DPIC’s Lethal Injection Page
“Volunteers” and the Need for Court Review

A sentencing that “shocks the conscience”

A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit underscored the responsibility that all courts, and particularly the federal courts, have in ensuring that constitutional principles are upheld.

FACTS

Robert Comer was convicted of murder and other offenses at a trial in Arizona in 1988. He was not in the courtroom during his trial. At the sentencing phase of his case, he was brought into the court “shackled to a wheelchair and, except for a cloth draped over his genitals, he was naked. His body was slumped to one side and his head drooped toward his shoulder. He had visible abrasions on his body.” The court inquired whether Comer was conscious and then sentenced him to death.

APPEALS

Comer’s conviction and death sentence were upheld by the Arizona courts. He then filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court, but his claims were initially denied. He appealed this decision to the 9th Circuit, but then wrote to the state of Arizona indicating that he no longer wanted to appeal and that he wanted to die.

DECISION

The 9th Circuit concurred with the lower court’s opinion that Comer’s waiver of his right to appeal was competently and voluntarily made. However, the Court said that a waiver of appeal must be given heightened scrutiny in a death penalty case: “Especially vital is meaningful appellate review of a capital defendant’s habeas petition. ‘The writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.’”

The court held that it was required to review Comer’s original claims despite the fact that he wanted to die because “The state should not be able to execute an illegally convicted or sentenced person.” An inmate should not be allowed to bypass the people’s interest in seeing that the law is justly administered:

  • [A]llowing a defendant to arbitrarily waive such review, once it has been properly initiated by the defendant and the reviewing court has been presented with briefs that demonstrate the defendant’s conviction or sentence may indeed be unconstitutional, violates the Eighth Amendment. The defendant is not taking his own life, he is coopting the power of the state’s capital punishment system to kill — a power that must only be wielded in accordance with the Constitution’s fundamental protections. The people’s interest in justice, which forms the basis of the state’s power to execute, should not be so easily commandeered. The right to die is not synonymous with the right to kill.

The court then went on to review Comer’s original claim that the manner of his sentencing, where he was shackled to a wheel chair, barely conscious, and almost naked before the court, violated his due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The court found that this process “shocks the conscience” and was a “severe affront to the dignity and decorum of the judicial proceedings.” He was granted a new sentencing hearing. One judge filed a partial dissent.

All quotations are from the decision: Comer v. Schriro, No. 98-99003 (9th Cir. Sept. 13, 2006).

For more information on Volunteers, see Time on Death Row. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, about 12% of those executed waived their appeals at the time of their execution. See DPIC’s Execution Database. See also Mental Illness.