Robert Servin v. E. McDaniel

MEMORANDUM

Robert Servin was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery under Nevada law and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of Nevada affirmed his conviction but vacated his death sentence, imposing instead two consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In 2005, after unsuccessfully pursuing state post-conviction relief, Servin filed an amended petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 , claiming that he was deprived at trial of his rights to due process and to the effective assistance of counsel. The district court denied his petition. Servin timely appealed, and this court granted a certificate of appeala-bility.

We first address the Supreme Court of Nevada’s rejection of Servin’s claim that the state trial court violated his right to due process when it denied his motion for a hearing to determine the necessity and amount of antipsychotic medication that a prosecution witness, Brian Allen, was voluntarily taking. In Riggins v. Nevada, 504 U.S. 127 , 112 S.Ct. 1810 , 118 L.Ed.2d 479 (1992), the Supreme Court of the United States held that the forced administration of antipsychotic drugs to a defendant is…