In Partisan Vote, Supreme Court Summarily Reverses Grant of Penalty-Phase Relief for Alabama Death-Row Prisoner Who May Be Intellectually Disabled

In a rul­ing ren­dered along par­ti­san lines with­out ben­e­fit of oral argu­ment, the United States Supreme Court has over­turned the deci­sion of a fed­er­al appeals court that had vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed on an Alabama death-row pris­on­er whose tri­al lawyers had failed to obtain expert assis­tance to present evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. By a vote of 6 – 3, with all mem­bers of the con­ser­v­a­tive bloc of jus­tices vot­ing for the pros­e­cu­tion, the Court on July 2, 2021 sum­mar­i­ly reversed the deci­sion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit — one of the nation’s most con­ser­v­a­tive fed­er­al appeals courts — that had ordered a new sen­tenc­ing for Matthew Reeves because of the inef­fec­tive­ness of his tri­al coun­sel in the penal­ty phase of his capital trial. 

The Eleventh Circuit had ruled that the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals had unrea­son­ably denied Reeves’ inef­fec­tive­ness claim by invent­ing a per se require­ment that a defen­dant must present tes­ti­mo­ny from his tri­al lawyers as a pre­req­ui­site to estab­lish­ing that counsel’s per­for­mance had been defi­cient. No such require­ment exists under the U.S. Supreme Court’s long-estab­lished Sixth Amendment jurispru­dence on the effec­tive­ness of coun­sel. Nonetheless, the Alabama court required that Reeves ​“must, at his evi­den­tiary hear­ing, ques­tion tri­al coun­sel regard­ing his or her actions and rea­son­ing.” Reeves’ fail­ure to do so, the state court ruled, was ​“fatal” to his ineffectiveness claim.

In an unsigned opin­ion that itself crit­i­cized the unsigned nature of the Eleventh Circuit’s rul­ing, the Supreme Court major­i­ty said Alabama had not required Reeves to present tes­ti­mo­ny from his lawyers and deferred to the state court’s res­o­lu­tion of the issue. The cir­cuit pan­el, the major­i­ty said, ​“rein­ter­pret­ed the Alabama court’s lengthy opin­ion as impos­ing a sim­ple per se pro­hi­bi­tion on relief” if coun­sel did not tes­ti­fy and ​“went astray in its readi­ness to attribute error” to the state court.”

Dissenting, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, said “[t]he lengths to which this Court goes to ensure that Reeves remains on death row are extra­or­di­nary.” She called the majority’s deci­sion part of a ​“trou­bling trend in which this Court strains to reverse sum­mar­i­ly any grants of relief to those fac­ing exe­cu­tion.” The Court ear­li­er, also along par­ti­san lines and with­out hear­ing argu­ment, lift­ed every injunc­tion and stay of exe­cu­tion that courts had issued dur­ing the fed­er­al government’s spree of 13 exe­cu­tions in just over six months at the end of the Trump administration’s tenure in office.

Justice Stephen Breyer sep­a­rate­ly dis­sent­ed, without opinion.

Reeves was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1998 for the mur­der of Willie Johnson. He was 18 years old at the time of the crime. Prior to his tri­al, his court-appoint­ed lawyers suc­cess­ful­ly sought fund­ing for an eval­u­a­tion by a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, Dr. John Goff, to deter­mine if Reeves was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. After his lead coun­sel with­drew and was replaced, Reeves’ legal team nev­er con­tact­ed Dr. Goff. Instead, on the day of Reeves’ penal­ty phase, they con­tact­ed a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist who had eval­u­at­ed Reeves for com­pe­tence to stand tri­al but had not exam­ined him for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. She warned the attor­neys that intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty was not in the scope of her eval­u­a­tion, but they asked her to tes­ti­fy any­way. She had con­duct­ed only a par­tial IQ test, which she tes­ti­fied ​“was not in a lev­el that they would call him [intel­lec­tu­al­ly disabled].” 

During Reeves’ post­con­vic­tion appeal, Goff tes­ti­fied at a hear­ing that Reeves ​“has sig­nif­i­cant­ly sub­av­er­age intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing” and that he ​“has sig­nif­i­cant deficits in mul­ti­ple areas of adap­tive func­tion­ing.” Because those deficits appeared before age 18, Goff con­clud­ed that Reeves is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. Reeves’ tri­al lawyers did not tes­ti­fy at the hear­ing and the state court denied relief. On appeal to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), the state argued that the low­er court had ​“prop­er­ly pre­sumed that [Reeves’ legal team] act­ed rea­son­ably” because the lawyers had not been called to tes­ti­fy at the hear­ing. The CCA agreed with the state’s argu­ment, writ­ing, “‘[T]o over­come the strong pre­sump­tion of effec­tive­ness, a Rule 32 peti­tion­er must, at his evi­den­tiary hear­ing, ques­tion tri­al coun­sel regard­ing his or her actions and rea­son­ing.’” The Eleventh Circuit reversed that deci­sion, which it inter­pret­ed to ​“trea[t] Mr. Reeves’ fail­ure to call his coun­sel to tes­ti­fy as a per se bar to relief — despite ample evi­dence in the record to over­come the pre­sump­tion of adequate representation.”

The 6‑justice major­i­ty of the Supreme Court over­turned the Eleventh Circuit’s deci­sion, writ­ing that it had mis­in­ter­pret­ed the CCA as apply­ing a ​“blan­ket rule,” rather than giv­ing Reeves’ case indi­vid­ual analy­sis. Justice Sotomayor stren­u­ous­ly dis­agreed. In her dis­sent, she explained, ​“If the state court had meant to weigh the evi­dence in the record, it would have. It did not. This Court is putting words in the state court’s mouth that the state court nev­er uttered, and which are flat­ly incon­sis­tent with what the state court did say.”