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Parties Involved:
Adam Eggers
Appellant
Warden, Lebanon Correctional Institution
Appellee

Document Text:

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RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION 

Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) 

File Name: 16a0145p.06 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT 

_________________ 

ADAM EGGERS, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

v. 

WARDEN, LEBANON CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION, 

Respondent-Appellee. 

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No. 15-3961 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Southern District of Ohio at Dayton. 

No. 3:14-cv-00443—Thomas M. Rose, District Judge. 

Argued: June 14, 2016 

Decided and Filed: June 21, 2016 

Before: SILER, ROGERS, and SUTTON, Circuit Judges. 

_________________ 

COUNSEL 

ARGUED: Jeffrey M. Brandt, ROBINSON & BRANDT, P.S.C., Covington, Kentucky, for 

Appellant. Hilda Rosenberg, OFFICE OF THE OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL, Cincinnati, 

Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Jeffrey M. Brandt, ROBINSON & BRANDT, P.S.C., 

Covington, Kentucky, for Appellant. Hilda Rosenberg, OFFICE OF THE OHIO ATTORNEY 

GENERAL, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellee. 

_________________ 

OPINION 

_________________ 

SUTTON, Circuit Judge. Adam Eggers and Dustin Bryant each sought the affections of 

the same woman, Julie Snyder, and each went to great lengths to be the winning suitor. In an 

unfortunate effort to end the feud, Eggers fired four shots into a home where he thought Bryant 

>

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was staying. One of the bullets struck Snyder instead, sparing the man he disliked and killing the 

woman he loved. 

Eggers agreed to plead guilty to one count of felony murder. The state trial judge 

conducted a guilty-plea hearing under Ohio Criminal Rule 11, during which Eggers admitted that 

he committed the crime. After accepting the plea, the trial judge started the sentencing hearing 

and gave Eggers an opportunity to speak—otherwise known as a right to allocute. Eggers said 

the following: “I’d like to apologize to the family. You know I loved her. You know I didn’t do 

this. I didn’t do this. I love you, mom. I don’t know. That’s it. I don’t know what else to say.” 

R. 8-1 at 86.

Eggers maintains that this half apology/half assertion of innocence made the earlier guilty 

plea involuntary, suggested that he was actually innocent, and required the state trial court to 

conduct a hearing under North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970), to ascertain the 

voluntariness of his plea, and to ensure that there was evidence supporting his plea. The state 

courts upheld the guilty plea. And the district court rejected Eggers’ federal habeas petition, 

holding that the state courts did not unreasonably apply clearly established Supreme Court 

precedent or unreasonably determine the facts in Eggers’ case. We affirm. 

I. 

After the 2010 murder of Ms. Snyder, the State charged Eggers with an assortment of 

crimes, including felony murder, felonious assault, and improperly discharging a firearm at or 

into a home. State v. Eggers, No. 2011-CA-48, 2013 WL 3816675, at *1 (Ohio Ct. App. July 19, 

2013). At what was originally scheduled to be a suppression hearing, the government and 

Eggers agreed to a plea bargain and told the court as much: Eggers would plead guilty to one 

count of felony murder in return for which the government would drop the other charges. See id.

at *1; see also Ohio Rev. Code § 2903.02(B). In court, the government provided a brief 

recitation of the facts supporting the guilty plea: Eggers fired four shots into a home, and one of 

them hit—and killed—Snyder. 

The court asked Eggers if he wanted to plead guilty “this afternoon.” R. 8-1 at 85. 

“Yes,” he responded. Id. The court then discussed Eggers’ decision with him. The court asked 

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if he had gone over the plea document with his lawyer and whether it was his signature that 

appeared on the plea document. Eggers answered yes both times. The court asked whether the 

government had promised anything besides what was written in the plea agreement or whether 

anyone had threatened Eggers to get him to plead guilty. Eggers answered no. “Are you 

pleading guilty voluntarily?” the court asked. Id. “Yes, sir,” Eggers responded. Id.

After explaining the nature of his offense and the mandatory nature of his sentence, the 

court pointed out everything Eggers was giving up. Eggers was waiving the right to a trial—and 

with it the right to compel and confront witnesses, the right to testify on his own behalf, and the 

right to be convicted only by a unanimous jury. “Understanding that,” the court asked how 

Eggers wanted to plead. Id. at 86. “Guilty, Your Honor,” Eggers replied. Id. The court 

“f[ound] him guilty” of felony murder “based upon that plea.” Id. 

After accepting Eggers’ guilty plea, the court stated that it would immediately “proceed 

with disposition” on the conviction—namely sentencing. Id. The court then asked if there was 

“anything [Eggers] wanted to say at this time.” Id. “There is,” he replied, “but I don’t know if I 

can speak.” Id. After consulting counsel, Eggers continued, saying: “I’d like to apologize to the 

family. You know I loved her. You know I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this. I love you, mom. I 

don’t know. That’s it. I don’t know what else to say.” Id. The court sentenced Eggers to fifteen

years to life, a sentence that required little explanation because Ohio law made it mandatory for 

this crime. 

Eleven days later, Eggers filed a handwritten, pro se motion to withdraw his guilty plea, 

claiming he was innocent. The trial court denied the motion. 

Eggers appealed. He challenged the voluntariness of his guilty plea, arguing 

(among other things) that the court should have held an Alford hearing either to resolve the 

apparent conflict between his guilty plea and his claim of innocence at the sentencing hearing or 

to ensure a legitimate factual predicate for the guilty plea. See North Carolina v. Alford, 

400 U.S. 25, 37–38 (1970). The Ohio Court of Appeals rejected this argument on the merits, 

2013 WL 3816675, at *5, and the Ohio Supreme Court refused to review Eggers’ appeal, 

999 N.E.2d 695 (Ohio 2013) (table). 

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Eggers turned to the federal courts. The district court denied relief on all of his § 2254 

claims and granted a certificate of appealability limited to this question: Did the Ohio courts 

reasonably apply Alford in resolving the apparent tension between Eggers’ guilty plea and 

protestation of innocence at sentencing? 

II. 

We do not lightly overturn a state court’s decision that state proceedings complied with 

the United States Constitution. We may do so only if the decision (1) “was based on an 

unreasonable determination of the facts” or (2) “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable 

application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the 

United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). As to the factual side, we must be convinced that “the 

state court’s ruling . . . was so lacking in justification that there was an error . . . beyond any 

possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 103 (2011); see 

Burt v. Titlow, 134 S. Ct. 10, 16 (2013). As to the legal side, the state court decision must be

“objectively unreasonable, not merely wrong; even clear error will not suffice.” White v. 

Woodall, 134 S. Ct. 1697, 1702 (2014) (quotations omitted). 

The Ohio Court of Appeals’ opinion, the last decision on the merits and the one we 

examine, see Ylst v. Nunnemaker, 501 U.S. 797, 804 (1991), does not violate this forgiving 

standard. In a decision by Judge Fain, the state court held that Eggers did not trigger Alford’s 

requirement that a trial court ensure the factual basis of a guilty plea when a defendant protests 

his innocence at the plea hearing. Any of Eggers’ statements “that could be construed as a 

protestation of innocence,” it explained, “occurred after the guilty plea had been accepted” and at 

sentencing, where Alford does not apply. 2013 WL 3816675, at *5. 

That was not an unreasonable reading of the facts or the law. First the facts. After the 

trial court warned Eggers that he was giving up an assortment of rights and ensured that his plea 

was voluntary, Eggers stated that he pleaded “[g]uilty.” R. 8-1 at 86. On that basis, the court 

accepted his guilty plea and “f[ound] [Eggers] guilty.” Id. Once that happened, the court moved 

to the sentencing phase of the hearing. The court would “proceed with disposition on [the felony 

murder count],” it said. Id. The court in other words transitioned from taking a plea to imposing 

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a sentence. Only then did the court ask Eggers if he had anything else to say and only then did 

Eggers disclaim responsibility for the crime. On this record, the Ohio Court of Appeals did not 

unreasonably determine the facts: that the plea phase of the hearing had ended and the 

sentencing hearing had started before Eggers mentioned anything suggestive of innocence. See 

Burt, 134 S. Ct. at 16. 

Second the law. Alford’s requirement that there be a “strong factual basis” for a guilty 

plea, 400 U.S. at 38, “enables a court to determine that the defendant’s guilty plea is voluntary” 

and thus constitutional, United States v. Tunning, 69 F.3d 107, 111 (6th Cir. 1995). But the 

requirement kicks in only if a defendant “protests his innocence” during the plea colloquy. Id. 

The context in which Alford arose confirms the point. At the plea colloquy, the defendant 

simultaneously pleaded guilty and asserted his innocence, noting that he pleaded guilty to avoid 

the risk of a capital charge. 400 U.S. at 28. That is not this case. Eggers’ protestations of 

innocence, as the state courts permissibly found, occurred after the guilty-plea hearing had 

ended. Absent a claim of innocence during the plea hearing, “there is no constitutional 

requirement that a trial judge inquire into the factual basis of a plea.” Roddy v. Black, 516 F.2d 

1380, 1385 (6th Cir. 1975). Eggers never claimed he was innocent until after he pleaded guilty 

and after the district court accepted that plea. Eggers thus never triggered Alford. “[O]nce a 

court accepts a plea agreement,” we have explained in a similar context, “it is bound by the 

bargain.” United States v. Fleming, 239 F.3d 761, 764 (6th Cir. 2001) (quotation omitted). The 

state court’s holding that Alford did not apply was thus not “contrary to” or “an unreasonable 

application of” “clearly established Federal law.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). 

Eggers, notably, fails to point to a single U.S. Supreme Court holding that applies Alford 

to a protestation of innocence raised for the first time at a sentencing hearing. “Section 

2254(d)(1),” the Supreme Court has explained, “provides a remedy for instances in which a state 

court unreasonably applies this Court’s precedent; it does not require state courts to extend that 

precedent or license federal courts to treat the failure to do so as error.” White, 134 S. Ct. at 

1706. Not only has Eggers failed to identify a Supreme Court decision applying Alford to a 

protestation of innocence made after a guilty plea had been accepted, he has not identified any 

court decision, state or federal, appellate or trial, that applied Alford in this setting. 

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One other point deserves mention on this score. It is not clear that Eggers’ statement 

amounted to a claim of innocence in the first place. The state court suggested as much, saying 

only that Eggers’ statement “could be construed as a protestation of innocence.” 2013 WL 

3816675, at *5. The federal magistrate judge pushed the point further, explaining that given 

“[t]he context of the killing” and the fact that Eggers’ “words were spoken in the midst of an 

apology, they could have been understood as directed to [Ms. Snyder’s] family and claiming he 

did not intend to kill her.” Eggers v. Warden, No. 3:14-cv-443, 2015 WL 3472960, at *10 (S.D. 

Ohio June 1, 2015), report and recommendation adopted, 2015 WL 4698434 (S.D. Ohio Aug. 6, 

2015). In context, the statement reads more like an admission of guilt than a protestation of 

innocence: Eggers was in the midst of a heartfelt apology to the victim’s family, which is quite 

understandable given his affection for Ms. Snyder but which is the opposite of a claim of 

innocence. In view of his relationship with the victim, it is just as plausible to read his words as 

a statement to her family (and his) that he did not intend to kill her, which in fact he did not. 

Eggers offers several rejoinders to this conclusion. He protests that his claim of 

innocence came less than two minutes after the court accepted his plea. This was “one ongoing 

hearing,” he points out, and the trial court “made no announcement that the plea hearing was 

over . . . that a non-lawyer would understand.” Appellant’s Br. 14–15. The trial court should 

have stopped to apply Alford, as Eggers sees it, and determined whether there was a strong 

factual basis for his guilty plea. 

To be sure, this is one way to read the facts, but it is not the only way—and most 

importantly it is not the only reasonable way. In this setting, we ask not whether we would have 

read the facts differently “in the first instance.” Wood v. Allen, 558 U.S. 290, 301 (2010). We 

ask whether fairminded jurists could agree with the state court’s reading of the facts. See Burt, 

134 S. Ct. at 16. We see no such problem here, where the trial court accepted the guilty plea and 

signaled a transition before Eggers mentioned anything about his innocence. Under Alford, “it is 

not incumbent upon the sentencing court to ascertain whether the defendant believes in his 

innocence. Instead, it is the defendant’s duty to assert innocence and thereby bring to the court’s 

attention the need to ensure a factual basis for the guilty plea notwithstanding his claim of 

innocence.” Orman v. Cain, 228 F.3d 616, 621 (5th Cir. 2000). 

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Nor do we see any problem with the state trial judge’s use of the word “disposition” to 

describe the transition from the guilty-plea part of the hearing to the sentencing-phase part of the 

hearing. The word means “the act . . . of” “arrang[ing] or settl[ing] a matter finally,” Webster’s 

Third New International Dictionary 654 (2002), a description that fairly signals a shift to 

sentencing. That indeed is just how the state court of appeals (which was in a better position to 

know than we are) construed the state trial court’s hearing. 2013 WL 3816675, at *5. 

Even if the federal courts may not grant relief on this claim, Eggers suggests that his plea 

should have been unwound on several other grounds: that he pleaded guilty only under pressure 

from counsel and that counsel negotiated a plea bargain against his wishes. But Eggers never 

presented these arguments to the Ohio Court of Appeals on direct review, forfeiting them there 

and here. The statute that gives Eggers a potential right to relief requires a showing that the state 

court made “an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the 

State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). That means that he (and we) are “limited to 

the record that was before the state court that adjudicated the claim on the merits.” Cullen v. 

Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181 (2011). The evidence presented to the state court on direct appeal 

was the transcript of the plea hearing, see 2013 WL 3816675, at *2–5, and on that basis it 

reasonably determined that Eggers’ guilty plea comported with Alford and the U.S. Constitution. 

Eggers, sure enough, tried to introduce evidence regarding these other claims (mainly in 

the form of affidavits from family members and friends) in a state post-conviction relief 

proceeding. See State v. Eggers, No. 2012–CA–33, 2013 WL 3971380, at *4–9 (Ohio Ct. App. 

Aug. 2, 2013). But he did not raise an Alford claim in that proceeding, see id. at *2–3, *8, and he 

has not challenged the findings from that proceeding here. 

For these reasons, we affirm. 

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