Thompson v. Bell
| Citation | 580 F.3d 423 |
| Decision Date | 11 September 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 06-5770.,No. 06-5744.,06-5744.,06-5770. |
| Parties | Gregory THOMPSON, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Ricky BELL, Warden, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Dana Hansen Chavis, Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, Inc., Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Jennifer Lynn Smith, Office of the Tennessee Attorney General, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.
ON BRIEF:
Dana Hansen Chavis, Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, Inc., Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Jennifer Lynn Smith, Office of the Tennessee Attorney General, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.
Before: SUHRHEINRICH, MOORE and CLAY, Circuit Judges.
CLAY, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which MOORE, J., joined. SUHRHEINRICH, J. (pp. 444-54), delivered a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Petitioner Gregory Thompson ("Thompson") appeals the district court's dismissal of his habeas petition brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, in which he seeks relief from execution because of his alleged incompetency. Separately, Thompson appeals the district court's denial of his motion pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), in which he moves to re-open his original habeas petition challenging his conviction and sentence. For the reasons that follow, we AFFIRM in part and REVERSE in part, and REMAND to the district court for further proceedings.
In 1985, a Coffee County Circuit Court jury in Tennessee found Thompson guilty of the first-degree murder of Brenda Lane, and following the sentencing phase of the trial, sentenced Thompson to death. See State v. Thompson, 768 S.W.2d 239 (Tenn.1989). The Tennessee courts affirmed Thompson's conviction on direct and collateral review. In 1998, Thompson filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, and the district court denied the petition on February 17, 2000. On January 9, 2003, this Court affirmed the district court's dismissal of Thompson's petition. Thompson v. Bell, 315 F.3d 566, 571 (6th Cir.2003). On December 1, 2003, the United States Supreme Court denied Thompson's certiorari petition, and on January 20, 2004, denied his petition for rehearing. Bell v. Thompson, 545 U.S. 794, 800, 125 S.Ct. 2825, 162 L.Ed.2d 693 (2005).
On January 21, 2004, the day after the Supreme Court denied Thompson's petition for a rehearing, Tennessee's attorney general filed a motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court to set a date for Thompson's execution. On February 2, 2004, Thompson filed a response opposing the state's motion and a petition providing notice of his incompetency to be executed. On February 25, 2004, the Tennessee Supreme Court set an execution date of August 19, 2004, but remanded the issue of Thompson's competency to the trial court.
Under Tennessee law, set forth in Van Tran v. State, 6 S.W.3d 257, 266 (Tenn.1999), a prisoner is not competent for execution if he "lacks the mental capacity to understand the fact of the impending execution and the reason for it." Under this standard, a prisoner seeking to be found incompetent for execution in Tennessee has the initial evidentiary burden to make a "threshold showing" that his present incompetency is genuinely at issue in order to warrant an evidentiary hearing. Id. at 268-69. In his petition to the trial court, Thompson requested an evidentiary hearing to determine his competency, and submitted with his motion his prison medical records, along with the reports of three mental health experts—John S. Rabun ("Dr. Rabun"), George W. Woods, Jr. ("Dr. Woods"), and Dr. Faye E. Sultan ("Dr. Sultan")—who had recently examined him.
The medical records submitted to the trial court show that Thompson has engaged in self-destructive acts from the time his incarceration began, including swallowing poison, cutting his wrist and arms, and burning his hand and face. Prison doctors began prescribing medication, including Lithium, to control Thompson's "mood swings" as early as 1988. (Joint Appendix ("J.A.") at 314.) A medical report from 1988 indicated that Thompson heard "voices" and believed he had gotten a "snake bite" on his finger and chest. (J.A. at 316.) In 1989, prison doctors diagnosed Thompson on two different occasions as "schizophrenic, paranoid type" and as having "bipolar affective disorder." (J.A. at 317, 324.) Thompson was given prescriptions for Klonopin and Trilafon when he refused to take his Lithium prescription. The psychiatrist who diagnosed him at that time reported that Thompson had been "displaying active evidence of psychosis and mania with marked grandiosity and delusional thought content." (J.A. at 324.) Thompson was continually diagnosed as bipolar or schizophrenic throughout his incarceration. In 1995, a prison doctor deemed Thompson a "mental health emergency" because his mental illness was causing "an immediate threat of serious physical harm to the inmate/patient or to others as a result of [his] violent behavior[.]" (J.A. at 343.) The doctor's report noted that "voluntary ... medication" had been "ineffective[.]" (Id.) According to a physician who evaluated Thompson in 2001, Thompson had been "violent at times" and had "assaulted staff in the recent past which appears to be related to his mental illness." (J.A. at 405.)
Dr. Rabun, a forensic psychiatrist in the pretrial evaluation unit of the St. Louis Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center in Missouri, interviewed Thompson for two and one-half hours on March 17, 2003 and for another two hours on January 19, 2004. Dr. Rabun also read Thompson's medical records and court files, and the reports of other mental health experts who had evaluated him since his incarceration began. Thompson told Dr. Rabun that he has heard voices intermittently since at least the time of his conviction, and that the voices become less acute when he takes antipsychotic medication. Thompson also shared a number of delusions with Dr. Rabun, including that he has written "most of the songs you hear on the radio;" that he has millions of dollars, gold bars and "a Grammy award" buried near a church in Thomaston, Georgia; and that the United States Navy owes him back pay dating back to 1979. (J.A. at 441.)
Thompson told Dr. Rabun that he "killed Brenda Lane," that he had been convicted of first-degree murder, and that he had been sentenced to "death" in connection with the killing. (J.A. at 442, 447.) Thompson also informed Dr. Rabun that because he was "a lieutenant in the Navy" and therefore had a right to be tried by a jury of "professionals," his conviction should be overturned; only the "Secretary of the Navy" could decide to execute him. (J.A. at 442, 448.) Thompson said that "once everyone sees I am a lieutenant, the Secretary of the Navy will take control, and the case will be thrown out." (J.A. at 442.) Thompson elaborated that when his buried fortune and Grammy award are discovered, he will be deemed "rehabilitated." (Id.) Thompson told Dr. Rabun that he preferred execution by electrocution, because "I am used to being shocked, every time I touch my TV, I get shocked, or when I went to a chiropractor in 1982, he twisted my neck, and it felt like a shock." (J.A. at 448.)
Dr. Rabun diagnosed Thompson as schizophrenic, hallucinatory and delusional. Having reviewed Thompson's medical records, Dr. Rabun stated that Thompson likely had been suffering from a psychotic illness for more than ten years, and that his illness was particularly severe when he did not take antipsychotic medications. Dr. Rabun ruled out "a physical or neurological disorder" as the cause of Thompson's condition, and rejected the possibility that Thompson had been "malingering." (J.A. at 446.) Dr. Rabun concluded that in his opinion, Thompson "lacks the mental capacity to understand the fact of the impending execution and the reason for it." (J.A. at 449.)
Dr. Woods, a psychiatrist, examined Thompson on February 17, 2004 for approximately three hours, and also reviewed Thompson's medical records, court file and transcripts from his legal proceedings. Dr. Woods reported that "Thompson believes that he can not die, and there will be a two-year period in which he will stay alive, even if he were executed." (J.A. at 463.) Dr. Woods stated that Thompson "denied ... that electrocution would, in fact, eliminate his life." (Id.) In addition to sharing with Dr. Woods the same delusions reported by Dr. Rabun, Thompson also told Dr. Woods that "after death ... he was going to be in Hawaii." (Id.) Dr. Woods diagnosed Thompson as a schizophrenic "suffer[ing] from a severe mental illness with psychotic features." (Id.) Dr. Woods noted that Thompson suffers from extreme delusions and hallucinations, even while compliant with his prescribed medication regimen. Like Dr. Rabun, Dr. Woods concluded that Thompson is not competent to be executed.
Dr. Sultan, a clinical psychologist and forensic consultant, submitted a letter dated February 27, 2004, in which she stated that she had conducted eleven clinical interviews of Thompson since 1998, with her most recent interview on January 28, 2004. Dr. Sultan stated her belief that Thompson has been schizophrenic "at least since early adulthood," and reported that Thompson "has experienced the delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking, and disorganized speech and behavior that are all characteristic of his particular psychiatric illness." (J.A. at 485.) Dr. Sultan stated that she had observed Thompson off his medication, and concluded that "[i]n a non-medicated state, Mr. Thompson is floridly psychotic." (J.A. at 486.) Without medication, she stated, Thompson is "unaware of his surroundings," "largely incomprehensible," and "completely unaware about the reason for his incarceration, the sentence he had received, or the fact of impending execution." (Id.)...
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