Justices overturn another ineffective assistance of counsel ruling (March 24, 2009)

The Supreme Court held today that a convicted murderer in California did not deserve a new trial after his attorney abandoned an insanity defense.

Alexandre Mirzayance was convicted of first-degree murder by a district court in California. After his trial, he petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus maintaining he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel.

The district court dismissed his petition. On appeal, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit conducted an evidentiary hearing on Mirzayance’s allegations and subsequently reversed the district court’s order.

The court held that Mirzayance’s Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel was violated, holding that his attorney’s advice to withdraw Mirzayance’s insanity plea was unreasonable because the outcome of his trial would probably have been different with it included.

On March 24, a unanimous Supreme Court reversed and remanded the lower court order.

“The State Court of Appeal’s denial of Mirzayance’s ineffective-assistance claim did not violate clearly established federal law,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court. “The Ninth Circuit reached a contrary result based largely on its application of an improper review standard—it blamed counsel for abandoning the NGI claim because there was ‘nothing to lose’ by pursuing it.”

Justices Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined in the judgment except for Part II, which discusses the case under the deference standard of AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).

Question presented:
Does a United States appellate court exceed its authority when it substitutes its own factual findings for those of the district court without determining whether the district court's findings were clearly in error?