Autry v. Estelle

Background

A Texas man under a death sentence faced execution after midnight on October 4, Central Daylight Time. He had previously filed a federal habeas petition and lost; the district court denied relief and the Fifth Circuit affirmed, 706 F.2d 1394. After the Court denied a stay pending a petition for review, he filed a second federal habeas petition raising new claims. One claim was that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals did not compare his sentence to other cases to decide if his death sentence was disproportionately severe. The district court denied the second petition and declined to issue a certificate of probable cause to appeal (a statutory finding under 28 U.S.C. §2253 that allows an appeal), and the Court of Appeals also denied the certificate and a stay.

Reasoning

Justice White weighed whether the proportionality claim presented a substantial question for appeal. He noted that the Ninth Circuit in Pulley v. Harris had held a state may not execute a person until its highest court conducts a comparative proportionality review, and the Supreme Court had granted review in Pulley and will hear argument in November. Given that possible outcome, Justice White concluded that the Fifth Circuit’s view — that Texas’s death-penalty system meets any constitutional proportionality requirement even without a case-by-case comparison — might be incorrect. For those reasons, he issued a certificate of probable cause and entered a stay of execution pending the final disposition of the inmate’s appeal.

Real world impact

The ruling delays the scheduled execution while appellate review continues. If the Court later requires comparative proportionality review, states that do not perform such comparisons could need to reexamine death sentences. Justice White also suggested Congress might consider requiring that federal grounds be presented in the first habeas petition, but he acknowledged historical and statutory reasons allow successive petitions in some situations.