Whether the Ninth Circuit's decision sanctioned a departure from this Court's precedent requiring a trial court to hold a competency hearing if substantial evidence of potential incompetency arises from any source

QUESTION PRESENTED Nearly two years after being restored to competency, Petitioner Kalamice Piggee’s mental illness resurged and his trial counsel declared doubt as to his competency. When the trial court denied counsel’s request for a competency hearing, trial counsel came back with an expert opinion that Piggee was incompetent, based on a recent jail visit where the expert observed that Piggee was significantly impaired and learned that he was no longer compliant with his medication and was nearing another involuntary medical hold. The trial court still refused to hold a competency hearing, citing concerns about courtroom management and wasted trial resources and denying the existence of a right to a retrospective competency determination, even by a matter of days, or to competency during all parts of the trial. Despite the trial court’s clear errors, the court of appeal affirmed without ever addressing them, instead independently searching the record and misapplying state law to find reasons one might have set aside the expert’s opinion, i.e., impermissibly weighing the evidence without a hearing. The federal courts then further insulated the trial court’s errors by holding that, because a doubt is subjective, they could not hold that no fair-minded jurist would disagree with the trial court’s subjective lack of doubt on the given record. None of these courts actually applied this Court’s precedent requiring a trial court to hold a competency hearing if substantial evidence of potential incompetency arises from any source. The question presented is thus whether the ii Ninth Circuit’s decision here sanctioned such a departure from this Court’s precedent as to call for this Court’s supervisory power.