Holmes v. Levenhagen, No. 04-3549 (7th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseIn 1992, Holmes, was convicted of two murders committed three years earlier at the restaurant where he worked. He and Vance had stabbed three people and stolen the till. He was sentenced to death. Holmes’s conviction and sentence were affirmed and state post‐conviction relief was denied. He sought federal habeas corpus, raising 18 grounds and claiming that he was not mentally competent to assist his lawyers in the habeas corpus proceeding. The judge found him competent and denied his claims on the merits. On remand, the court again found Holmes competent and reinstated the denial of his claims. The Seventh Circuit again reversed, instructing the court to suspend the habeas corpus proceeding “unless and until the state provides substantial new evidence that Holmes’s psychiatric illness has abated, or its symptoms are sufficiently controlled, to justify the resumption of the proceeding.” The district court complied, suspending the habeas proceeding until 2013, when the prison superintendent moved to lift the stay and dismiss the habeas proceeding, based the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Ryan v. Gonzales, rejecting “the assertion that the right to counsel implies a right to competence.” The court recognized that the substantive claims presented in Holmes’s petition are “record‐based” and granted the motion. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding many of his claims defaulted and the others without merit.
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