Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-06-01344/USCOURTS-ca8-06-01344-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

---

1

The Honorable Gary A. Fenner, United States District Judge for the Western

District of Missouri.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 06-1344

___________

Tremayne L. Guinn, *

*

Appellant, *

* Appeal from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Western District of Missouri.

Michael Kemna, *

*

Appellee. *

___________

Submitted: March 14, 2007

Filed: June 7, 2007

___________

Before RILEY, BOWMAN, and ARNOLD, Circuit Judges.

___________

BOWMAN, Circuit Judge.

Tremayne Guinn appeals from the order of the District Court1

 denying his

petition for a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254. We affirm.

After a jury trial in Missouri state court, Guinn was convicted of first-degree

robbery, first-degree assault, and armed criminal action. The convictions were

affirmed on appeal, State v. Guinn, 58 S.W.3d 538 (Mo. Ct. App. 2001) (9–2

decision), and his motion filed in state court for postconviction relief was

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 1 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
-2-

unsuccessful, Guinn v. State, 141 S.W.3d 94 (Mo. Ct. App. 2004) (per curiam). The

evidence at trial was that Lori Clanin was returning to her apartment at 3434 Gillham

in Kansas City, Missouri, at 5:20 a.m. on September 11, 1998. She was taking

groceries from her car when she was approached by two men, one of whom stood very

close to her and held a small pistol to her chest. After he took her purse from the car,

Clanin thought he was about to shoot her, and she pushed the gun down. The man

took a step back, the gun fired, and Clanin was hit and injured.

Clanin and a police detective used a computer program to create a composite

sketch of her assailant that was published in The Kansas City Star and The Kansas

City Call. Based on responses to those publications, the detective created a

photographic lineup of possible suspects, but Clanin was unable to identify her

assailant from among those photographs. Then the manager of an apartment building

on Gillham near Clanin's building saw the composite sketch and contacted authorities.

She thought the sketch resembled a man she had seen visiting apartment 2-E in the

building she managed, and she was able to identify a photograph of Guinn as that

person. Guinn's photograph was included in another array presented to Clanin, and

she identified him as the man who robbed and shot her. Meanwhile, Clanin's stolen

purse was found in the bathtub of an unoccupied apartment near 2-E.

In his § 2254 petition for a writ of habeas corpus, Guinn raised four issues. The

District Court found no merit to any of them, denied the petition, and denied Guinn

a certificate of appealability (COA). Guinn filed an application for a COA with this

Court, which we granted as to two evidentiary issues. We review de novo the District

Court's decision to deny relief on these issues, applying the standards of review set

forth in the habeas statute. That is, under § 2254, as amended by the Anti-Terrorism

and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), Guinn is not entitled to habeas relief

unless he can show that the state-court adjudication of his claims "resulted in a

decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly

established Federal law" or "resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 2 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
-3-

determination of the facts." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). "'[C]learly established Federal law'

under § 2254(d)(1) is the governing legal principle or principles set forth by the

Supreme Court at the time the state court renders its decision." Lockyer v. Andrade,

538 U.S. 63, 71–72 (2003).

For his first issue, Guinn claims a violation of his constitutional rights in the

state trial court's failure to allow four witnesses to testify to hearsay statements made

by Cornelius Johnson, a friend of Guinn's and a tenant of apartment 2-E. (In parts of

the record, Johnson and Guinn are referred to as roommates, but the building manager

testified that Guinn was not on the lease.) Guinn contends that Johnson told four of

Guinn's relatives that he, Johnson, shot Clanin and that these four witnesses should

have been permitted to testify to Johnson's statements against interest.

Our first task is to determine the appropriate clearly established federal law.

Guinn proposes that the Missouri Court of Appeals and the District Court correctly

identified Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284 (1973), as setting out the clearly

established law applicable to his case. But Kemna contends that "Chambers is not

clearly established federal law." Br. of Appellee at 11. He relies on the Chambers

Court's statement that in reaching its conclusion that the habeas petitioner in that case

was denied a fair trial, the Court established "no new principles of constitutional law."

Chambers, 410 U.S. at 302. Kemna misses the point. The comment was related to the

fact-intensive nature of the case. See id. at 303. While perhaps not a seminal case in

the areas of the law applied to the issues raised, Chambers nevertheless articulates the

legal principles applicable to Guinn's claims of constitutional error.

In a later-decided plurality opinion, the Supreme Court described the Chambers

holding: "erroneous evidentiary rulings can, in combination, rise to the level of a due

process violation." Montana v. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. 37, 53 (1996). Kemna contends

that the four dissenting justices in Egelhoff "categorically stated the opposite view"

from that of the four-justice plurality, Br. of Appellee at 14, when they described

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 3 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
-4-

Chambers "as a prohibition on enforcement of state evidentiary rules that lead, without

sufficient justification, to the establishment of guilt by suppression of evidence

supporting the defendant's case," Egelhoff, 518 U.S. at 62–63 (O'Connor, J.,

dissenting) (emphasis added). According to Kemna, because neither of these views

of the Chambers decision commanded a majority in Egelhoff, no law was clearly

established by the Chambers Court. Kemna asserts that "Guinn's claim, stripped of

its Chambers rhetoric, boils down to whether the state court erred in excluding

Johnson's confessions," relying on an Eighth Circuit case for the clearly established

federal law. Br. of Appellee at 25. As we read it, the statement in the Egelhoff dissent

to which Kemna refers does not reflect an "opposite view" at all. An "erroneous

evidentiary ruling" can, of course, be one made "without sufficient justification." In

any event, although the Chambers opinion established no new constitutional principle,

it iterated and applied existing law to the facts of the case before the Court. We

conclude that the Missouri Court of Appeals and the District Court correctly identified

the applicable law in the Chambers line of cases, here stated yet another way: "[T]he

Constitution . . . prohibits the exclusion of defense evidence under rules that serve no

legitimate purpose or that are disproportionate to the ends that they are asserted to

promote . . . ." Holmes v. South Carolina, 126 S. Ct. 1727, 1732 (2006) (unanimous

decision) (describing arbitrary evidentiary rules discussed in previous Supreme Court

opinions, including Chambers). 

Guinn argues that the facts of his case are sufficiently analogous to those in

Chambers that the decision of the state court denying his claim of constitutional error

was contrary to this Supreme Court precedent. We disagree. We conclude that the

facts of Guinn's case are not "materially indistinguishable" from Chambers, so the

state court's decision in his case cannot be contrary to clearly established federal law.

Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405 (2000). And to the extent Guinn argues that

the Missouri Court of Appeals unreasonably applied the law set forth in Chambers to

his claims, he is likewise mistaken.

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 4 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
-5-

At Guinn's trial in March 1999, he made a proffer of the hearsay testimony at

issue. First, Charleen Robinson, Guinn's mother, said, "I've been knowing Cornelius

Johnson ever since five years ago" because "[h]im and Tremayne became best of

friends at the age of nine until now." Trial Tr. at 361. She offered testimony that she

was visiting Johnson and Guinn's apartment within a month or two after the robbery

and assault of Clanin when Johnson told her "that he didn't really shoot the woman,

the woman grabbed his hand and really shot herself." Id. at 363. But "[f]irst he said

he shot the bitch." Id. She also recounted that Johnson "said that he pulled the gun

to rob her." Id.

Guinn's eleven-year-old sister, Laguisha Robinson, would have testified that

nearly four months after the shooting, she was present when her younger brother,

Marvance Robinson, asked Johnson, "Who shot that lady?" Id. at 365. Laguisha

continued, "And then he said, 'I did.' And I said, 'Why?' and he said, 'Don't worry

about it.'" Id. at 365. Marvance—Laguisha and Guinn's nine-year-old

brother—offered essentially the same testimony as his sister. There was no proffered

testimony about who "that lady" was or when this shooting took place. The children

said they knew Johnson because he was their brother's friend, but they did not say how

well they knew him or for how long.

Finally, Guinn's nineteen-year-old cousin, Tosheda Myrick, would have

testified that at some unspecified time after the shooting—she could not say

when—she was living in an apartment with Guinn, Johnson, and Johnson's mother and

brother when Johnson told her, in the presence of others (including Charleen

Robinson), "that he robbed a lady and said he wasn't trying to shoot her but she

wouldn't trying [sic] to give her valuables, so he said he just shot her." Id. at 370. She

did not say how and when she came to know Johnson or how close she was to him.

The relevant facts of Chambers are quite different. In that case, officers were

trying to arrest a suspect when he resisted, "and a hostile crowd of some 50 or 60

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 5 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
-6-

persons gathered." 410 U.S. at 285. Police officer Aaron Liberty was shot, and

Liberty in turn shot and wounded Chambers as he ran from the scene. Chambers was

later arrested and charged with Liberty's murder. Some months later, Gable

McDonald, apparently at the urging of a third party, went to Chambers's attorneys and

gave a sworn confession to killing Liberty. He was taken into custody. A month later,

McDonald repudiated his confession at a preliminary hearing. He was released from

custody with no further investigation into his possible involvement in Liberty's

murder.

At Chambers's trial, he was not permitted to cross-examine McDonald as an

adverse witness because a state common-law evidentiary rule prohibited a party from

impeaching his own witness. Likewise, Chambers was not permitted to question

under oath three other witnesses about inculpating statements McDonald made to

them. The first of these witnesses, Sam Hardin, a "lifelong friend of McDonald's,"

was permitted to testify as an eyewitness that he actually saw McDonald shoot

Liberty. Id. at 289. But Hardin also would have testified that McDonald confessed

to him the very night of the shooting. Next, Berkley Turner was McDonald's friend

and his claimed alibi for the time of the shooting. Turner testified, however, that he

was not with McDonald when Liberty was shot. But Turner was not permitted to

testify that while he and others were taking Chambers to the hospital after the melee,

McDonald said he shot Liberty and that one week later, McDonald reminded Turner

of the confession and "urged Turner not to 'mess him up.'" Id. at 292. Finally, Albert

Carter was McDonald's neighbor and a friend for twenty-five years. Carter would

have testified that the day after the shooting, McDonald told Carter that he shot

Liberty and then disposed of the pistol. Carter also would have testified that he was

with McDonald several weeks later when McDonald purchased a replacement pistol.

The Supreme Court determined that the failure to allow Chambers to crossexamine McDonald together with the erroneous exclusion of this proffered testimony

deprived Chambers of a fair trial. The Court held that McDonald was indeed a

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 6 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
2

Charleen Robinson would have testified that her son normally wore a mustache

and a goatee and that Cornelius Johnson had no facial hair. Also, according to

Robinson, Johnson wore his hair in braids and Guinn had a "short afro" at the time of

Clanin's assault. Trial Tr. at 362. Clanin testified that the man who assaulted her had

short braids, and she could not recall his facial hair. Guinn's counsel challenged

Clanin's identification of Guinn on this basis in cross-examination and argued

misidentification in her closing statement.

-7-

witness adverse to Chambers and that cross-examination should have been allowed.

As for the three other witnesses, the Court concluded that their proffered testimony

"bore persuasive assurances of trustworthiness" and should have been admitted under

the hearsay exception for declarations against interest. Id. at 302. The Court cited

several reasons for its conclusion. "First, each of McDonald's confessions was made

spontaneously to a close acquaintance shortly after the murder had occurred." Id. at

300. Also, each statement was corroborated by other evidence that was admitted at

Chambers's trial: "McDonald's sworn confession, the testimony of an eyewitness to

the shooting [Hardin], the testimony that McDonald was seen with a gun immediately

after the shooting, and proof of his prior ownership of a .22-caliber revolver and

subsequent purchase of a new weapon." Id. Moreover, the "sheer number of

independent confessions provided additional corroboration for each." Id. All three

confessions were "self-incriminatory and unquestionably against interest." Id. at 301.

And finally, McDonald was available to testify under oath.

Here, unlike in Chambers, none of the witnesses who heard Johnson's

confessions were longtime or close friends, and none of the statements were made

close in time to the assault. The confession the children heard was not spontaneous

but responsive to a question Marvance asked. Moreover, there was precious little

corroboration for the confessions. Guinn contends that discrepancies about facial hair

and hairstyles and the fact that Clanin's purse was found in an unoccupied apartment

near the one Johnson leased could provide the necessary corroboration. But the

evidence about the assailant's appearance was contradictory,2

 and the location of

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 7 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
3

Guinn argues that "there was corroborating evidence where the jury requested

to see exhibits and for guidance from the judge while deliberating." Br. of Appellant

at 23. According to Guinn, "If the jury were having a difficult time deciding

Appellant's guilt without the benefit of his four witness' [sic] testimony, it is likely

they would have had a much more difficult time of it with the testimony." Id. The

jury's requests during deliberations are not evidence of any kind, much less evidence

corroborating the confessions.

-8-

Clanin's stolen purse when recovered—near the apartment Johnson rented and Guinn

frequented—incriminated Guinn as much as Johnson. Moreover, in contrast to the

facts in Chambers, the only eyewitness to the crime to testify in this case identified the

defendant (Guinn), not the third party (Johnson), as the perpetrator, and no witness put

Johnson at the scene of the crime. Johnson, unlike McDonald, had not made a sworn

confession. There were, as in Chambers, three confessions (two of Guinn's witnesses

heard the same one), but they cannot be said to corroborate each other. Of the four

proposed witnesses, only Charleen Robinson proffered testimony that described a

version of the attack that might be readily reconciled with Clanin's sworn testimony.

The confession made to Guinn's young siblings was vague as to the victim ("that

lady"), and there was no indication at all as to when the shooting may have occurred

and that it occurred in the course of a robbery. In addition, the statement Myrick

heard does not fit with the account of the facts given by Clanin under oath or

confessed by Johnson to Charleen Robinson. Clanin was shot after the assailant had

taken her purse, not while she was resisting giving up her "valuables." And Johnson

supposedly told Robinson that Clanin shot herself accidentally, not that he shot her

because she would not give up her purse. These confessions, despite their "sheer

number," id. at 300, hardly corroborate one another.3

 Finally, in this case Johnson was

unavailable to be cross-examined under oath, to have "his demeanor and responses

weighed by the jury." Id. at 301.

For these reasons, we cannot say that the state court's adjudication resulted in

a decision that was contrary to or involved an unreasonable application of clearly

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 8 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
-9-

established federal law regarding the admission of hearsay statements against interest

by a third party as a defense to a criminal charge.

We also granted a COA on Guinn's claim that his constitutional rights were

violated when he was not permitted to cross-examine Detective James Herrington

about Herrington's investigation—or lack thereof—of Johnson as a suspect in the

robbery and assault of Clanin. According to Guinn, Herrington's responses on crossexamination "would have corroborated [Guinn's] proposed witnesses' testimony." Br.

of Appellant at 25. As Guinn acknowledges, however, "there was no admissible

evidence allowed by the trial court to support his claim herein that Johnson committed

the crime." Id. at 27. He argues that his "due-process rights to confront his witnesses

and to present testimony in his defense were clearly denied." Id.

The right of a criminal defendant to be confronted with the witnesses against

him is found in the Sixth Amendment and is made applicable to the states through the

Fourteenth Amendment. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 406 (1965). The Missouri

Court of Appeals, citing a Missouri Supreme Court case quoting from the opinion in

Kentucky v. Stincer, 482 U.S. 730, 739 (1987), noted that the Sixth Amendment right

to cross-examine witnesses is not a right without limits. Guinn, 58 S.W.3d at 547.

The appeals court then held that the trial court properly applied state law to disallow

the cross-examination and that, in addition, the ruling was an appropriate exercise of

the court's discretion to limit cross-examination.

The exclusion of "critical evidence" favorable to a criminal defendant does not

necessarily deny him "a fair opportunity to defend against the State's accusations."

Egelhoff, 518 U.S. at 53 (plurality opinion). In its opinion, the Missouri Court of

Appeals noted that the right of confrontation through cross-examination, like the right

of a criminal defendant to present evidence in his defense, can be limited in the

discretion of the trial court judge. As the Supreme Court has explained, "'trial judges

retain wide latitude' to limit reasonably a criminal defendant's right to cross-examine

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 9 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
-10-

a witness 'based on concerns about, among other things, harassment, prejudice,

confusion of the issues, the witness' safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only

marginally relevant.'" Michigan v. Lucas, 500 U.S. 145, 149 (1991) (quoting

Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679 (1986)). The Missouri Court of Appeals

determined that while the cross-examination of Herrington might have led to relevant

evidence, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by excluding the testimony. We

hold that the adjudication by the state court, while not really addressing a

constitutional issue, nevertheless did not result in a decision that was contrary to or

involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. See Early v.

Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8 (2002) (per curiam) (noting that a state-court decision being

reviewed under AEDPA need not cite or even be aware of applicable Supreme Court

cases, "so long as neither the reasoning nor the result of the state-court decision

contradicts them"). In the absence of any other evidence that Johnson may have been

the perpetrator of the assault on Clanin, the proffered cross-examination of Herrington

was, at best, marginally relevant to the case and would likely have confused the issues

for the jury.

Guinn also raises the exclusion of the Herrington cross-examination as an

adjunct to his first claim—had his relatives been permitted to testify as to Johnson's

confessions, Guinn's proffered cross-examination of Herrington would have been

admissible.

In combination with the state court's ruling regarding exclusion of

Appellant's proposed testimony with its prohibition on cross-examining

Det. Harrington [sic] about the police's failure to adequately investigate

Johnson, Chambers applies to require reversal because of the dramatic

impingement on Appellant's due-process rights. Like Chambers, the

facts and circumstances of this case deprived Appellant of a fair trial.

Br. of Appellant at 28. Indeed, the Chambers Court held that the erroneous exclusion

of critical evidence, "coupled with" the erroneous refusal to allow the crossAppellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 10 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166
-11-

examination of McDonald, denied Chambers "a trial in accord with traditional and

fundamental standards of due process." Chambers, 410 U.S. at 302. The Missouri

Court of Appeals did not address a Chambers error-in-combination argument,

however, probably because Guinn, while citing Chambers when he first challenged

the exclusion of the hearsay testimony before trial, did not brief this precise argument

to the appeals court, nor did he raise it in his pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus

to the District Court. The argument cannot be raised for the first time in this appeal

from the denial of § 2254 relief. Even if we could consider the argument, the

Supreme Court determined that the third-party hearsay confessions in Chambers were

relevant and admissible and that the exclusion of McDonald's cross-examination

violated Chambers's right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. We have

held here that the state appeals court's determination that similar evidence was not

improperly excluded at Guinn's trial did not result in a decision that was contrary to

or involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. That being

the case, Guinn's error-in-combination argument would be unavailing.

 

Finally, in Guinn's brief, he argues on both COA issues that he has shown "by

clear and convincing evidence" that the court's factual findings "should be set aside."

Br. of Appellant at 22, 27–28. In discussing the issue relating to the exclusion of the

hearsay testimony, he also makes the blanket statement that "the decision was based

on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the

state court proceeding." Id. at 24. It is not clear to which specific factual findings

Guinn refers. Guinn's invocation of the statutory language in a wrap-up paragraph

does not meet his burden to rebut with clear and convincing evidence the presumption

that the state court's findings are correct. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1).

The order of the District Court denying the writ and dismissing the petition is

affirmed.

 ______________________________

Appellate Case: 06-1344 Page: 11 Date Filed: 06/07/2007 Entry ID: 3317166