Bowersox v. Williams
| Decision Date | 09 April 1996 |
| Docket Number | A828 |
| Citation | 116 S.Ct. 1312,517 U.S. 345,134 L.Ed.2d 494 |
| Parties | MICHAEL BOWERSOX, SUPERINTENDENT, POTOSI CORRECTIONAL CENTER v. DOYLE J. WILLIAMS On application to vacate stay of execution [ |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Doyle J. Williams is scheduled to be executed by the State of Missouri on April 10, 1996. On January 11, 1996, a Federal District Court denied Williams' third federal habeas corpus petition, finding all of Williams' claims to be abusive, successive, or procedurally defaulted. On March 8, 1996, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit entered a summary order staying Williams' execution. The Court of Appeals scheduled oral argument for May 13, 1996, and resolved that the stay would remain in effect pending submission of the case and that Court's further order. The summary order gives no explanation for the Court of Appeals' conclusion that oral argument is necessary or that entry of a stay was appropriate. The Court of Appeals denied a petition for rehearing en banc, and we now have before us an application to vacate the stay.
"A stay of execution pending disposition of a second or successive federal habeas petition should be granted only when there are `substantial grounds upon which relief might be granted.'" Delo v. Stokes, 495 U. S. 320, 321 (1990) (per curiam) (quoting Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U. S. 880, 895 (1983)). Entry of a stay on a second or third habeas petition is a drastic measure, and we have held that it is "`particularly egregious'" to enter a stay absent substantial grounds for relief. Delo v. Blair, 509 U. S. 823 (1993) (citation omitted). On the record before us, we can discern no such grounds. We are persuaded by the report prepared by Magistrate Judge Hays, which meticulously addresses each of Williams' claims and finds each to be abusive, successive, procedurally defaulted, or meritless, and by the District Court's order adopting that report, in which the District Court also denied Williams' dilatory motion to amend the habeas petition. The Court of Appeals abused its discretion by entering a stay on this record.
To the extent the Court of Appeals discerned substantial grounds for relief, it failed to reveal them in its summary order granting the stay. Although we hesitate to say that a Court of Appeals must, in every case, explain the basis for its entry of a stay, we see fit to remind the lower courts that entry of a stay without explanation is disfavored. Cf. Netherland...
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