## Facts

- Salvador Perez, a Mexican citizen living in Texas, left home in July 1996 with his 12-year-old son and drove to New Orleans while experiencing paranoid beliefs that others were pursuing and trying to kill him.
- During the drive, Perez engaged in erratic behavior and reported to his wife that someone was following him and that she was being held hostage.
- At the Fair Grounds racetrack complex in New Orleans, Perez fled after security contacted police; during a pursuit, he shot and killed New Orleans Police Officer Chris McCormick.
- Perez was charged in Louisiana state court with first-degree murder of a police officer and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
- Perez was evaluated and at one point found incompetent due to symptoms including disorganized thinking, hallucinations, and delusions; after antipsychotic treatment, he was restored to competency and tried.
- At trial, seven defense psychiatrists testified that Perez suffered severe mental illness; six opined he could not distinguish right from wrong at the time of the offense.
- The prosecution presented no expert psychiatric testimony and relied on cross-examination and impeachment of lay testimony (including inconsistencies in the wife’s statements) to argue the mental-illness accounts were exaggerated or fabricated.
- The jury rejected the insanity defense, convicted Perez of first-degree murder, and he received life imprisonment without parole; state appellate and post-conviction relief were denied.
- Perez sought federal habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254; the district court granted relief on the ground that the evidence was constitutionally insufficient to support rejection of the insanity defense, and the State appealed.

## Issues

1. Under Jackson v. Virginia as constrained by AEDPA, whether the Louisiana court unreasonably applied clearly established federal law in finding sufficient evidence for a rational juror to reject Perez’s insanity defense.
2. Whether impeachment and argument, without affirmative expert evidence of sanity, could permit a rational juror to find Perez failed to prove insanity by a preponderance of the evidence under Louisiana law.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of § 2254 relief.
- The court held the state court’s affirmance of the conviction was an unreasonable application of Jackson v. Virginia.
- Given the consistent, largely unrebutted expert testimony supporting insanity and the absence of contrary expert evidence, no rational juror could have concluded Perez failed to prove insanity by a preponderance of the evidence.
- The court concluded the State’s impeachment of family testimony did not supply a rational evidentiary basis to reject the experts’ independent clinical assessments.

## Legal Principles

- Jackson v. Virginia requires asking whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational factfinder could reach the challenged determination; on federal habeas, AEDPA permits relief only if the state court’s application of Jackson was unreasonable, not merely wrong.
- When state law places on the defendant the burden to prove insanity by a preponderance of the evidence, the Jackson inquiry becomes whether any rational juror could find the defendant did not meet that burden on the trial record.
- A jury may assess credibility, but a verdict rejecting insanity cannot stand where the defense presents substantial, consistent expert evidence of psychosis and inability to distinguish right from wrong, the State offers no expert rebuttal, and the remaining impeachment does not provide a rational basis to disregard the experts’ independent evaluations.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit upheld federal habeas relief because the state court unreasonably applied Jackson in sustaining a verdict rejecting insanity where the defense presented extensive, consistent psychiatric testimony of legal insanity and the State offered no expert evidence of sanity, leaving no rational evidentiary basis to find Perez failed to prove insanity.


Perez v. Cain, 529 F.3d 588 (5th Cir. 2008)