US Supreme Court Sends Message to Feder- Al
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petition, and under it relief may not be grant- U.S. Supreme Court ed unless the state court adjudication “re- Duke Lacrosse Hoax Sends Message To Feder- sulted in a decision that was based on an Rape Case Accuser unreasonable determination of the facts in al Courts That When In light of the evidence presented in the State Charged With Murder Doubt Deny A State Pris- court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. §2254(d)(2). The U.S. District Court judge determined rystal Gail Mangum is the woman who oner’s Habeas Petition that the Court of Appeal’s finding that the Cfalsely accused three Duke University black jurors were not excluded because of lacrosse players of raping her during a party n 2004 Steven Frank Jackson was con- their skin color was not unreasonable. in 2006 that she and another woman were Ivicted in Sacramento County, California hired to dance at while scantily clad. of charges related to the sexual assault in Jackson appealed that ruling to the Ninth 2002 of a 72-year-old woman who lived in Circuit Court of Appeals, which in July The media firestorm about the case was his apartment complex. He was sentenced 2010 reversed the lower court’s ruling. In initially focused on the angle that the ac- to 25 years to life in prison. their unpublished memorandum the three cused white players were from wealthy judge panel unanimously ruled: families while the black Mangum was a During jury selection, Jackson who is black, struggling single mother who had to take “The prosecutor’s proffered race-neutral objected to the prosecutor’s peremptory demeaning jobs to make ends meet. bases for peremptorily striking the two challenges to two of the three blacks in the African-American jurors were not suffi- jury pool. Jackson’s lawyer argued there was Based on Mangum’s accusation Reade Se- cient to counter the evidence of purpose- no valid reason for their exclusion from his ligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans ful discrimination in light of the fact that jury except for their skin color. In 1986 the were charged in May 2006 with rape, sexual two out of three prospective African- US Supreme Court ruled it violates a defen- offense and kidnapping. American jurors were stricken, and the dant’s right to equal protection of the law for record reflected different treatment of a juror to be excluded based on their race. When details of the case became publicly comparably situated jurors.” Jackson v. That case was Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. known — including that Mangum gave six Felkner, 389 Fed. Appx. 640, 641 (2010). 79 (1986) and when a defendant challenges different accounts of the alleged incident, the prosecution’s exclusion of a juror based that she had a history of making made false The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review on race it is known as a “Batson challenge.” sexual assault allegations, and that DNA tests the Ninth Circuit’s ruling. On March 21, of the sperm recovered from her didn’t match 2011 the Court unanimously ruled in favor The prosecutor claimed the exclusion of the either the three accused players or any of the of granting the California Attorney Gener- two jurors was for “race-neutral” reasons. other 43 men at the party — Durham County al’s writ of certiorari. The Court’s opinion DA Mike Nifong dismissed the rape charges in Felkner v. Jackson, 562 U.S. ____ (2011) The prosecutor justified striking Juror J, a against the three men on December 22, 2006. states in part: black woman with a master’s degree in However, Nifong refused to dismiss the sex- social work, “based on her educational The Batson issue before us turns largely ual offense and kidnapping charges. background.” Jackson’s lawyer countered on an “evaluation of credibility.” The trial that several white prospective jurors with court’s determination is entitled to “great North Carolina’s Attorney General took educational backgrounds were not chal- deference,” ibid., and “must be sustained over the case in January 2007. After review- lenged by the prosecutor. The prosecutor unless it is clearly erroneous,” Snyder v. ing the case the AG dismissed the remain- did not ask Juror J a single question while Louisiana, 552 U. S. 472, 477 (2008). ing charges against Seligmann, Finnerty the white jurors were asked questions about and Evans in April 2007. their educational backgrounds. That is the standard on direct review. On federal habeas review, AEDPA “impos- It was reported that at the time the charges The prosecutor justified striking Juror S, a es a highly deferential standard for eval- were dismissed the families of the three black man, because he had been “frequently uating state-court rulings” and young men had spent over $1 million in stopped by California police officers.” Jack- “demands that state-court decisions be legal fees. son’s lawyer countered that several white given the benefit of the doubt.” Renico prospective jurors who had “negative expe- v. Lett, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) Here In September 2007 Seligmann, Finnerty riences with law enforcement” were not the trial court credited the prosecutor’s and Evans filed a federal civil rights lawsuit challenged by the prosecutor. race-neutral explanations, and the Cali- that named a number of defendants, includ- fornia Court of Appeal carefully re- ing Duke University, and the city of Dur- Jackson raised his Batson challenge as an viewed the record at some length in ham and its police department. issue in his direct appeal to the California upholding the trial court’s findings. The Court of Appeal that affirmed his convic- state appellate court’s decision was Duke University settled with the three men tion, and the California Supreme Court de- plainly not unreasonable. There was nied his petition for review. simply no basis for the Ninth Circuit to Mangum cont. on p. 20 reach the opposite conclusion, particu- Jackson filed a federal petition for a writ of larly in such a dismissive manner. extreme deference should be given to up- habeas corpus that included his Batson chal- holding the state court’s ruling. The deci- lenge to exclusion of the two black jurors. The U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the same sion in Felkner v. Jackson sent the strong The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Pen- evidence related to Jackson’s jury selection message to all federal district and appeals alty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) governs the re- and applied the same legal standard to ana- courts that when in doubt to deny the habe- view of a state prisoner’s federal habeas lyzing that evidence as the Ninth Circuit, as corpus petition of a state prisoner. but the Supreme Court decided that more JUSTICE DENIED: THE MAGAZINE FOR THE WRONGLY CONVICTED PAGE 19 ISSUE 49 - WINTER 2012 lawyers spend on trials — clients are simply asking Washington Cities Sued sometimes five a week — for one thing: to fix the For Violating Defen- for defendants who refuse system.” to plead guilty. dants’ Right To Counsel The Mount Vernon and It was reported in the Se- Burlington city councils class-action lawsuit has been filed attle Times that the two recently voted to extend against two Washington cities for vio- Richard Sybrandy A contract lawyers — Rich- Morgan Witt their contract with Syb- (www.sybrandy-law.org) lating defendants’ constitutional right to ard M. Sybrandy and (www.legalwitt.com) randy and Witt for an effective assistance of counsel. The lawsuit Morgan Witt — visited the Skagit County additional two years. was filed in Skagit County Superior Court. Jail a total of six times in 2010, during The three plaintiffs are prisoners at the Sk- which they saw seven clients. In Washington cities and counties pay for agit County Jail in Mount Vernon. public defender services, so there is a wide During an interview with The Seattle Times variance in the quality of representation. Mount Vernon and Burlington are about 65 Sybrandy admitted that he rarely visits his While someone accused of a crime in a miles north of Seattle. The cities jointly clients in jail. He also said it has been at wealthy city like Seattle can get first-class contract all their public defender services to least two years since he hired an investiga- representation, a person charged with the two private attorneys. In 2010 those two tor to investigate a case. same crime in a poor rural county may get lawyers handled the defense of more than representation no better or even worse than 2,100 people charged with criminal misde- There have been many complaints that cli- if a customer at a local coffee shop had been meanors in the two cities. The cities pay the ents are unable to communicate with Syb- randomly picked to represent the person. two lawyers a total of $180,000 yearly, and randy and Witt, and even the Mount Vernon according to the cities the two lawyers spend Police Department has reported that it “is Deficient public defender representation in no more than 1/3 of their time handling not an isolated case” when they can’t reach Grant County, Washington was national criminal cases for the cities. That would the public defenders to discuss a case. news several years ago. Among other mean that in handling more than 2,100 cases things, PD Guillermo Romero was disbarred yearly, the lawyers spend an average of less The Washington State Bar Association rec- by the Washington Supreme Court in 2004 than 20 minutes on each case. However, the ommends that public defenders handle no for soliciting money from indigent clients time spent on the average case is much less more than 400 cases a year, and the Wash- whose case he was assigned.