mischaracterize
Atkins as clearly establishing a right to an
evidentiary hearing upon a substantial threshold showing of mental
retardation, the state court did not unreasonably apply that rule.
Atkins did not define the showing necessary, and the state
court reasonably concluded that, on this record, Brumfield had not
met it.[
12]
D
In sum, §2254(d) bars Brumfield’s
Atkins claim. The facts upon which the state court rejected
his claim are amply supported by the record and thus not
unreasonable. In concluding otherwise, the majority conflates
questions of fact with questions about the application of law to
fact. That conflation may help it get around the inconveniences of
“clearly established Federal law as determined by th[is Court],”
§2254(d)(1), but it does violence to the statute and to our
ordinary understanding of “facts.” Indeed, we have summarily
reversed lower courts for making that same error. See,
e.g.,
Lopez v.
Smith, 574 U. S. ___, ___ (2014)
(
per curiam) (slip op., at 8) (“Although the Ninth Circuit
claimed its disagreement with the state court was factual in
nature, in reality its grant of relief was based on a legal
conclusion about the adequacy of the notice provided”). We should
hold ourselves to the same standard.
IV
The majority’s willingness to afford relief on
Brumfield’s first ground of alleged error in the state court’s
dismissal of his
Atkins claim obviates its need to resolve
his second, which focuses on the state court’s denial of funding to
develop that claim. Because I would conclude that AEDPA bars relief
on the first ground, I must also address the second. AEDPA’s
standards make short work of that ground as well.
The state court’s denial of funding to Brumfield
was neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of,
clearly established federal law as determined by this Court.
No precedent of this Court addresses whether and under what
circumstances a state prisoner must be af-forded funds to develop
an
Atkins claim.
Atkins left “to the States the task
of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional
restriction upon their execution of sentences.” 536 U. S., at
317 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). None of our
decisions since
Atkins have even purported to address
constitutional requirements for funding of these claims.
Brumfield believes that the decision was
contrary to, and involved an unreasonable application of
Ake
v.
Oklahoma, 470 U. S. 68 (1985) , and
Ford v.
Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399 , but neither of those
decisions even involved protections for mentally retarded
offenders. Instead, both decisions addressed protections for
prisoners asserting
insanity—
Ake in the context of
insanity as a defense to a crime, 470 U. S., at 70, 77, and
Ford in the context of insanity as a limitation on the
State’s power to execute a prisoner, 477 U. S., at 418
(Powell, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
Neither involved the question whether a prisoner is entitled to
funds to develop an insanity claim before he has made a substantial
threshold showing of that claim. Only
Ake addressed the
question of funds at all, and it held that an indigent defendant
has a right of “access” to a competent psychiatrist to assist in
the preparation of his insanity defense,
not that an
“indigent defendant has a constitutional right to choose a
psychiatrist of his personal liking or to receive funds to hire his
own.” 470 U. S., at 83.
The state court fully complied with this Court’s
decisions when it declined to award Brumfield funds. Brumfield did
not meet his burden to make a substantial threshold showing of
mental retardation. No decision of this Court requires a State to
afford a defendant funds to do so.
* * *
Over 20 years ago, Brumfield deprived the
people of Baton Rouge of one of their police officers and six
children of their mother. A jury of his peers found Brumfield
guilty of the crime and sentenced him to death. The Louisiana
courts afforded him full appellate and collateral-review
proceedings.
Today, the majority tosses those proceedings
aside, concluding that the state court based its decision to deny
Brumfield’s
Atkins claim on an “unreasonable determination
of the facts,” even as it concedes that the record includes
evidence supporting that court’s factual findings. Under AEDPA,
that concession should bar relief for Brumfield. In concluding
otherwise, the majority distorts fed-eral law and intrudes upon
Louisiana’s sovereign right to enforce its criminal laws and its
courts’ judgments. Such willfulness is disheartening.
What is perhaps more disheartening than the
majority’s disregard for both AEDPA and our precedents is its
disregard for the human cost of its decision. It spares not a
thought for the 20 years of judicial proceedings that its decision
so casually extends. It spares no more than a sentence to describe
the crime for which a Louisiana jury sentenced Brumfield to death.
It barely spares the two words necessary to identify Brumfield’s
victim, Betty Smothers, by name. She and her family—not to mention
our legal system—deserve better.
I respectfully dissent.
APPENDIX
W. Dunn & D. Yaeger, Running for My Life: My
Journey in the Game of Football and Beyond (2008).