Apelt v. Ryan
Decision Date | 28 December 2017 |
Docket Number | Nos. 15-99013,15-99015,s. 15-99013 |
Citation | 878 F.3d 800 |
Parties | Michael APELT, Petitioner-Appellee/Cross-Appellant, v. Charles L. RYAN, Respondent-Appellant/Cross-Appellee. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Kristina B. Reeves (argued), Assistant Attorney General, Capital Litigation Section; Lacey Stover Gard, Chief Counsel; Mark Brnovich, Attorney General; Office of the Attorney General, Phoenix, Arizona; for Respondent-Appellant/Cross-Appellee.
Emily Katherine Skinner (argued), Arizona Capital Representation Project, Tucson, Arizona; Dana Carpenter, Phoenix, Arizona; for Petitioner-Appellee/Cross-Appellant.
Before: Jerome Farris, Consuelo M. Callahan, and John B. Owens, Circuit Judges.
In December 1988, Michael Apelt ("Apelt") and his brother, Rudi, murdered Apelt’s wife of less than two months in order to collect on her life insurance policy. The brothers were tried separately, convicted of first degree murder, and given death sentences. Having obtained no relief in the Arizona courts, Apelt filed a habeas petition in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. After a stay of proceedings to allow Apelt to advance a claim in the state courts based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia , 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002), the district court granted the writ on one issue, ineffective assistance of counsel ("IAC") at sentencing, and denied relief on all of Apelt’s other claims.
In No. 15-99013, the state of Arizona appeals, challenging the district court’s jurisdiction to reach the merits of Apelt’s IAC claim, as well as its grant of the writ. In No. 15-99015, Apelt appeals two claims certified by the district court: the denial in state court of funding to investigate mitigating evidence, and the determination that Apelt had failed to show that he was intellectually disabled under Atkins . In addition, Apelt raises two issues that were not certified by the district court: whether the Arizona Supreme Court applied an unconstitutional causal nexus requirement in reviewing Apelt’s sentence; and whether trial counsel was ineffective in failing to challenge Apelt’s competency to be tried and sentenced.
Apelt’s habeas petition is subject to review under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"), 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). See Mann v. Ryan , 828 F.3d 1143, 1151 (9th Cir. 2016) (en banc). We first determine that federal court review was not procedurally barred. We then vacate the district court’s grant of relief because we cannot find the Arizona Supreme Court’s determination that Apelt’s counsel’s deficient performance at sentencing was not prejudicial to be clearly unreasonable. See Davis v. Ayala , ––– U.S. ––––, 135 S.Ct. 2187, 2199, 192 L.Ed.2d 323 (2015) ; Cullen v. Pinholster , 563 U.S. 170, 189, 131 S.Ct. 1388, 179 L.Ed.2d 557 (2011). We affirm the district court’s denial of relief on Apelt’s claims of inadequate funding to investigate mitigating evidence, and mental disability
pursuant to Atkins , 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242. We grant the certificate of appealability for Apelt’s claims of an application of an unconstitutional causal nexus standard by the Arizona Supreme Court and for ineffective assistance of counsel in failing to challenge Apelt’s competency to stand trial, and we deny those claims on the merits.
Michael Apelt, the youngest of seven siblings, was born in August 1963 in Germany. He came to the United States in the late summer of 1988. The underlying facts leading to Apelt’s conviction were fairly and fully set forth in the Arizona Supreme Court’s opinion, State v. Apelt , 176 Ariz. 349, 861 P.2d 634 (Ariz. 1993), as follows:
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