Brown v. Payton
Payton was sentenced to death for murder in California. Payton appealed both his underlying conviction and death sentence, which were affirmed by the California Supreme Court. Payton filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court, which raised the question whether the jury, in imposing the death penalty, should have considered the potentially mitigating evidence of Payton's post-crime religious conversion and good behavior in prison. The California death penalty statute contains a "catchall" factor, enabling jury to consider any other circumstance that the defendant presents in mitigation of a death sentence. Payton objected to the jury instructions on this factor, which restricted the jury to considering pre-crime mitigating factors.
The district court granted Payton's habeas petition and vacated his death sentence on the basis of the jury instructions. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court, and ordered the writ vacated. The Ninth Circuit en banc reversed the panel's decision and affirmed the district court's decision with respect to the death sentence ( Payton I ). The Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded the case to us for further consideration in light of its decision in Woodford v. Garceau . On remand, ( Payton II ), the Ninth Circuit again concluded that the district court properly granted Payton's habeas petition.
Question Presented:
In Boyde v. California , 494 U.S. 370 (1990), this Court upheld the constitutionality of California's "catch-all" mitigation instruction in
capital cases, which directs a jury to consider "any other circumstance which extenuates the gravity of the crime even though it is not a legal excuse for the crime." The mitigating evidence at
issue in Boyde was pre-crime evidence in mitigation. Relying on Boyde , the California Supreme Court held that California's "catch-all" mitigation instruction in this capital case
is constitutional as applied to post-crime evidence in mitigation. In a 6-5 decision, the en banc Ninth Circuit held that the California Supreme Court decision was objectively unreasonable
"because Boyde does not control this case." The question presented is:
Did the Ninth Circuit violate 28 U.S.C. ยง 2254(d) when it found the California Supreme Court objectively unreasonable in holding that California's "catch-all" mitigation instruction in capital cases is constitutional as applied to post-crime evidence in mitigation?
