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Brewer v. Nathaniel Quarterman
No. 05-11287
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Brent Ray Brewer v. Nathaniel Quarterman, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division
Argued with:
Jalil Abdul-Kabir, fka Ted Calvin Cole v. Nathaniel Quarterman, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division
(Case No. 05-11284)
Subject:
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Capital Sentencing, Death Penalty, Jury Instructions, Penry v. Johnson, Mental Disorders, Mitigation, Mitigating Evidence
- Do the former Texas "special issue" capital sentencing jury instructions — which
permit jurors to register only a "yes" or "no" answer to two questions, inquiring
whether the defendant killed "deliberately" and probably would constitute a
"continuing threat to society" — permit constitutionally adequate consideration of
mitigating evidence about a defendant's mental impairment and childhood
mistreatment and deprivation, in light of this Court's emphatic statement in Smith v.
Texas, 543 U.S. 37, 48 (2004), that those same two questions "had little, if
anything, to do with" Smith's evidence of mental impairment and childhood
mistreatment)?
- Do this Court's recent opinions in Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782 (2001) ("Penry
II") and Smith, both of which require instructions that permit jurors to give "full
consideration and full effect" to a defendant's mitigating evidence in choosing the
appropriate sentence, preclude the Fifth Circuit from adhering to its prior decisions
— antedating Penry II and Smith — that reject Penry error whenever the former
special issues might have afforded some indirect consideration of the defendant's
mitigating evidence?
- Has the Fifth Circuit, in insisting that a defendant show as a predicate to relief
under Penry that he suffers from a mental disorder that is severe, permanent or
untreatable, simply resurrected the threshold test for "constitutional relevance" that
this Court emphatically rejected in Tennard v. Dretke, 542 U.S. 274 (2004)?
- Where the prosecution, as it did here, repeatedly implores jurors to "follow the law" and "do their duty" by answering the former Texas special issues on their own terms and abjuring any attempt to use their answers to effect an appropriate sentence, is it reasonably likely that jurors applied their instructions in a way that prevented them from fully considering and giving effect to the defendant's mitigating evidence?
- U.S. Court of Appeals - 5th Circuit
Opinion in Brewer Filed: March 1, 2006
- United States Supreme Court, Cert. Granted: October 13, 2006
Resources:
- Docket Sheet From the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Northwestern University - Medill School of Journalism: On the Docket
