Kan. v. Cheever

• Decision Date: 11 December 2013
• Docket Number: No. 12–609.,12–609.
• Citation: 571 U.S. 87,187 L.Ed.2d 519,134 S.Ct. 596
• Parties: KANSAS, Petitioner v. Scott D. CHEEVER.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

571 U.S. 87

134 S.Ct. 596

187 L.Ed.2d 519

KANSAS, Petitioner

v.Scott D. CHEEVER.

No. 12–609.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Oct. 16, 2013.

Decided Dec. 11, 2013.

Derek Schmidt, Attorney General, for Petitioner.

Nichole A. Saharsky, for the United States as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the petitioner.

Neal Katyal, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Derek Schmidt, Attorney General of Kansas, Counsel of Record, Stephen R. McAllister, Solicitor General of Kansas, Kristafer R. Ailslieger, Deputy Solicitor General, Natalie Chalmers, Assistant Solicitor General, Topeka, for Petitioner.

Debra J. Wilson, Capital and Conflicts, Appellate Defender, Capital Appeals and Conflicts Office, Topeka, KS, Neal Kumar Katyal, Counsel of Record, Dominic F. Perella, Mary Helen Wimberly, Sean Marotta, Hogan Lovells US LLP, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Justice SOTOMAYOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "[n]o person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...." The question here is whether the Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from introducing evidence from a court-ordered mental evaluation of a criminal defendant to rebut that defendant's presentation of expert testimony in support of a defense of voluntary intoxication. We hold that it does not.

I

On the morning of January 19, 2005, Scott Cheever shot and killed Matthew Samuels, a sheriff of Greenwood County, Kansas, and shot at other local law enforcement officers. In the hours before the shooting, Cheever and his friends had cooked and smoked methamphetamine at a home near Hilltop, Kansas. Samuels and multiple deputies drove there to arrest Cheever on an unrelated outstanding warrant.

When one of Cheever's friends warned him that officers were en route, Cheever rushed outside and tried to drive away, but his car had a flat tire. He returned inside and hid with a friend in an upstairs bedroom, holding a loaded .44 caliber revolver. Cheever then heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to the room, and he stepped out and shot Samuels, who was climbing the stairs. After briefly returning to the bedroom, Cheever walked back to the staircase and shot Samuels again. He also shot at a deputy and a detective, as well as members of a local SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team that had since arrived. Only Samuels was hit.

The State charged Cheever with capital murder. But shortly thereafter, in an unrelated case, the Kansas Supreme Court found the State's death penalty scheme unconstitutional. State v. Marsh, 278 Kan. 520, 102 P.3d 445 (2004). Rather than continuing to prosecute Cheever without any chance of a death sentence, state prosecutors dismissed their charges and allowed federal authorities to prosecute Cheever under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, 18 U.S.C. § 3591 et seq .

In the federal case, Cheever filed notice that he "intend[ed] to introduce expert evidence relating to his intoxication by methamphetamine at the time of the events on January 19, 2005, which negated his ability to form specific intent, e.g., malice aforethought, premeditation and deliberation." App. to Pet. for Cert. 69–70. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12.2(b), the District Court ordered Cheever to submit to a psychiatric evaluation by Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist, to assess how methamphetamine use had affected him when he shot Samuels. Welner interviewed Cheever for roughly five and a half hours.

The federal case proceeded to trial. Seven days into jury selection, however, defense counsel became unable to continue; the court suspended the proceedings and later dismissed the case without prejudice. Meanwhile, this Court had reversed the Kansas Supreme Court and held that the Kansas death penalty statute was constitutional. Kansas v. Marsh, 548 U.S. 163, 167, 126 S.Ct. 2516, 165 L.Ed.2d 429 (2006). A second federal prosecution never commenced.

Kansas then brought a second state prosecution. At the state trial, Cheever presented a voluntary-intoxication defense, arguing that his methamphetamine use had rendered him incapable of premeditation. In support of this argument, Cheever offered testimony from Roswell Lee Evans, a specialist in psychiatric pharmacy and dean of the Auburn University School of Pharmacy. Evans opined that Cheever's long-term methamphetamine use had damaged his brain.¹ Evans also testified that on the morning of the shooting, Cheever was acutely intoxicated. According to Evans, Cheever's actions were "very much influenced by" his use of methamphetamine.

After the defense rested, the State sought to present rebuttal testimony from Welner, the expert who had examined Cheever by order of the federal court. Defense counsel objected, arguing that because Welner's opinions were based in part on an examination to which Cheever had not voluntarily agreed, his testimony would violate the Fifth Amendment proscription against compelling an accused to testify against himself. The State countered that the testimony was necessary to rebut Cheever's voluntary-intoxication defense.

The trial court agreed with the State. The court was persuaded, in part, by the fact that the defense expert had himself relied on Welner's examination report: "I think that fact alone probably allows the State to call [Welner] to give his own point of view." App. 92. The court allowed Welner's testimony for the purpose of showing that Cheever shot Samuels "because of his antisocial personality, not because his brain was impaired by methamphetamine." Id., at 94.

The jury found Cheever guilty of murder and attempted murder. At the penalty phase, it unanimously voted to impose a sentence of death, and the trial court accepted that verdict.

On appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court, Cheever argued that the State had violated his Fifth Amendment rights when it introduced, through Welner's testimony, statements that he had made during the federal court-ordered mental examination. The court agreed, relying primarily on Estelle v. Smith, 451 U.S. 454, 101 S.Ct. 1866, 68 L.Ed.2d 359 (1981), in which we held that a court-ordered psychiatric examination violated the defendant's Fifth Amendment rights when the defendant neither initiated the examination nor put his mental capacity in dispute at trial. 295 Kan. 229, 243–244, 284 P.3d 1007, 1019–1020 (2012) (per curiam ). The court acknowledged, id., at 244–245, 284 P.3d, at 1020, our holding that a State may introduce the results of a court-ordered mental examination for the limited purpose of rebutting a mental-status defense. Buchanan v. Kentucky, 483 U.S. 402, 423–424, 107 S.Ct. 2906, 97 L.Ed.2d 336 (1987). But it distinguished Buchanan on the basis that under Kansas law, voluntary intoxication is not a "mental disease or defect." 295 Kan., at 250, 284 P.3d, at 1023. Consequently, it vacated Cheever's conviction and sentence, holding that Cheever had not waived his Fifth Amendment privilege and that his federal court-ordered examination should not have been used against him at the state-court trial. Ibid. We granted certiorari, 568 U.S. ––––, 133 S.Ct. 1460, 185 L.Ed.2d 360 (2013), and now reverse.

II

The Fifth Amendment guarantees that "[n]o person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...." We held in Estelle that under the Fifth Amendment, when a criminal defendant "neither initiates a psychiatric evaluation nor attempts to introduce any psychiatric evidence," his compelled statements to a psychiatrist cannot be used against him. 451 U.S., at 468, 101 S.Ct. 1866. In that case, a judge ordered a psychiatric examination to determine the defendant's competency to stand trial. Id., at 456–457, 101 S.Ct. 1866. The prosecution then used statements from that examination during the sentencing phase of the trial as evidence of the defendant's future dangerousness. Id., at 458–460, 101 S.Ct. 1866. Emphasizing that the defendant had neither "introduced" any "psychiatric evidence," nor even "indicated that he might do so," id., at 466, 101 S.Ct. 1866, we concluded that the Fifth Amendment did not permit the State to use the defendant's statements in this manner.

In Buchanan, we addressed the admissibility of evidence from a court-ordered evaluation where—unlike in Estelle —a defendant had introduced psychiatric evidence related to his mental-status defense. We held that the Fifth Amendment allowed the prosecution to present evidence from the evaluation to rebut the defendant's affirmative defense of extreme emotional disturbance. And while, as Cheever notes, the mental evaluation in Buchanan was requested jointly by the defense and the government, our holding was not limited to that circumstance. Moreover, contrary to Cheever's suggestion, the case did not turn on whether state law referred to extreme emotional disturbance as an "affirmative defense." Buchanan, 483 U.S., at 408, 422, 107 S.Ct. 2906 (holding that the prosecution's use of rebuttal expert testimony is permissible where a defendant "presents psychiatric evidence"). The rule of Buchanan, which we reaffirm today, is that where a defense expert who has examined the defendant testifies that the defendant lacked the requisite mental state to commit an offense, the prosecution may present psychiatric evidence in rebuttal. Ibid. Any other rule would undermine the adversarial process, allowing a defendant to provide the jury, through an expert operating as proxy, with a one-sided and potentially inaccurate view of his mental state at the time of the alleged crime.

The admission of this rebuttal testimony harmonizes with the principle that when a defendant chooses to testify in a criminal case, the Fifth Amendment does not allow him to refuse to answer related questions on cross-examination. A defendant "has no right to set forth to the jury all the facts which tend in his favor without laying himself open to a cross-examination upon those facts."...