Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Alito, J., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA, EASTERN DISTRICT
Petitioner Williams was convicted of the 1984 murder of Amos Norwood and sentenced to death. During the trial, the then-district attorney of Philadelphia, Ronald Castille, approved the trial prosecutor’s request to seek the death penalty against Williams. … In 2012, Williams filed a successive petition pursuant to Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA), arguing that the prosecutor had obtained false testimony from his codefendant and suppressed material, exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83. Finding that the trial prosecutor had committed Brady violations, the PCRA court stayed Williams’s execution and ordered a new sentencing hearing. The Commonwealth asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, whose chief justice was former District Attorney Castille, to vacate the stay. Williams filed a response, along with a motion asking Chief Justice Castille to recuse himself or, if he declined to do so, to refer the motion to the full court for decision. Without explanation, the chief justice denied Williams’s motion for recusal and the request for its referral. He then joined the State Supreme Court opinion vacating the PCRA court’s grant of penalty-phase relief and reinstating Williams’s death sentence. Two weeks later, Chief Justice Castille retired from the bench.
Held:
1. Chief Justice Castille’s denial of the recusal motion and his subsequent judicial participation violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 5–12.
(a) The Court’s due process precedents do not set forth a specific test governing recusal when a judge had prior involvement in a case as a prosecutor; but the principles on which these precedents rest dictate the rule that must control in the circumstances here: Under the Due Process Clause there is an impermissible risk of actual bias when a judge earlier had significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision regarding the defendant’s case. The Court applies an objective standard that requires recusal when the likelihood of bias on the part of the judge “is too high to be constitutionally tolerable.” Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U. S. 868, 872. …
(b) Because Chief Justice Castille’s authorization to seek the death penalty against Williams amounts to significant, personal involvement in a critical trial decision, his failure to recuse from Williams’s case presented an unconstitutional risk of bias. …
2. An unconstitutional failure to recuse constitutes structural error that is “not amenable” to harmless-error review, regardless of whether the judge’s vote was dispositive, Puckett v. United States, 556 U. S. 129, 141. Because an appellate panel’s deliberations are generally confidential, it is neither possible nor productive to inquire whether the jurist in question might have influenced the views of his or her colleagues during the decision making process. … The fact that the interested judge’s vote was not dispositive may mean only that the judge was successful in persuading most members of the court to accept his or her position—an outcome that does not lessen the unfairness to the affected party. … Because Chief Justice Castille’s participation in Williams’s case was an error that affected the State Supreme Court’s whole adjudicatory framework below, Williams must be granted an opportunity to present his claims to a court unburdened by any “possible temptation . . . not to hold the balance nice, clear and true between the State and the accused,” Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510, 532. Pp. 12–14. __ Pa. __, 105 A. 3d 1234, vacated and remanded.
….
* * * Where a judge has had an earlier significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision in the defendant’s case, the risk of actual bias in the judicial proceeding rises to an unconstitutional level. Due process entitles Terrance Williams to “a proceeding in which he may present his case with assurance” that no member of the court is “predisposed to find against him.” Marshall v. Jerrico, Inc., 446 U. S. 238, 242 (1980).
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.