Thompson v. McNeil

• Decision Date: 09 March 2009
• Docket Number: No. 08–7369.,08–7369.
• Citation: 129 S.Ct. 1299 (Mem),556 U.S. 1114
• Parties: William Lee THOMPSON, Petitioner, v. Walter A. McNEIL, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

556 U.S. 1114

129 S.Ct. 1299 (Mem)

William Lee THOMPSON, Petitioner

v.Walter A. McNEIL, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections.

No. 08–7369.

Supreme Court of the United States

March 9, 2009.

Opinion

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

Statement of Justice STEVENS respecting the denial of the petition for writ of certiorari.

Last Term, in my opinion in Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35, 128 S.Ct. 1520, 170 L.Ed.2d 420 (2008), I suggested that the “time for a dispassionate, impartial comparison of the enormous costs that death penalty litigation imposes on society with the benefits that it produces has surely arrived.” Id., at ––––, 128 S.Ct., at 1548–1549 (opinion concurring in judgment). This petition for certiorari describes costs that merit consideration in any such study.

In June 1976, having been advised by counsel that he would not receive the death penalty if he accepted responsibility for his crime, petitioner pleaded guilty to a capital offense. The advice was erroneous, and he was sentenced to death. Since that time, two state-court judgments have set aside his death sentence. See Thompson v. State, 351 So.2d 701 (Fla.1977) ; Thompson v. Dugger, 515 So.2d 173 (Fla.1987). At a third penalty hearing—after petitioner presented mitigation evidence about his limited mental capacity and dysfunctional childhood that had previously been barred—five members of the advisory jury voted against a death sentence, but the court again imposed a sentence of death.

Thirty-two years have passed since petitioner was first sentenced to death. In prior cases, both Justice BREYER and I have noted that substantially delayed executions arguably violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. See, e.g., Smith v. Arizona, 552 U.S. 985, ––––, 128 S.Ct. 2997, ––– L.Ed.2d –––– (2007) (BREYER, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); Foster v. Florida, 537 U.S. 990, 991, 123 S.Ct. 470, 154 L.Ed.2d 359 (2002) (same); Knight v. Florida, 528 U.S. 990, 993, 120 S.Ct. 459, 145 L.Ed.2d 370 (1999) (same); Lackey v. Texas, 514 U.S. 1045, 115 S.Ct. 1421, 131 L.Ed.2d 304 (1995) (STEVENS, J., respecting denial of certiorari). Petitioner's case involves a longer delay than any of those earlier cases.

As he awaits execution, petitioner has endured especially severe conditions of confinement, spending up to 23 hours per day in isolation in a 6–by 9–foot cell. Two death warrants have been signed against him and stayed only shortly before he was scheduled to be put to death. The dehumanizing effects of such treatment are undeniable. See People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628, 649, 100 Cal.Rptr. 152, 493 P.2d 880, 894 (1972) (“[T]he process of carrying out a verdict of death is often so degrading and brutalizing to the human spirit as to constitute psychological torture”); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 288, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring) (“[T]he prospect of pending execution exacts a frightful toll during the inevitable long wait between the imposition of sentence and the actual infliction of death”). Moreover, as I explained in Lackey, delaying an execution does not further public purposes of retribution and deterrence but only diminishes whatever possible benefit society might receive from petitioner's death. It would therefore be appropriate to conclude that a punishment of death after significant delay is “so totally without penological justification that it results in the gratuitous infliction of suffering.”Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 183, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.).

While the length of petitioner's confinement under sentence of death is extraordinary, the concerns his case raises are not unique. Clarence Allen Lackey had spent 17 years on death row when this Court reviewed his petition for certiorari. Today, condemned inmates await execution for an average of nearly 13 years. See Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Capital Punishment, 2007 (Table 11) (2008), online at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ bjs/pub/html/cp/2007/tables/cp07st11.htm (all Internet materials as visited Feb. 20, 2009, and available in Clerk of Court's case file). To my mind, this figure underscores the fundamental inhumanity and unworkability of the death penalty as it is administered in the United States.

Some respond that delays in carrying out executions are the result of this Court's insistence on excessive process. But delays have multiple causes, including “the States' failure to apply constitutionally sufficient procedures at the time of initial [conviction or] sentencing.” Knight, 528 U.S., at 998, 120 S.Ct. 459 (BREYER, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). The reversible error rate in capital trials is staggering. More than 30 percent of death verdicts imposed between 1973 and 2000 have been overturned,¹ and 129 inmates sentenced to death during that time have been exonerated, often more than a decade after they were convicted.² Judicial process takes time, but the error rate in capital cases illustrates its necessity. We are duty bound to “insure that every safeguard is observed” when “a defendant's life is at stake.” Gregg, 428 U.S., at 187, 96 S.Ct. 2909 (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.).

In sum, our experience during the past three decades has demonstrated that delays in state-sponsored killings are inescapable and that executing defendants after such delays is unacceptably cruel. This inevitable cruelty, coupled with the diminished justification for carrying out an execution after the lapse of so much time, reinforces my opinion that contemporary decisions “to retain the death penalty as a part of our law are the product of habit and inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process.”

Baze, 553 U.S., at ––––, ––––, 128 S.Ct., at 1546, 1555 (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment).

Justice THOMAS, concurring in denial of certiorari.

I remain “unaware of any support in the American constitutional tradition or in this Court's precedent for the proposition that a defendant can avail himself of the panoply of appellate and collateral procedures and then complain when his execution is delayed.” Knight v. Florida, 528 U.S. 990, 120 S.Ct. 459, 145 L.Ed.2d 370 (1999) (THOMAS, J., concurring in denial of certiorari). Petitioner William Lee Thompson has pleaded guilty to this murder—twice. Thompson v. State, 759 So.2d 650, 654 (Fla.2000)(per curiam) . Having confessed, petitioner could have accepted “what the people of Florida have deemed him to deserve: execution.” Foster v. Florida, 537 U.S. 990, 991, 123 S.Ct. 470, 154 L.Ed.2d 359 (2002) (THOMAS, J., concurring in denial of certiorari). But because petitioner chose to challenge his death sentence, Justice STEVENS and Justice BREYER suggest that the subsequent delay caused by petitioner's 32 years of litigation creates an Eighth Amendment problem. Ante, at 1299 – 1301 (STEVENS, J., statement respecting denial of certiorari); post, at 1303 – 1304 (BREYER, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). I disagree. It makes “a mockery of our system of justice ... for a convicted murderer, who, through his own interminable efforts of delay ... has secured the almost-indefinite postponement of his sentence, to then claim that the almost-indefinite postponement renders his sentence unconstitutional.” Turner v. Jabe, 58 F.3d 924, 933 (C.A.4 1995) (Luttig, J., concurring in judgment).

Justice BREYER replies that a death-row inmate's Eighth Amendment challenge to “a delay of more than 30 years” between sentencing and execution should not be “automatically waive[d]” because he chooses to exercise his appellate rights. See post, at 1303. But framing the issue in this way obscures the central question. The issue is not whether a death-row inmate's appeals “waive” any Eighth Amendment right; the issue instead is whether the death-row inmate's litigation strategy, which delays his execution, provides a justification for the Court to invent a new Eighth Amendment right. It does not. See Knight, supra, at 992, 120 S.Ct. 459 (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (“Consistency would seem to demand that those who accept our death penalty jurisprudence as a given also accept the lengthy delay between sentencing and execution as a necessary consequence .... It is incongruous to arm capital defendants with an arsenal of ‘constitutional’ claims with which they may delay their executions, and simultaneously to complain when executions are inevitably delayed”).

I also disagree with Justice STEVENS that other aspects of the criminal justice system in this country require the fresh examination of the costs and benefits of retaining the death penalty that he seeks. Ante, at 1299 – 1300. For example, Justice STEVENS criticizes the “dehumanizing effects” of the manner in which petitioner has been confined, ante, at 1299, but he never pauses to consider whether there is a legitimate penological reason for keeping certain inmates in restrictive confinement. See, e.g., Kocieniewski, Death Row Inmate Said to Beat and Kick Another to Death in New Jersey Prison, New York Times, Sept. 8, 1999, p. B5. Indeed, the disastrous consequences of this Court's recent foray into prison management, Johnson v. California, 543 U.S. 499, 125 S.Ct. 1141, 160 L.Ed.2d 949 (2005), should have suppressed any urge to second-guess these difficult institutional decisions, Beard v. Banks, 548 U.S. 521, 536–537, 126 S.Ct. 2572, 165 L.Ed.2d 697 (2006) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (noting that after the Court invalidated California's policy of racially segregating prisoners in its reception centers, the State “subsequently experienced several instances of severe race-based prison violence, including a riot that resulted in 2 fatalities and more than 100 injuries, and significant fighting along racial lines between newly arrived inmates, the very inmates that were subject to the policy invalidated by the Court in Johnson ”).

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