To find some strange things going on, one doesn’t have to go very far into the latest opinion by Ninth Circuit arch-activist Stephen Reinhardt—which holds that a habeas petitioner received ineffective assistance of counsel at the death-penalty phase of his trial.
In the caption of Doe v. Ayers, the docket number in the district court is redacted; the geographic federal district from which the case is drawn (there are four in California) is redacted; the name of the federal district judge is redacted; and the date on which the case was argued and submitted is redacted.
Further, the Ninth Circuit case number listed in the caption—No. 15-99006—appears to be of recent invention. The first two digits of that case number would suggest that the appeal was filed in 2015. But a quick look at the Ninth Circuit’s calendar of oral arguments indicates that the notoriously slow court is hearing regular appeals from years earlier than 2015, and it seems highly unlikely that Reinhardt’s 85-page opinion relates to a case that was filed and argued since January 1.
Another sign: The listed respondent is “Robert L. Ayers, Jr, Warden, of California State Prison at San Quentin.” But Ayers retired as warden in 2008. Was this appeal filed way back in 2008 or earlier?
Reinhardt explains in footnote 1 that he has replaced the petitioner’s actual name with “John Doe” because of the possibility that discussing of “disturbing evidence of sexual abuse suffered” by the petitioner “might place him at risk in a prison environment.” For the same reason, he omits the citation to a Supreme Court ruling at an earlier stage of the habeas process. (See page 9, footnote 5.)
For what it’s worth, especially given Reinhardt’s (seemingly gratuitous) description of the Supreme Court’s ruling in that earlier proceeding, it doesn’t take a lot of work to locate that earlier ruling and learn the name of the habeas petitioner.
I wonder whether Reinhardt’s ill-executed measures to conceal the name of the petitioner are warranted. I recognize that there are exceptional reasons (e.g., classified national-security information) that will sometimes be sufficient to override the presumption in favor of disclosure. But does Reinhardt’s speculation as to the risks that the petitioner might face qualify? Further, if the state of California decides to seek review, the Supreme Court’s rules (see Rule 14(b)) will require it to identify the parties below, including petitioner, and nothing in Reinhardt’s opinion purports to bar the state from complying with those rules. I’ll nonetheless err on the side of caution here and defer to Reinhardt’s judgment.
I’ll note that Reinhardt’s fellow panelists in the case are hard-core lefties Harry Pregerson and Kim Wardlaw. So who knows what stranger things might lie buried in the 85 pages of the opinion?