OCTOBER TERM, 1991
Syllabus
certiorari to the supreme court of california
No. 90-8370. Argued February 25, 1992—Decided June 22, 1992
Before petitioner Medina's trial for, inter alia, first-degree murder, the California court granted his motion for a competency hearing pursuant to a state law that forbids a mentally incompetent person to be tried or punished, establishes a presumption of competence, and placed on petitioner the burden of proving incompetence by a preponderance of the evidence. The jury empaneled for the competency hearing found Medina competent to stand trial and, subsequently, he was convicted and sentenced to death. The State Supreme Court affirmed, rejecting Medina's claim that the competency statute's burden of proof and presumption provisions violated his right to due process.
Held: 1. The Due Process Clause permits a State to require that a defendant claiming incompetence to stand trial bear the burden of proving so by a preponderance of the evidence. Pp. 442-453. (a) Contrary to Medina's argument, the Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, test for evaluating procedural due process claims does not provide the appropriate framework for assessing the validity of state procedural rules that are part of the criminal law process. It is not at all clear that Mathews was essential to the results in United States v. Raddatz, 447 U. S. 667, or Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U. S. 68, the only criminal law cases in which this Court has invoked Mathews in resolving due process claims. Rather, the proper analytical approach is that set forth in Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, in which this Court held that the power of a State to regulate procedures for carrying out its criminal laws, including the burdens of producing evidence and persuasion, is not subject to proscription under the Due Process Clause unless " 'it offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.' " Id., at 201- 202. Pp. 442-446. (b) There is no historical basis for concluding that allocating the burden of proof to a criminal defendant to prove incompetence violates due process. While the rule that an incompetent criminal defendant should not be required to stand trial has deep roots in this country's common-law heritage, no settled tradition exists for the proper allocation of the burden of proof in a competency proceeding. Moreover, con-
437
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