Schriro v. Landrigan
Landrigan was convicted of first degree murder in Arizona state court and sentenced to death. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence. Landrigan filed a petition for post-conviction relief in the Arizona Superior Court, urging that his counsel had been ineffective by failing to investigate and present mitigating evidence at the sentencing proceeding. Landrigan also requested an evidentiary hearing in connection with this claim. The Superior Court denied the request for the hearing and the petition, concluding that Landrigan could not argue his counsel was ineffective at sentencing because he had instructed his attorney not to present mitigating evidence. The Arizona Supreme Court summarily denied the petition.
Landrigan filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus raising a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel and renewing his request for an
evidentiary hearing. The district court denied the petition on the merits, concluding that even if Landrigan’s counsel was deficient, Landrigan had
not demonstrated he suffered prejudice from his counsel’s shortcomings. The district court granted Landrigan a certificate of appealability for his
ineffective assistance claim. A three judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of the writ.
After rehearing en banc, the Ninth Circuit granted Landrigan's petition for writ of habeas corpus. The court based its decision on two recent Supreme
Court decisions: in Rompilla v. Beard, the Court held that an attorney has a duty to develop and present mitigating evidence, even when
dealing with capital defendants
who are “uninterested in helping” or “even actively obstructive” in developing a mitigation case; in Wiggins v. Smith, the Court held that
prejudice to the defendant in a capital sentencing hearing should be measured by reweighing "the evidence in aggravation against the totality of
available mitigating evidence.” The Ninth Circuit therefore held that Landrigan had made a colorable claim that he did not receive effective
assistance of counsel in his sentencing, and remanded the case to the district court to conduct an evidentiary hearing.
Question Presented:
Respondent Jeffrey Landrigan actively thwarted his attorney's efforts to develop and present mitigation evidence in his capital sentencing
proceeding. Landrigan told the trial judge that he did not want his attomey to present any mitigation evidence, including proposed testimony from
witnesses whom his attorney had subpoenaed to testify. On post-conviction review, the state court rejected as frivolous an ineffective assistance of
counsel claim in which Landrigan asserted that if counsel had raised the issue of Landrigan's alleged genetic predisposition to violence, he would
have cooperated in presenting that type of mitigating evidence.
1. In light of the highly deferential standard of review required in this case pursuant to the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
("AEDPA"), did the Ninth Circuit err by holding that the state court unreasonably determined the facts when it found that Landrigan “instructed his
attorney not to present any mitigating evidence at the sentencing hearing”?
2. Did the Ninth Circuit err by finding that the state court's analysis of Landrigan's ineffective assistance of counsel claim was objectively
unreasonable under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) notwithstanding the absence of any contrary authority from this Court in
cases in which (a) the defendant waives presentation of mitigation and impedes counsels attempts to do so, or (b) the evidence the defendant
subsequently claims should have been presented is not mitigating?
