Federal Appeals Court Finds South Carolina Judge Ignored Uncontested Evidence of Mental Illness, Reverses Death Sentence

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has over­turned a South Carolina death-row prisoner’s death sen­tence after find­ing that the sen­tenc­ing judge in his case had ignored uncon­test­ed evi­dence of the defendant’s men­tal ill­ness and his­to­ry of severe child­hood abuse and neglect.

In a 2 – 1 rul­ing on July 26, 2022, a pan­el of the Fourth Circuit vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed on Quincy Allen by Richland County Circuit Court Judge G. Thomas Cooper in March 2005 for the mur­ders of Dale Hall and Jedediah Harr. Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Roger Gregory, joined by Judge Pamela Harris, wrote: ​“The sen­tencer in this case exclud­ed, ignored, or over­looked Allen’s clear and undis­put­ed mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence, there­by erect­ing a bar­ri­er to giv­ing this evi­dence mean­ing­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and effect and evis­cer­at­ing the well-estab­lished require­ments of due process in decid­ing who shall live and who shall die.” In so doing, they wrote, Judge Cooper ​“violate[d] the Eighth Amendment’s guar­an­tee against the arbi­trary impo­si­tion of the death penalty.”

Judge Allison Jones Rushing, whose nom­i­na­tion to the Court by Donald Trump was con­firmed by the Senate in 2019, dissented.

Allen plead­ed guilty to cap­i­tal mur­der charges in 2005 and waived his right to a jury sen­tenc­ing. At the time of the mur­ders, the 22-year-old Allen had been com­mit­ted to men­tal health facil­i­ties sev­en times as a result of men­tal ill­ness and mul­ti­ple sui­cide attempts. Prior to his South Carolina tri­al, Allen was con­vict­ed in North Carolina for two oth­er mur­ders. Saying ​“the evi­dence is con­vinc­ing that [] Allen is men­tal­ly ill,” the North Carolina tri­al court sen­tenced Allen to life on those charges. 

After a ten-day sen­tenc­ing tri­al that fea­tured men­tal health tes­ti­mo­ny from both the defense and the pros­e­cu­tion, Judge Cooper sen­tenced Allen to death for the South Carolina mur­ders. In his post-sen­tenc­ing affi­davit, Cooper found that Allen had not con­clu­sive­ly proven the exis­tence of any mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stance and that ​“Allen was NOT con­clu­sive­ly diag­nosed to be men­tal­ly ill.” He fur­ther indi­cat­ed that he had been look­ing at the defense men­tal health tes­ti­mo­ny ​“to con­vince me that Mr. Allen was so men­tal­ly ill through­out the time of his crimes and was so men­tal­ly ill at the time of tri­al, that impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty would vio­late the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cru­el and unusual punishment.”

U.S. Supreme Court caselaw has repeat­ed­ly empha­sized that cap­i­tal sen­tencers may not refuse to con­sid­er and give weight to rel­e­vant mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence nor require that the evi­dence have a direct rela­tion­ship to the crime itself. Allen argued that Judge Cooper had failed to mean­ing­ful­ly con­sid­er and weigh the evi­dence relat­ing to his chron­i­cal­ly trau­mat­ic and abu­sive upbring­ing and his his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. The South Carolina state courts denied his claim, assert­ing that Cooper had in fact con­sid­ered the evi­dence but found it unpersuasive. 

The cir­cuit pan­el ruled that Judge Cooper had not ​“prop­er­ly con­sid­er[]” all the mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in Allen’s case, and that the South Carolina court deci­sion was con­trary to clear­ly estab­lished U.S. Supreme Court caselaw and/​or was based upon an unrea­son­able deter­mi­na­tion of the facts. The court first addressed Judge Cooper’s asser­tions that ​“Conclusive proof of mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances was not found” and that ​“Allen was NOT con­clu­sive­ly diag­nosed to be men­tal­ly ill.” Those find­ings, the major­i­ty said, were based upon Cooper’s assess­ment that numer­ous psy­chi­a­trists and psy­chol­o­gists had tes­ti­fied to con­flict­ing diag­noses — a find­ing belied by the fact that at least some of the evi­dence of men­tal ill­ness was uncontested. 

The major­i­ty wrote: ​“The sen­tenc­ing judge gath­ered Allen’s evi­dence of child­hood abuse, rumi­na­tion dis­or­der, and anti-social per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der; placed it on the ana­lyt­i­cal scale; and pro­ceed­ed to give all of this evi­dence zero weight, and did so because the experts could not agree as to Allen’s men­tal health diag­noses. which is direct­ly con­tra­dict­ed by the fact that the government’s experts did not con­test Allen’s rumi­na­tion dis­or­der diag­no­sis. The court held that the sen­tenc­ing judge could not have con­clud­ed that Allen was not men­tal­ly ill. But we know that this fac­tu­al con­clu­sion is erro­neous because, as dis­cussed at length above, no one con­test­ed Allen’s rumi­na­tion dis­or­der. So, to the extent that the state court viewed the sen­tenc­ing judge’s con­sid­er­a­tion through the ​‘no weight’ lens and deter­mined that such con­sid­er­a­tion of Allen’s mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence was ​‘prop­er,’ this con­clu­sion is defec­tive because it flowed from [an] unrea­son­able factual determination …. ”

Additionally, the major­i­ty found that the state court deci­sion was con­trary to the fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al require­ment that the sen­tencer mean­ing­ful­ly con­sid­er mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence offered to spare a defendant’s life. It wrote: ​“The only way to rec­on­cile the sen­tenc­ing judge’s con­clu­sion that no con­clu­sive proof of mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances exist­ed with the con­clu­sive proof of [sev­er­al of] Allen’s [men­tal health] dis­or­ders, as well as child­hood abuse, is to con­clude that the sen­tenc­ing judge did not con­sid­er these mitigators.”

The cir­cuit court deter­mined that that Cooper’s con­duct was prej­u­di­cial, say­ing it cre­at­ed ​“grave doubt that exclud­ing, ignor­ing, or over­look­ing Allen’s seri­ous men­tal ill­ness and his­to­ry of child­hood abuse had no sub­stan­tial and inju­ri­ous effect or influ­ence on the out­come of the sen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ing.” ​“Equal jus­tice under the law demands that a death-eli­gi­ble defendant’s indi­vid­ual back­ground, char­ac­ter­is­tics, and cul­pa­bil­i­ty are giv­en mean­ing­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and effect before impos­ing a sen­tence of death,” Chief Judge Gregory wrote. 

In dis­sent, Judge Rushing said that the majority’s por­tray­al of Judge Cooper’s con­sid­er­a­tion of the mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence was ​“not accu­rate” because dur­ing the oral pro­nounce­ment of the sen­tence, Judge Cooper said that he had con­sid­ered all the evi­dence before him. 

Fielding Pringle, one of the lawyers who rep­re­sent­ed Allen at tri­al, expressed ​“relief … that the well-doc­u­ment­ed severe child­hood abuse and neglect and the his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness suf­fered by Quincy his whole life has final­ly led to the appropriate ruling.”