2000—So much for respecting a capital inmate’s final wishes.
Don Jay Miller, sentenced to death in Arizona for first-degree murder and kidnapping, states that he wishes his execution to proceed as scheduled the next day, declines to seek federal habeas relief, and refuses to authorize any attorney to represent him in seeking habeas relief. But, in an action brought by a public defender seeking to represent Miller against his will, a divided Ninth Circuit panel, in an opinion by Judge Stephen Reinhardt (in Miller v. Stewart), blocks the execution on the ground that a hearing that established Miller’s competency to represent himself in state post-conviction proceedings did not suffice to establish his competence to “choose to die.” Judge Pamela Rymer, in dissent, criticizes “the unprecedented view that there is a difference of constitutional magnitude between what [Reinhardt] characterizes as ‘competency to choose to die …’ and competency to make legal decisions.”
Later the same day, the Supreme Court lifts the Ninth Circuit stay.