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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 20-10843
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 2:20-cv-00058-ECM
NATHANIEL WOODS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
WARDEN, HOLMAN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, and
ATTORNEY GENERAL, STATE OF ALABAMA,
Defendants-Appellees.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Alabama
________________________
(March 4, 2020)
Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, WILLIAM PRYOR and ROSENBAUM,
Circuit Judges.
WILLIAM PRYOR, Circuit Judge:
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Nathaniel Woods was convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 for
intentionally killing three on-duty police officers. After he finished unsuccessfully
challenging his convictions and sentence in state and federal courts, the State
moved the Supreme Court of Alabama on October 29, 2019, for an execution date.
On January 23, 2020, Woods filed a complaint in the district court challenging the
State’s planned method of execution as violating his rights under the Eighth and
Fourteenth Amendments and Alabama state law. See
42 U.S.C. § 1983. On January
30, 2020, the Supreme Court of Alabama scheduled Woods’s execution for March
5, 2020. Woods filed a motion in the district court for a stay of execution on
February 24. On March 2, the district court ruled in favor of the State and denied
Woods’s motion for a stay. Woods appealed and moved this Court for a stay of
execution. We deny his motion for a stay of execution.
I. BACKGROUND
A jury convicted Woods in 2005 of capital murder for the intentional killing
of three on-duty Birmingham police officers: Carlos Owen, Harley A. Chisolm III,
and Charles R. Bennett. The officers, along with Officer Michael Collins, who was
wounded, were at an apartment where Woods and his co-defendant, Kerry
Spencer, sold drugs and stored guns. The officers were in an area that was known
for having drug problems when they encountered Woods, who was shouting
profanities at them, and learned that he had an outstanding arrest warrant for
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assault. The officers were then shot when they attempted to arrest Woods. A jury
convicted Woods of four counts of capital murder for his role in the killing of the
officers, and the court imposed the death penalty. Woods challenged his
convictions and sentence on direct appeal to the Alabama Court of Criminal
Appeals, Woods v. State,
13 So. 3d 1, 4–9 (Ala. Crim. App. 2007), and the
Supreme Court of Alabama, see Woods v. State,
221 So. 3d 1125, 1130 (Ala. Crim.
App. 2016), and through collateral challenges in state court, see
id., and federal
court, Woods v. Holman, No. 18-14690-P, 2019, at *
2 WL 5866719 (11th Cir. Feb.
22, 2019). All have been denied.
Woods is facing execution on March 5, 2020, and is challenging the State’s
planned method of execution. On January 23, 2020, he filed a civil-rights
complaint in the district court,
42 U.S.C. § 1983, against Jefferson Dunn, the
Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections; Cynthia Stewart, the
Warden of the prison where he is held—Holman Correctional Facility; and Steve
Marshall, the Attorney General of Alabama. He brought claims under the Eighth
and Fourteenth Amendments and Alabama state law.
The focus of his complaint is a new Alabama law that added nitrogen
hypoxia as an alternative execution method to the default method of lethal
injection. See
Ala. Code § 15-18-82. For death-sentenced inmates such as Woods
who were sentenced prior to the effective date of the amendment, the State
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provided for a thirty-day period—from June 1 to June 30, 2018—to elect nitrogen
hypoxia as the method of execution. See
id. § 15-18-82.1(b)(2). The addition of
nitrogen hypoxia served to moot a pending challenge to the constitutionality of
Alabama’s lethal-injection protocol. See In re: Ala. Lethal Injection Protocol
Litig., No. 2:12-cv-316-WKW (M.D. Ala. filed Apr. 6, 2012). The plaintiffs in that
action were represented by attorneys at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, who
drafted a form to distribute to clients so they could elect nitrogen hypoxia.
The election form stated as follows:
ELECTION TO BE EXECUTED BY NITROGEN HYPOXIA
Pursuant to Act No. 2018-353, if I am to be executed, I elect that
it be by nitrogen hypoxia rather than by lethal injection.
This election is not intended to affect the status of any
challenge(s) (current or future) to my conviction(s) or sentence(s), nor
waive my right to challenge the constitutionality of any protocol
adopted for carrying out execution by nitrogen hypoxia.
Dated this _______ day of June, 2018.
________________________ ________________________
Name/Inmate Number Signature
It is undisputed that Woods received this form during the election period but
did not complete it. Nearly 50 of the 175 death-sentenced inmates in Alabama
elected nitrogen hypoxia during the election period, including inmates like Woods
whom the Federal Public Defenders did not represent. Dunn v. Price,
139 S. Ct.
1312, 1312 (2019). Although Woods was represented by counsel during the
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election period, he contends that he did not contact his counsel at that time.
When Alabama added nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative method of
execution, it did not, and still does not, have a protocol in place for nitrogen-
hypoxia executions. The Alabama Department of Corrections “has been diligently
working to formulate a safe hypoxia protocol,” but it will not have a protocol in
place by March 5. The lack of a protocol has affected the order in which the State
has moved for executions. “As a matter of custom, the State waits to move for an
inmate’s execution until he has exhausted his conventional appeals: direct appeal,
state postconviction, and federal habeas.” But some of the inmates who have
exhausted their conventional appeals elected to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia
and so cannot be executed yet. For those inmates like Woods who did not elect
nitrogen hypoxia, the State is moving for execution dates after they have
completed their appeals.
Woods’s complaint alleges violations of his rights under the Eighth and
Fourteenth Amendments and under state law. Woods alleges that the State violated
his right to procedural due process by failing to tell him during the election period
that it did not have a nitrogen-hypoxia protocol and by failing to help him access
his attorney during the election period. See U.S. Const. amend. XIV. He also
alleges that the State violated his right to equal protection of law by moving for his
execution before the execution of similarly situated inmates and by helping the
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plaintiffs in In re: Alabama Lethal Injection Protocol Litigation access their
attorneys but not doing the same for him. See
id. Woods contends that “targeting
[him] for speedier execution, and thereby discriminating against [him], based
solely on method of execution is arbitrary and wanton conduct,” and that
Alabama’s lethal-injection protocol violates his right to be free from cruel and
unusual punishment. See U.S. Const. amend. VIII. He also asserts state-law claims
of fraudulent misrepresentation and fraudulent suppression because the State told
him that the election form would determine the method of his execution but did not
tell him that it would affect the timing of his execution. His final claim is that the
State violated the Alabama Administrative Procedure Act by failing to comply
with the Act when it purportedly created a rule that “targets” for execution those
inmates who did not elect nitrogen hypoxia.
The State filed a motion to dismiss and, in the alternative, a motion for
summary judgment. Woods opposed that motion, cross-moved for summary
judgment, and filed a motion for a stay of execution. The district court held a
hearing, and on March 2, it ruled in favor of the State on Woods’s federal claims,
declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction of his state-law claims, and denied
his motion for a stay of execution. Woods appealed that ruling and filed an
emergency motion for a stay of execution in this Court and a motion for excess
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words. We grant Woods’s motion for excess words and deny his motion for a stay
of execution.
II. DISCUSSION
We may grant Woods’s motion for a stay of execution “only if [he]
establishes that (1) he has a substantial likelihood of success on the merits; (2) he
will suffer irreparable injury unless the injunction issues; (3) the stay would not
substantially harm the other litigant; and (4) if issued, the injunction would not be
adverse to the public interest.” Price v. Comm’r, Ala. Dep’t of Corr.,
920 F.3d
1317, 1323 (11th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks omitted). A stay of
execution is an equitable remedy that “is not available as a matter of right.” Hill v.
McDonough,
547 U.S. 573, 584 (2006).
Woods is not entitled to a stay of execution for at least two reasons. Equity
weighs heavily against granting the motion because of its untimeliness and the
State and the victims’ interest in enforcement of criminal sentences. And Woods
has failed to establish a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of any of his
claims.
A. Equity Weighs Against Granting Woods’s Motion for a Stay.
Woods has not established his entitlement to the equitable remedy of a stay
of execution. Equity strongly disfavors inexcusable delay. “The Supreme Court has
unanimously instructed the lower federal courts on multiple occasions that we must
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apply ‘a strong equitable presumption against the grant of a stay where a claim
could have been brought at such time as to allow consideration of the merits
without requiring entry of a stay.’” Jones v. Comm’r, Ga. Dep’t of Corr.,
811 F.3d
1288, 1297 (11th Cir. 2016) (quoting Hill,
547 U.S. at 584); see also Gomez v. U.S.
Dist. Ct. for N. Dist. of Calif.,
503 U.S. 653, 654 (1992). “Last-minute stays should
be the extreme exception, not the norm, and the last-minute nature of an
application that could have been brought earlier, or an applicant’s attempt at
manipulation, may be grounds for denial of a stay.” Bucklew v. Precythe,
139 S.
Ct. 1112, 1134 (2019) (internal quotation marks omitted). Woods’s execution was
scheduled on January 30, 2020, for March 5, yet he waited until February 24—10
days before the execution—to move the district court for a stay of execution. [Id.]
We agree with the district court’s well-reasoned ruling that the last-minute nature
of his motion for a stay is unjustified.
Equity also weighs against granting the stay because “the State and the
victims of crime have an important interest in the timely enforcement of a
sentence.” Hill,
547 U.S. at 584. As the State explains, Woods was convicted and
sentenced to death in 2005 “for his part in the brutal slaying of three police officers
in the line of duty and the attempted murder of a fourth.” After Woods completed
the conventional appellate process, the State did not face an impediment to
executing him. Woods contends that the State cannot rely on its interest in the
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timely enforcement of a sentence because it offered him the option of execution by
nitrogen hypoxia—which would have indefinitely delayed his execution. That the
State has chosen to offer an alternative method of execution and to honor the
wishes of inmates who make that selection does not eliminate its interest in
carrying out the sentences of inmates who did not elect that method. Woods also
argues that a stay would not be adverse to the public interest because of the
purported strength of his claims, but, as we discuss below, we disagree.
B. Woods Failed to Establish a Substantial Likelihood of Success on the Merits
of His Claims.
Woods also has failed to establish a substantial likelihood of success on the
merits of any of his claims. That failure is a separate reason we must deny his
motion. We address each claim in turn.
1. Procedural Due Process.
Woods alleges that the State violated his right to procedural due process
because it failed to tell him that electing nitrogen hypoxia would affect the timing
of his execution and it did not help him access his attorney during the election
period. See U.S. Const. amend. XIV. To succeed on this claim, Woods must show
“(1) a deprivation of a constitutionally-protected liberty or property interest; (2)
state action; and (3) constitutionally inadequate process.” Worthy v. City of Phenix
City,
930 F.3d 1206, 1223 (11th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Woods has failed to make a substantial showing that the procedures he wanted
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were constitutionally required.
The Supreme Court’s decision Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard,
523
U.S. 272, 277 (1998), is instructive. In Woodard, a death-sentenced inmate
challenged the State’s clemency process as violating his right to due process.
Id. at
266–67. Justice O’Connor, in the controlling concurring opinion, held that “some
minimal procedural safeguards apply to clemency proceedings,” such that a State
may provide constitutionally inadequate process if it based its clemency decisions
on a coin flip or “arbitrarily denied a prisoner any access to its clemency process.”
Id. at 289 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment); see
also Gissendaner v. Comm’r, Ga. Dep’t of Corr.,
794 F.3d 1327, 1331 (11th Cir.
2015) (explaining that Justice O’Connor’s opinion set the binding precedent). She
concluded that the State had provided adequate process in the clemency proceeding
even though it provided Woodard only a few days’ notice of the hearing, excluded
his counsel from his clemency interview, allowed his attorney “to participate in the
hearing only at the discretion of the parole board chair,” and did not allow
Woodard to testify or submit documentary evidence at the hearing. Woodard,
523
U.S. at 289–90. That he had received “notice of the hearing and an opportunity to
participate in an interview, comport[ed] with [the State’s] regulations and
observe[d] whatever limitations the Due Process Clause may impose on clemency
proceedings.”
Id. at 290.
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Our decision in Price is also instructive. 920 F.3d at 1322. Price was another
death-sentenced inmate in Alabama who did not elect nitrogen hypoxia. Id. His
complaint alleged that the State violated the Equal Protection Clause by not
allowing him to elect nitrogen hypoxia after the thirty-day opt-in period had ended.
Id. In support of that claim, he contended that the State had not adequately
explained his rights and that most of the inmates who elected nitrogen hypoxia
received advice from their counsel at the Federal Public Defender’s Office. Id. at
1324. In rejecting that argument, we stressed that Price was represented by counsel
during the election period and could have sought advice from his attorney. Id.
Although that holding addressed the Equal Protection Clause, the district court
aptly concluded that its reasoning is instructive in resolving Woods’s due process
challenge.
The election procedure that Woods challenges determined his method of
execution, not whether he would be spared from execution, such as in clemency.
See Woodard,
523 U.S. at 280–81. And Woods does not dispute that he received
the election form during the election period, thus informing him of the option to
elect nitrogen hypoxia, and that he was represented by counsel at that time. He has
failed to establish that he has a substantial likelihood of succeeding on his claim
that the process the State provided him for electing nitrogen hypoxia was
constitutionally inadequate.
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2. Equal Protection Clause.
Woods alleges that the defendants violated his Fourteenth Amendment right
to equal protection of the law. See U.S. Const amend. XIV. To succeed on this
claim, Woods must establish that “the State will treat him disparately from other
similarly situated persons.” Arthur v. Thomas,
674 F.3d 1257, 1262 (11th Cir.
2012) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Woods contends that the State treated him disparately from two groups of
purportedly similarly situated persons. The first group is inmates who also have
completed their conventional appeals but do not have scheduled execution dates
because they elected nitrogen hypoxia. The second group is inmates who were
plaintiffs in the In re: Alabama Lethal Injection Protocol Litigation and
purportedly received State-sponsored help in meeting with their counsel who
worked at the Federal Public Defender’s Office.
As the district court correctly concluded, our decision in Price controls this
issue. To establish his equal-protection claim, Price similarly pointed to the
inmates who elected nitrogen hypoxia and those whom the Federal Public
Defender’s Office represented and provided with election forms and an
explanation of their rights.
Id. at 1324. Beginning with the first group, we
concluded that Price was not similarly situated to the inmates who elected nitrogen
hypoxia during the election period—they opted in during the election period and
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he did not.
Id. at 1325. The same is true of Woods. As to the second group, we
explained that “the interactions between other inmates and the Federal Public
Defender’s Office do not support any unequal treatment by the State of similarly
situated individuals.”
Id. at 1324. Price was represented by counsel too and could
have sought assistance in making the decision but did not.
Id. Woods has similarly
failed to establish that any difference in treatment between him and the inmates the
Federal Public Defenders represented could be attributed to the State. As the
district court explained, Woods failed to introduce evidence to support his
contention that the State helped these inmates meet with their attorneys. And
Woods could have contacted his attorney for advice. Woods has failed to establish
a substantial likelihood of success on this claim.
3. Eighth Amendment.
Woods argues in his emergency motion for a stay that he “is likely to
succeed in showing the State has violated his Eighth Amendment rights by
targeting him for speedier execution” based on his refusal to select nitrogen
hypoxia. See Caldwell v. Mississippi,
472 U.S. 320, 343 (1985) (O’Connor, J.,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). But he has failed to establish a
substantial likelihood of success on this claim, as the district court ably explained
in rejecting this claim. The district court correctly rejected Woods’s attempt to
equate his situation—the carrying out of his death sentence—with the imposition
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of a death sentence. And it also correctly determined that Woods failed to establish
that the State acted arbitrarily in moving to execute him before inmates who
elected nitrogen hypoxia, a method of execution that is not presently available.
4. State-Law Claims.
Woods argues that he has established a substantial likelihood of succeeding
on the merits of his state-law claims. To succeed on his state-law claims, he would
need to establish that the district court abused its discretion when it declined to
exercise supplemental jurisdiction over those claims. But the decision whether to
exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Woods’s state-law claims rested within the
district court’s sound discretion. Raney v. Allstate Ins. Co.,
370 F.3d 1086, 1088–
89 (11th Cir. 2004). When, as here, a district court dismisses a plaintiff’s federal
claims, we have encouraged dismissal of the remaining state-law claims too.
Id. at
1089. So the district court did not abuse its discretion. For that reason, Woods has
failed to establish a substantial likelihood of success on these claims.
III. CONCLUSION
We GRANT Woods’s motion for excess words and DENY his motion for a
stay of execution.
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ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment:
I concur in the judgment of the Court denying Nathaniel Woods’s motion to
stay execution. We have explained that the “most important question” in addressing
a motion for stay concerns whether the movant has shown a substantial likelihood
of success on the merits of the claims he brings. Jones v. Comm’r, Ga. Dep’t of
Corr.,
811 F.3d 1288, 1292 (11th Cir. 2016). I agree with the panel that Woods
cannot establish a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of his claims. I
write separately because Woods bears the burden of establishing all four prongs of
the stay test and he cannot establish the most important one—a substantial likelihood
of success on the merits. For that reason, I would start and end the analysis with the
discussion of the Woods’s failure to demonstrate a substantial likelihood of success
on the merits. I would not opine on any other prongs of the stay test, since it makes
no difference to the outcome here.
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