Watts v. Singletary

• Decision Date: 18 July 1996
• Docket Number: No. 95-4403,95-4403
• Citation: 87 F.3d 1282
• Parties: Carl Eugene WATTS, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Harry K. SINGLETARY, Respondent-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1282

87 F.3d 1282

Carl Eugene WATTS, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Harry K. SINGLETARY, Respondent-Appellant.

No. 95-4403.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

July 18, 1996.

Joan L. Greenberg, Asst. Attorney General, West Palm Beach, FL, for appellant.

Helen C. Trainor, Asst. Federal Public Defender, Miami, FL, for appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before KRAVITCH, DUBINA and CARNES, Circuit Judges.

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge:

A habeas petitioner contends that his due process rights were infringed when he was tried and convicted in state court for murder while incompetent to stand trial. We hold that petitioner has failed to prove a violation of his procedural due process right to a competency hearing or his substantive due process right not to be tried while incompetent.

I.

In 1987, Carl Eugene Watts was tried in Florida state court and convicted by a jury of second-degree murder. Watts was asleep through much of the five day trial.

On the first day of trial, the judge recorded his initial observation of Watts's behavior: "I'd also like to make a statement for the record at this time that during the entire voir dire examination that I've conducted, since about 3:30 and it's 20 minutes to 5:00, that the defendant in this case, Mr. Watts, has been sleeping at counsel table." Trial tr. at 69.

The next day, after two prospective jurors approached the judge to express concern that Watts's sleeping would threaten their ability to remain impartial, ¹ the judge questioned Watts about the cause of his continuing somnolence:

THE COURT: First thing I'd like to put on the record is that Mr. Watts for the second day in a row has slept through 90 percent of the ... questioning this morning and Mr. Blostein [counsel for Watts] has on occasion had to wake him up. I'm sure the jurors have all seen this. I'd like to ask some questions at this time.

Mr. Watts, are you under the influence of any drugs or alcohol or medication today?

WATTS: No, sir.

THE COURT: Is there any particular reason why you are sleeping through this serious trial which is probably going to effect your life?

WATTS: No, sir. I'm not sleeping through it.

....

THE COURT: You have your eyes closed. You have your head down on your neck or your chest and it seems pretty obvious to everybody in the courtroom that you are sleeping.

Trial tr. at 130-31.

As Watts continued to sleep, the judge initiated a similar colloquy with Watts and his lawyer at least once on each subsequent day of the trial. After estimating the percentage of the recent proceedings through which Watts had slept, the trial judge would ask Watts if he was under the influence of any drugs; Watts always replied that he was not. When pressed for an explanation of his inability to stay awake, Watts on one occasion suggested that he was not sleeping, but praying--a characterization that both the judge and Watts's attorney strongly doubted. On other occasions, Watts professed to having no explanation for his sleeping, disavowing physical illness, in addition to the use of alcohol, medication, or drugs. In response to a question from the bench, Watts indicated that he had never been treated for mental illness.

Watts's attorney at one point expressed frustration at his inability to keep his client awake:

MR. BLOSTEIN: For the record, and for my own protection on this, my thought is that Mr. Watts is also sleeping. I have over the last three days had to wake him up on numerous occasions including today and [addressed to Watts] if you were praying you didn't even notice that I attempted to wake you up.

THE COURT: On one occasion I saw you hit him in the shoulder and he never even moved. He never budged.

MR. BLOSTEIN: Exactly. I'm doing the best I can to represent Mr. Watts under the circumstances he's putting me in.

Trial tr. at 337-38. Nevertheless, Watts's attorney never raised the issue of Watts's competency at trial or requested a competency hearing.

Prior to closing arguments, the judge questioned Watts in an attempt to ensure that he understood his decision not to testify on his own behalf:

THE COURT: You are doing all right. Okay. You remember last week when your attorney put a couple witnesses on for you; do you remember that?

WATTS: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: I think your mother came in and testified and your sister?

WATTS: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: I want you to understand that you have a right to testify in this case if you want. Now your lawyer indicated to us last week that you were not going to testify and I just wanted to double check with you and make sure that that is what you want to do; that you do not want to testify in this case; is that true?

WATTS: That's correct.

THE COURT: Have you talked this over with your lawyer?

WATTS: Yes.

THE COURT: Are you satisfied with him as your lawyer?

WATTS: Yes.

Trial tr. at 482.

At the conclusion of the trial, the judge instructed the jury as follows:

Before I get into the instructions, I would like to make a comment about Mr. Watts and his obvious sleeping throughout most of the trial. I don't know how that affected any of you but I'm going to tell you under your oaths as jurors you must not allow that to affect you in any way. I don't know why Mr. Watts has slept and you don't either and no matter what the reason was, even if we did know, that has nothing to do with whether he's guilty or not guilty of the charge that he's here on trial for today.

So you must not allow that to affect your decision in this case and I'm going to tell you not even to discuss that in any way during your deliberations.

Trial tr. at 529. Watts could not be awakened to stand as the jury retired to deliberate.

In the interim between conviction and sentencing, Watts was examined by a psychologist. Watts informed her that he had been using drugs for seven years (since he was sixteen) ² and that he had been smoking crack cocaine during the trial at night while he was out on bond. According to the trial judge, the psychologist attributed Watts's inability to stay awake at trial to his staying up nights taking crack "as well as thinking and doing a lot of crying." ³ Watts explained to the psychologist that he had not admitted in court to taking drugs because his relatives were present and he did not want to upset them.

At the sentencing hearing, Watts's counsel and the judge both said that they had suspected Watts had been taking drugs during the trial. (Given that the parties had agreed before trial not to mention Watts's use of drugs around the time of the murder, Watts's counsel and the judge obviously were aware that Watts had used drugs in the past. They also knew that Watts was out on bond during the trial.) Watts himself expressed concern that the jury's verdict had been influenced by his sleeping:

WATTS: The jury made the decision because of my sleeping disorder.... They figured I didn't care.

THE COURT: Maybe you're right. I told them not to regard that and not to consider that in their verdict.

WATTS: But you can't throw that out of a human mind.

THE COURT: You are probably right, Mr. Watts. See how rational you are talking now. You've now got some good judgment. You are thinking rational. Too bad that all this had to happen.

Trial tr. at 584-85.

Watts's conviction and sentence were upheld on direct appeal, and he is currently incarcerated. Proceeding pro se, Watts filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal district court in 1994, claiming that, because he slept through most of his trial, he was denied due process as a result of the trial judge's failure to order a competency hearing and as a result of his trial and conviction while incompetent. A magistrate judge agreed. The magistrate issued a report recommending that Watts's petition be granted and appointed a Federal Public Defender to represent him. The district court adopted the magistrate's report and recommendation and vacated Watts's conviction and sentence pending retrial by the State. The State now appeals.

II.

The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the criminal prosecution of a defendant who is not competent to stand trial. A defendant is incompetent if he lacks "sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding" or "a rational as well as a factual understanding of the proceedings against him." Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402, 402, 80 S.Ct. 788, 789, 4 L.Ed.2d 824 (1960) (internal quotation marks omitted). As the Supreme Court recently has emphasized,

"[c]ompetence to stand trial is rudimentary, for upon it depends the main part of those rights deemed essential to a fair trial, including the right of effective assistance of counsel, the rights to summon, to confront, and to cross-examine witnesses, and the right to testify on one's own behalf or to remain silent without penalty for doing so."

Cooper v. Oklahoma, --- U.S. ----, ----, 116 S.Ct. 1373, 1376, 134 L.Ed.2d 498 (1996) (quoting Riggins v. Nevada, 504 U.S. 127, 139-40, 112 S.Ct. 1810, 1817, 118 L.Ed.2d 479 (1992) (Kennedy, J., concurring)). The competency inquiry, then, is a functional one. It focuses on the criminal defendant's capacity to contribute sufficiently to his own defense to allow a fair trial and, ultimately, serves to protect both the defendant and society against erroneous convictions. ⁴

The issue of Watts's competency to stand trial implicates both the procedural and substantive dimensions of the right. The district court concluded, first, that Watts's procedural due process rights under Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 86 S.Ct. 836, 15 L.Ed.2d 815 (1966), were infringed by the state trial court's failure to conduct a competency hearing on its own initiative and, second, that Watts's substantive due process rights were violated because he was in fact tried while incompetent. We will address the procedural and substantive claims in turn. ⁵

A. Procedural Due...