Carl Merton Irons, Ii, U.S. Attorney General, Intervenor v. Tom L. Carey, Warden

The state appeals the district court’s grant of habeas corpus to Carl Merton Irons II. The district court granted relief after finding that there was insufficient evidence in the record to support the California Board of Prison Term’s decision to deem Irons ineligible for parole in 2001. In light of the California Supreme Court’s decision in In re Dannenberg, 34 Cal.4th 1061 , 23 Cal.Rptr.3d 417 , 104 P.3d 783 (Cal.2005), and our decision in Sass v. California Board of Prison Terms, 461 F.3d 1123 (9th Cir.2006), both decided after the district court issued its order in this case, we reverse.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

In 1985, Irons was convicted of second degree murder in the death of his former housemate and sentenced to seventeen years to life in prison. At the time of the offense, Irons was living in the home of a couple, with another tenant, John Nicholson. The couple suspected that Nicholson was dealing drugs and was stealing from them. Irons shared their suspicions. He confronted Nicholson and an angry argument ensued in which Nicholson denied responsibility for the thefts. Irons went to his room, retrieved his gun, and then went to Nicholson’s room where he fired…

concurring:

Proper resolution of this case, on its face involving the fate of a single individual, involves the clash of two constitutional principles of importance to every inhabitant of our country:

Congress has the power to determine the jurisdiction of all federal courts.

Congress does not have the power to determine how a federal court shall decide a case.

An easy solution of the clash is to say that the greater power includes the lesser. If Congress can determine jurisdiction and so take away any judicial supervision of the subject, a fortiori Congress can specify what materials the courts may use in deciding the case. This reasoning is of a mathematical character. It has the precision and the force of Euclidean geometry. In addition, it has a pragmatic appeal. Why force Congress to use its radical power to remove jurisdiction, if the purposes of Congress will be served by Congress directing the process of decision?

This line of argument has an undoubted appeal. It is nonetheless mistaken. Eu *666 clidean logic does not dominate a judge’s careful consideration of all the aspects of matters that are far from linear. A simple example: The power to kill is greater than the…

concurring:

I concur in Judge Reinhardt’s opinion. I write separately for two reasons.

First, I am not satisfied that there was no reason to continue to hold Irons in prison other than the circumstances of his callously senseless murder of another person for trivial reasons. While his answer to whether he still had the rage that led him to kill someone 1 can easily be read in an innocuous manner, it need not be, and the Commission could interpret it to mean that he might. At any rate, I see nothing wrong with being very, very cautious about releasing a person from prison and onto *671 society when he has committed the kind of crime that Irons committed and has done it as flagitiously as he did it. The Board has a right (nay, an obligation) to be exceedingly cautious about setting him free.

Second, Judge Noonan has issued a concurring opinion in which he decries the fact that we (and, probably, the United States Supreme Court) have deemed the AEDPA to be constitutional. I do not join that, and its mere filing would elicit no response from me but for the fact that Judge Reinhardt has concurred in the concurrence. Because that means that two members of the panel have joined that…

concurring specially:

I fully join in Judge Noonan’s sagacious concurrence. Would that it were the law of the land. I add only a couple of thoughts.

After affording federal courts the power to issue writs of habeas corpus in state eases, Congress tells us in AEDPA that we may not grant relief to citizens who are being held in prison in violation of their constitutional rights unless the constitutional error that led to their unlawful conviction or sentence is one that could not have been made by a reasonable jurist. Whether it was reasonable for a state court to misapprehend the dictates of the Constitution in a particular case hardly seems relevant to a citizen’s right not to be imprisoned in violation of the fundamental liberties he is granted by the document that governs our societal structure. Nor is authorizing jurists to determine that a citizen’s detention is unlawful, but that he must remain incarcerated because a magistrate’s error is understandable, consistent with our duty as jurists to enforce the laws and protect the rights of our citizens against arbitrary state action.

Having granted the courts the authority to review state convictions under our habe-as powers,…

479 F.3d 658 Carl Merton IRONS, II, Petitioner-Appellee, U.S. Attorney General, Intervenor, v. Tom L. CAREY, Warden, Respondent-Appellant. No. 05-15275. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued May 11, 2005. Filed March 6, 2007. Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of the State of California, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Stephen P. Acquisto, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, & Pamela B. Hooley, Deputy Attorney General, for the respondent-appellant. Quin Denvir, Federal Defender, & Ann C. McClintock, Assistant Federal Defender, for the petitioner-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California; Lawrence K. Karlton, Senior District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-04-00220-LKK. Before STEPHEN REINHARDT, JOHN T. NOONAN, and FERDINAND F. FERNANDEZ, Circuit Judges. REINHARDT, Circuit Judge. 1 The state appeals the district court's grant of habeas corpus to Carl Merton Irons II. The district court granted relief after finding that there was insufficient evidence in the record to support the California Board of Prison Term's decision to deem Irons ineligible for parole in 2001. In light of the…