Smith v. Rock, (2nd Cir. 2009)
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08-3217-pr
Smith v. Rock
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
F OR THE S ECOND C IRCUIT
SUMMARY ORDER
R ULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. C ITATION TO SUMMARY ORDERS FILED
AFTER J ANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY THIS COURT' S L OCAL R ULE 32.1 AND
F EDERAL R ULE OF A PPELLATE P ROCEDURE 32.1. I N A BRIEF OR OTHER PAPER IN WHICH A LITIGANT
CITES A SUMMARY ORDER, IN EACH PARAGRAPH IN WHICH A CITATION APPEARS, AT LEAST ONE CITATION
MUST EITHER BE TO THE F EDERAL A PPENDIX OR BE ACCOMPANIED BY THE NOTATION : "( SUMMARY
ORDER)." A PARTY CITING A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF THAT SUMMARY ORDER TOGETHER
WITH THE PAPER IN WHICH THE SUMMARY ORDER IS CITED ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL
UNLESS THE SUMMARY ORDER IS AVAILABLE IN AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE WHICH IS PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE
WITHOUT PAYMENT OF FEE ( SUCH AS THE DATABASE AVAILABLE AT HTTP:// WWW. CA2. USCOURTS. GOV/).
I F NO COPY IS SERVED BY REASON OF THE AVAILABILITY OF THE ORDER ON SUCH A DATABASE, THE
CITATION MUST INCLUDE REFERENCE TO THAT DATABASE AND THE DOCKET NUMBER OF THE CASE IN WHICH
THE ORDER WAS ENTERED.
At a stated Term of the United States Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit, held at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan
United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl Street, in the City of
New York, on the 27 th day of August, two thousand and nine.
Present:
JON O. NEWMAN,
RICHARD C. WESLEY, *
Circuit Judges,
JED S. RAKOFF, District Judge. ** L EON S MITH, Petitioner-Appellee, - v - No. 08-3217-pr D AVID R OCK, S UPERINTENDENT, G REAT M EADOW C ORRECTIONAL F ACILITY, Respondent-Appellant.
For Petitioner-Appellee: R ISA G ERSON (Richard M. Greenberg, on the brief), Office of the Appellate Defender, New York, NY.
For Respondent-Appellee: A LYSON J OY G ILL, Assistant Attorney General, for Andrew M.
Cuomo, Attorney General of the State of New York, New York, NY.
UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the order and judgment of the district court granting Petitioner-Appellee's petition for a writ of habeas corpus be AFFIRMED.
This is an appeal from a May 19, 2008 order and May 29, 2008 judgment of the Southern District of New York (Jones, J.) granting Petitioner-Appellee Leon Smith's petition for habeas corpus and vacating his conviction for robbery in the second degree on the basis that it was objectively unreasonable for the state trial court not to order sua sponte a hearing regarding Smith's competency to stand trial. "We review a district court's decision to grant or deny a habeas petition de novo and its findings of fact for clear error." Hemstreet v. Greiner, 491 F.3d 84, 89 (2d Cir. 2007). Smith is entitled to habeas relief only if he can demonstrate that the state court's decision was "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court." 28U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). It is not enough that the state court simply erred in its application of governing federal law; for a federal court to grant habeas, any such error must have been "objectively unreasonable." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 409-11 (2000) .
It is well established that where the evidence "raise[s] a sufficient doubt as to a defendant's competence to stand trial, the failure of the trial court to conduct a competency hearing sua sponte violates due process." Nicks v. United States, 955 F.2d 161, 168 (2d Cir. 1992) (citing Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 385 (1966)). On direct appeal, the Appellate Division, First Department stated, "[w]e see nothing in the record to indicate that the trial court improvidently exercised its discretion in failing to order, sua sponte, a CPL article 730 examination to determine whether [Smith] was competent to stand trial. In this regard, we do not view the remarks made by the [trial] court during the CPL 440.10 hearing as an indication that the court viewed defendant as incompetent at the time of the trial." New York v. Smith, 4 A.D.3d 163, 165 (2004) (citations omitted). However, the correct inquiry is not whether the trial court viewed the defendant as competent, but whether it had "reasonable ground . . . to conclude that the defendant may not be competent to stand trial." Nicks, 955 F.2d at 168.
After an independent review of the record, we conclude, for the reasons stated by the district court in its comprehensive and well-reasoned opinion, that "the trial judge had sufficient doubt as to Smith's competence to require a competency hearing before further proceedings, and that both the Appellate Division and the trial judge's application of the relevant legal standards were objectively unreasonable." Smith v. Rock, 554 F. Supp. 2d 505, 513 (S.D.N.Y. 2008).
Accordingly, the order and judgment of the district court granting the petition for habeas corpus relief are hereby AFFIRMED.
For the Court Catherine O'Hagan Wolfe, Clerk By:
* The Honorable Sonia Sotomayor, originally a member of the panel, was elevated to the Supreme Court on August 8, 2009. The Clerk has designated, by random selection, the Honorable Richard C. Wesley to replace her. See Local Rule 0.14(2). ** The Honorable Jed S. Rakoff, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, sitting by designation.
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