US Supreme Court Denies Habeas Relief in Michigan’s Denial of Diminished Capacity Defense

Metrish v. Lancaster, _ U.S. _, 17 133 S.Ct. 1781, 2013 WL 2149793 (No. 12-547, May 20, 2013)

The United States Supreme Court has denied a Michigan prisoner’s petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus arguing that Michigan had erroneously prevented him from presenting evidence of his diminished capacity to a charge of first degree murder. At the time this case first came to trial in 1993, the Michigan Court of Appeals had long recognized the defense of diminished capacity to negate the mens rea or specific intent element required to support a first degree murder conviction. Two years after the first trial, the Michigan Supreme Court held that the diminished capacity defense had been abolished following Michigan’s 1975 comprehensive enactment of its statutes related to the admissibility of evidence of mental illness and intellectual disability. Upon his retrial in 2005 and on direct appeal, the Michigan courts refused to allow the defendant to present evidence of diminished capacity rejecting his argument that retroactive application of the state’s Supreme Court decision did not violate his due process rights. The Sixth Circuit granted the petitioner habeas relief. The United States Supreme Court reversed finding that the state court decisions did not result in an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as embodied in Supreme Court decisions. The Opinion is available on the Court’s website at: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-547_0pm1.pdf.

In April 1993, Burt Lancaster, a former police officer with a long history of mental illness, shot and killed his girlfriend in a shopping center parking lot. Lancaster was charged with first degree murder and possession of a firearm to commit a felony. At his jury trial in 1994, Lancaster raised the insanity and diminished capacity defenses. At that time, the Michigan Court of Appeals in a line of cases had permitted legally sane defendants to present evidence of mental abnormality to negate the specific intent or mens rea required to commit a crime. Even though he was allowed to present this evidence, the jury convicted him of both charges. Lancaster later obtained federal habeas corpus relief on different grounds because the prosecutor at his first trial had erroneously exercised a race-based preemptory challenge to a potential juror and was awarded a new trial.

Prior to his new trial, however, the Michigan Supreme Court determined that the Michigan legislature had enacted a comprehensive legislative scheme in 1975 establishing the requirements for introducing evidence related to a defense based upon mental illness or intellectual disability. People v. Carpenter, 627 N.W.2d 276 (Mich. 2001). That scheme essentially adopted the M’Naughten rule for asserting an insanity defense. It also required a 30- day notice of intent to use the defense and a court-ordered psychiatric examination. In addition, the legislature created a verdict of “guilty but mentally ill” for defendants who suffered from mental illness but did not satisfy the legal definition of insanity. Such defendants would be provided with treatment but would not be exempt from the sentencing provisions applicable to other criminal defendants. Although the legislation did not specifically address the diminished capacity defense, the Michigan Supreme Court found that by creating such a comprehensive statutory scheme, the diminished capacity defense was superseded by that scheme.

Upon retrial in 2005, the trial court refused to allow Lancaster to assert the diminished capacity defense based upon the decision in Carpenter and he was again found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. The Michigan appellate courts upheld the conviction and the United States District Court denied him habeas relief. On appeal, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed holding that the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter was unforeseeable because of 1) the Michigan Court of Appeals’ consistent application of the diminished capacity defense, 2) the Michigan Supreme Court’s repeated references in dicta to the defense, and 3) the Michigan State Bar’s use of the defense in pattern jury instructions.

After granting the petition for Writ of Certiorari, the United States Supreme Court reversed the Sixth Circuit. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Ginsburg recognized that a state prisoner has a very high standard to meet to obtain habeas corpus relief from a federal court. To obtain such relief, the challenged court ruling must have unreasonably applied federal law clearly established in United States Supreme Court decisions. The Court declined to apply Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964), as urged by Lancaster, a case in which the Court had preciously held that due process required state criminal statutes must give fair warning of the conduct they prohibit. In Bouie, African-American petitioners had been convicted of trespass under South Carolina law after they refused to comply with orders to leave a drug store’s restaurant, which was reserved for white customers. Unlike this case, the South Carolina Supreme Court had unexpectedly expanded narrow and precise statutory language that did not cover the defendants’ conduct.

Instead the Court relied upon Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451 (2001), a case that upheld the Tennessee Supreme Court’s retroactive abolishment of the year and a day rule, a common law rule that barred a murder conviction unless the victim died within a year and a day of the act. In Rogers, the Court held that the retroactive application of the decision did not violate due process. The Court recognized that the diminished capacity defense is not an outdated relic of the common law as is the year and a day rule. To the contrary, the Court observed that the Model Penal Code sets out a version of the defense whenever evidence may establish a defendant does not have the state of mind that is necessary to establish an element of the offense.

In addition, the American Bar Association approved criminal justice guidelines in 1993 that favor the admissibility of mental health evidence to negate mens rea, and a majority of States, including Virginia, allow such evidence in certain circumstances. Nevertheless, the Court held that it has never found a due process violation where a state supreme court “squarely addressing a particular issued for the first time, rejected a consistent line of lower court decisions based on the supreme court’s reasonable interpretation of the language of a controlling statute.” The Supreme Court therefore reversed the Sixth Circuit decision and denied Lancaster habeas relief.

Found in DMHL Volume 32 Issue 3