New York Times
Court Counters Judge on a Call Not to Recuse Himself
June 10, 2016
by Adam Liptak
WASHINGTON — A judge may not hear an appeal in a death penalty case that he worked on as a prosecutor, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a 5-to-3 decision. The court also issued divided decisions in two other cases, ruling that Puerto Rico cannot try defendants in local courts for conduct already prosecuted in federal court, and that discharged juries may be called back in some cases to fix mistakes in their verdicts.
The death penalty case concerned Ronald D. Castille, who was Philadelphia’s district attorney in 1986 when he authorized the capital prosecution of Terrance Williams. Mr. Williams and a friend, both 18, were accused of killing Amos Norwood, 56, with a tire iron.
“Approved to proceed on the death penalty,” Mr. Castille wrote on a subordinate’s memorandum.
Mr. Williams was convicted and sentenced to death. Later, when Mr. Castille was running for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, he said he was reluctant to take a firm public position on the death penalty, fearing it would require his recusal from all capital cases.
“I can certainly say I sent 45 people to death row as district attorney of Philadelphia,” he told a legal newspaper in 1993, adding that voters “sort of get the hint.” Mr. Williams was the first of those 45.
In 2012, as the court’s chief justice, Mr. Castille denied a request from Mr. Williams’s lawyers that he disqualify himself from hearing an appeal based on claims of prosecutorial misconduct by the office he had led. Although a lower court had accepted the claims, Mr. Castille, about two weeks before he retired at the end of 2014, joined a unanimous decision reinstating Mr. Williams’s death sentence.
In an interview, Mr. Castille said his role in the case as district attorney had been merely administrative. “I didn’t try the case,” he said. “I wasn’t really involved in the case except as the leader of the office.”
On Thursday, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said Mr. Castille’s participation in the case required his recusal. “Chief Justice Castille’s significant, personal involvement in a critical decision in Williams’s case gave rise to an unacceptable risk of actual bias,” Justice Kennedy wrote.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the majority decision in the case, Williams v. Pennsylvania, No. 15-5040. The court ordered the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to rehear Mr. Williams’s appeal.
Justice Kennedy said the Constitution’s due process clause guarantees that “no man can be a judge in his own case.”
In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that “the majority opinion rests on proverb rather than precedent.”
“The due process clause did not prohibit Chief Justice Castille from hearing Williams’s case,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “That does not mean, however, that it was appropriate for him to do so,” as recusal might have been required under state law and ethics rules.
“It is up to state authorities — not this court — to determine whether recusal should be required,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Chief Justice Roberts’s dissent. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate dissent, saying that “the specter of bias alone in a judicial proceeding is not a deprivation of due process.”
The Supreme Court has said that the federal government and the states are independent sovereigns, meaning that the same conduct can be prosecuted separately in state and federal courts. Puerto Rico lacks such authority, the court ruled on Thursday in Puerto Rico v. Sánchez Valle, No. 15-108, addressing a deeply contested matter of politics and pride.
The case concerned Luis M. Sánchez Valle and Gómez Vázquez, who were prosecuted on gun charges in local and federal courts in Puerto Rico. They pleaded guilty to the federal charges and asserted that they could not be prosecuted for the same crimes in local courts under the Constitution’s double jeopardy clause.
Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court agreed. “Puerto Rico’s authority to prosecute individuals is derived from its delegation by United States Congress and not by virtue of its own sovereignty,” the court’s majority said.
In an opinion affirming that judgment on Thursday, Justice Kagan said Puerto Rico does as a contemporary matter have many important attributes of sovereignty. Since Puerto Rico became a territory in 1898, she wrote, “the United States and Puerto Rico have forged a unique political relationship, built on the island’s evolution into a constitutional democracy exercising local self-rule.”
But she said the legal test for analyzing the double jeopardy question was a historical one and that the commonwealth failed it.
“For purposes of the double jeopardy clause, the future is not what matters — and there is no getting away from the past,” Justice Kagan wrote. “Because the ultimate source of Puerto Rico’s prosecutorial power is the federal government — because when we trace that authority all the way back, we arrive at the doorstep of the U.S. Capitol — the commonwealth and the United States are not separate sovereigns.”
Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg and Alito joined the majority opinion, and Justice Thomas for the most part concurred in it. Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Sotomayor, dissented, saying that the majority’s test was too narrow and mechanical, and that it failed to grapple with all of the historical evidence.
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The court also ruled, 6 to 2, that federal judges in civil cases may sometimes recall jurors they have discharged for further deliberations after discovering that their verdict did not make sense.
The case, Dietz v. Bouldin, No. 15-458, arose from a car crash in Bozeman, Mont., in which all sides agreed that the plaintiff was owed at least $10,136. But the jury, apparently assuming that the sum had already been paid, awarded nothing. A few minutes after the jurors left the courtroom, the judge ordered them to come back for more deliberations, and they eventually awarded $15,000.
Justice Sotomayor, writing for the majority, said that recalling the jurors had been permissible, though she cautioned that judges should be wary of long delays, ask whether jurors had spoken to outsiders, and not use the procedure if the verdict had given rise to “gasps, crying, cheering” and the like.
In dissent, Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Kennedy, said there should be a categorical rule against ever recalling discharged jurors.
“After discharge,” Justice Thomas wrote, “the court has no power to impose restrictions on jurors, and jurors are no longer under oath to obey them.”
“Jurors may access their cellphones and get public information about the case,” he said. “They may talk to counsel or the parties. They may overhear comments in the hallway as they leave the courtroom. And they may reflect on the case — away from the pressure of the jury room — in a way that could induce them to change their minds. The resulting prejudice can be hard to detect.”