State Of Tenn. v. Irick

• Decision Date: 22 September 2010
• Docket Number: No. M1987-00131-SC-DPE-DD.,M1987-00131-SC-DPE-DD.
• Citation: 320 S.W.3d 284
• Parties: STATE of Tennesseev.Billy Ray IRICK.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

320 S.W.3d 284

STATE of Tennesseev.Billy Ray IRICK.

No. M1987-00131-SC-DPE-DD.

Supreme Court of Tennessee at Nashville.

Submitted on Briefs Sept. 14, 2010.

Sept. 22, 2010.

C. Eugene Shiles, Jr., and Howell G. Clements, Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the appellant, Billy Ray Irick.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Gordon W. Smith, Associate Solicitor General; James E. Gaylord, Assistant Attorney General; Randall Eugene Nichols, District Attorney General; Leland Price and Kenneth Irvine, Jr., Assistant

District Attorneys General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

CORNELIA A. CLARK, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which JANICE M. HOLDER, GARY R. WADE, WILLIAM C. KOCH, JR., and SHARON G. LEE, JJ., joined.

CORNELIA A. CLARK, C.J.

The appellant, death-row inmate Billy Ray Irick, challenges the trial court's order of August 20, 2010, finding that he is presently competent to be executed according to the standards enunciated in Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 127 S.Ct. 2842, 168 L.Ed.2d 662 (2007) Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 106 S.Ct. 2595, 91 L.Ed.2d 335 (1986), and Van Tran v. State, 6 S.W.3d 257 (Tenn.1999). Applying de novo review, we hold that the trial court applied the correct legal standards in adjudicating the question of the appellant's present competence for execution. Additionally, after carefully and thoroughly reviewing the record on appeal, we conclude that the evidence fully supports and does not preponderate against the trial court's factual finding that the appellant is presently competent to be executed. Accordingly, the judgment of the trial court is affirmed.

I. Procedural History

The appellant, Billy Ray Irick, was convicted on November 1, 1986, of first degree felony murder and two counts of aggravated rape of a seven-year-old girl. The jury imposed a sentence of death for Mr. Irick's first degree murder conviction, and the trial court imposed forty-year concurrent sentences for the aggravated rape convictions. See State v. Irick, 762 S.W.2d 121, 124 (Tenn.1988) cert. denied 489 U.S. 1072, 109 S.Ct. 1357, 103 L.Ed.2d 825 (1989). This Court affirmed Mr. Irick's convictions and sentences on direct appeal.¹Irick, 762 S.W.2d at 135. Thereafter Mr. Irick challenged his convictions and sentences in state post-conviction and federal habeas corpus proceedings, but these challenges were unsuccessful.² On May 10, 2010, after Mr. Irick had completed the standard three-tier appeals process, the State filed a motion asking this Court to set an execution date for Mr. Irick. On May 27, 2010, Mr. Irick filed a response to the State's motion, raising a claim of incompetency to be executed, and requesting a competency hearing under Van Tran v. State, 6 S.W.3d 257 (Tenn.1999). On July 19, 2010, this Court granted the State's motion, set an execution date for December 7, 2010, and remanded the matter to the Criminal Court of Knox County for an expeditious determination of Mr. Irick's present competency in accord with the procedures and time limits set forth in Van Tran, 6 S.W.3d at 267-73.

Upon remand, Mr. Irick filed his petition to determine competency. On July 30, 2010, the trial court found that Mr. Irick had made the threshold showing necessary to obtain an evidentiary hearing.³ Thus, the trial court ordered an evidentiary hearing on the issue of competency and appointed two mental health experts to evaluate Mr. Irick. The competency hearing was held on August 16 and 17, 2010. On August 20, 2010, the trial court entered an order finding Mr. Irick competent to be executed. In accord with Van Tran, 6 S.W.3d at 272, Mr. Irick has appealed the trial court's decision directly to this Court. The record of the competency hearing was filed in this Court on August 30, 2010. Mr. Irick filed his brief on September 3, 2010; the State filed its responsive brief on September 8, 2010; and Mr. Irick filed a reply brief on September 10, 2010. After determining that no extraordinary circumstances require oral argument, we have expeditiously and carefully reviewed the record and the briefs. See generally id. (setting forth the procedure that will be followed by this Court upon receiving the parties' briefs). For the reasons explained below, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

II. Evidence at the Competency Hearing

Mr. Irick presented two witnesses at the competency hearing: Dr. Peter Brown, a forensic psychiatrist, and Ms. Nina Lunn a licensed social worker. Mr. Irick also introduced into evidence various exhibits related to his history of mental illness.

Dr. Brown evaluated Mr. Irick on December 7, 2009, and January 21, 2010, meeting with Mr. Irick for almost six hours.⁴ In addition to his own meetings with Mr. Irick, Dr. Brown also relied upon the neuropsychological testing and evaluation of Mr. Irick performed by Dr. D. Malcolm Spica, a licensed clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist, in November and December of 2009. Furthermore, Dr. Brown had reviewed Mr. Irick's school records, records from the various mental health facilities in which Mr. Irick had been institutionalized, records from the various mental health professionals who had treated and/or evaluated Mr. Irick during his life, portions of the transcripts and evidence offered at Mr. Irick's trial, portions of the proof introduced at the state post-conviction and federal habeas corpus proceedings, and records from the correctional facilities in which Mr. Irick has been incarcerated.

Dr. Brown candidly testified that the purpose of his evaluation had been to determine Mr. Irick's mental status at the time of the murder and to identify any mitigating circumstances. While Dr. Brown was aware of the guidelines and standards set forth by the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law for the assessment of competence to be executed, he did not use these guidelines in a systematic way when conducting his evaluation. Furthermore, while Dr. Brown was aware of the competency standard outlined in Panetti, he did not focus upon this standard, explaining that “it did not relate to what I was doing.” As for Mr. Irick's competency to be executed, Dr. Brown testified, “I don't have an opinion about that.” When asked whether Mr. Irick “has a rational understanding of why he's going to be put to death,” Dr. Brown responded:

The best answer that I can give is that his rational understanding of events is that of a child in the seven-to-nine-year-old range. So that by the legal standards are obviously not my business, but the-his-the capacity of his brain to work in forming a rational understanding is in that of a pre-adolescent child.

Dr. Brown confirmed, however, that Mr. Irick was able to engage in a coherent conversation. Additionally, Dr. Brown agreed that a seven-to-nine-year-old child understands the concepts of doing wrong and receiving punishment.

Concerning Mr. Irick's mental condition generally, Dr. Brown testified that Mr. Irick has suffered from a lifelong severe psychiatric illness and that at the time of the offense he was suffering from psychosis. Through Dr. Brown, Mr. Irick introduced evidence concerning his past diagnoses of mental illness, evidence of his potentially violent actions during his teenage years, and evidence of his psychotic behavior around the time of the victim's murder.

Dr. Brown diagnosed Mr. Irick as suffering from a psychotic disorder not otherwise specified.⁵ This psychotic disorder is a condition manifested by gross perceptual and thinking deficits, such as hallucinations, delusions, and gross disorganization of behavior. Dr. Brown believed that Mr. Irick's expressed inability to remember the offense was genuine; he did not believe Mr. Irick was malingering or pretending to have lost his memory. Dr. Brown opined that Mr. Irick's inability to remember the offense is the result of the psychotic episode Mr. Irick was experiencing at the time of the offense. Dr. Brown explained that persons suffering psychoses typically do not have “good recollection” of events occurring during psychotic episodes. At the same time, Dr. Brown acknowledged that Mr. Irick is able to recall events from his childhood, from the evening of the murder, and from his trial. Dr. Brown also acknowledged that during psychological evaluations conducted not long after the crime, Mr. Irick admitted he had been drinking alcohol on the day of the offense and that he had felt “angry,” “enraged,” “degraded,” and “humiliated” by the family's request for him to babysit the children because he had planned to go out that evening.

Dr. Brown opined that Mr. Irick's mental problems continue to the present time, although he agreed that Mr. Irick showed no evidence of thought disorder, acute hallucinations, or delusions during their interview. Dr. Brown's diagnosis was based on Mr. Irick's history; however, Dr. Brown acknowledged that there have been no documented episodes of psychosis during Mr. Irick's incarceration at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Dr. Brown also acknowledged that Mr. Irick has responded well to the structured environment of prison and that he has not been prescribed anti-psychotic medication since adolescence. Dr. Brown opined that the “best examples” of Mr. Irick's psychotic behavior were contained in the lay affidavits provided by members of the victim's family in 1999 during federal habeas corpus proceedings. These affidavits related that Mr. Irick reported hearing voices, talked to himself, and acted violently toward others in the days leading up to the 1985 rape and murder of the victim. Specifically, the persons providing these affidavits stated that Mr. Irick talked aloud to himself and told family members that he was receiving commands from the devil and hearing other voices telling him what to do. Mr. Irick also professed to hearing police sirens and warned family members to protect themselves because the police were coming to kill them. On another occasion, Mr. Irick was seen ...