[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-12134

Non-Argument Calendar

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RICKEY MARTIN, 

Petitioner-Appellant,

versus

SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, 

Respondent-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 4:19-cv-00562-MW-HTC

____________________

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2 Opinion of the Court 22-12134

Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and LUCK, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Rickey Martin, counseled and currently incarcerated, appeals the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. section 2254 habeas 

petition. We affirm.

Martin is serving a life sentence for capital sexual battery. 

His victim in this case—a daughter of his former girlfriend—didn’t 

report the crime until years later when she heard a rumor that he’d 

molested another girl. The rumor came up in a conversation between the victim, her sister, and their mother, in which the sister 

shared the rumor and indicated that she had a hard time believing 

it because it didn’t sound like something Martin would do. Martin’s victim broke down and tearfully told her sister and mother 

that they should believe it because he’d raped her when she was 

eleven years old.

At trial, the state moved in limine to admit testimony of that 

conversation. Martin objected, arguing that it was “very harmful 

to suggest that there’s another victim out there.” But his primary

defense was that the rape never happened and that his victim’s 

years-long silence was evidence that her story was fabricated because the family was angry over his breakup with the victim’s

mother. The trial court admitted the testimony, with a “very severe limiting instruction” to the jury, because it provided context 

regarding the series of events that brought the victim’s story to 

light. Martin was convicted and sentenced to a term of life imprisonment without parole. 

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After unsuccessfully appealing his conviction in the state appellate court, Martin moved the district court for habeas relief, arguing that the trial court’s admission of the testimony deprived 

him “of the right to confront witnesses against him in violation of 

his Sixth Amendment rights and den[ied] him a fair trial in violation 

of his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights.”1

 A magistrate 

judge entered a report and recommendation that characterized 

Martin’s petition as “claim[ing] [that] his right to a fair trial under 

the Fourteenth Amendment was violated when the state trial court 

erred in admitting, over defense objection, a highly inflammatory 

inadmissible hearsay statement concerning an unknown and therefore unavailable person rumored to have claimed to have been molested by . . . Martin.” The magistrate judge recommended denying Martin’s petition and denying a certificate of appealability because: (1) the trial court’s decision to grant the state’s motion in 

limine wasn’t contrary to, and didn’t involve an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law as determined by the 

Supreme Court; (2) the trial court didn’t err because the testimony 

was offered not for the truth of the matter asserted but rather to 

explain the victim’s delay in coming forward; and (3) even if the 

trial court erred, it didn’t deprive Martin of a fair trial because the 

trial court’s limiting instructions ameliorated any prejudice that 

might’ve been caused by the evidence. The district court accepted 

in part and adopted in part the report and recommendation, denied 

1

 This was “Ground 2” of Martin’s petition, which is the only ground relevant 

to this appeal.

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Martin’s petition, and granted a certificate “as to Ground 2 of the 

petition” because “reasonable jurists could find this court’s assessment of Ground 2 debatable.” 

On appeal, Martin repeats verbatim the argument he raised 

before the district court—namely, that “[t]he state trial court erred 

in admitting, over defense objection, a highly inflammatory inadmissible hearsay statement concerning an unknown and therefore

unavailable person rumored to have claimed to have been molested by Mr. Martin, thus depriving Mr. Martin of the right to confront witnesses against him in violation of his Sixth Amendment 

rights and denying him a fair trial in violation of his Fourteenth 

Amendment due process rights.”

2

 

We review de novo a district court’s denial of a section 2254 

petition, “but we owe deference to the final state habeas judgment.” Reed v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 593 F.3d 1217, 1239 (11th 

Cir. 2010) (quotation omitted). Specifically, under the 

2

 Neither the magistrate judge nor the district court addressed the Sixth 

Amendment part of Martin’s claim. See Clisby v. Jones, 960 F.2d 925, 936 (11th 

Cir. 1992) (instructing district courts “to resolve all claims for relief raised in a 

petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. [section] 2254”). But 

because Martin didn’t raise this issue in either his response to the report and 

recommendation or his brief on appeal, he has forfeited any argument that the 

district court committed Clisby error. See 11th Cir. R. 3-1 (stating that a party 

who fails to object to a magistrate judge’s finding or recommendation waives 

the right to challenge that finding or recommendation on appeal); United States 

v. Campbell, 26 F.4th 860, 872 (11th Cir. 2002) (en banc) (holding that issues not 

raised on appeal are deemed forfeited). As such, only his Fourteenth Amendment claim is properly before us on appeal.

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Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, where a 

state court has adjudicated a claim on the merits, a federal court 

may grant habeas relief only if the state court decision (1) “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established [f]ederal law, as determined by the Supreme Court,” or (2) 

“was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light 

of the evidence presented in the [s]tate court proceeding.” 28 

U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), (2). The “unreasonable application” inquiry requires that the state court decision “be more than incorrect or erroneous”; it must be “objectively unreasonable.” Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 75 (2003). The petitioner must show that the 

state court’s ruling “was so lacking in justification that there was an 

error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond 

any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” White v. Woodall, 572 

U.S. 415, 419–20 (2014). Under the “contrary to” clause, a federal 

habeas court may grant the writ if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Supreme Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than the 

Supreme Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts. 

Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412–13 (2000).

Where, as here, the final state court decision on the merits 

doesn’t provide its reasoning, “the federal court must look through 

the unexplained decision to the last related state-court decision that 

does provide a relevant rationale and presume that the unexplained 

decision adopted the same reasoning.” Pye v. Warden, Ga. Diagnostic Prison, 50 F.4th 1025, 1034 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (quotation 

omitted). Generally, “a federal court in a habeas corpus case will 

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not review the trial court’s actions concerning the admissibility of 

evidence.” Alderman v. Zant, 22 F.3d 1541, 1555 (11th Cir. 1994). 

But “where a state court’s ruling is claimed to have deprived a defendant of his right to due process, a federal court should then inquire only to determine whether the error was of such magnitude 

as to deny fundamental fairness to the criminal trial.” Id. (cleaned 

up). “The admission of prejudicial evidence justifies habeas corpus 

relief only if the evidence is material in the sense of a crucial, critical, highly significant factor.” Osborne v. Wainwright, 720 F.2d 1237, 

1238 (11th Cir. 1983) (quotation omitted).

Martin’s due process claim fails because he hasn’t shown 

that the trial court’s ruling “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established [f]ederal law.” 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2254(d)(1). He argues primarily that the trial court erred by violating Florida’s rules of evidence as expounded in various state 

court cases. The only federal law Martin references in the Fourteenth Amendment context is Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 

681 (1988), which is nested within a quotation of a state appellate 

opinion. Martin doesn’t attempt to show that the trial court violated Huddleston, nor could he; Huddleston addresses whether evidence violates the Federal Rules of Evidence and doesn’t even 

mention due process or the Fourteenth Amendment. See id. at 691. 

Nor has Martin shown that the trial court’s ruling “was so 

lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and 

comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” White, 572 U.S. at 419–20. Indeed, nothing 

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in the record shows that the decision was “objectively unreasonable,” Lockyer, 538 U.S. at 75, or that the objected-to evidence—even 

if admitted in error—was “material in the sense of a crucial, critical, 

highly significant factor,” Osborne, 720 F.2d at 1238. 

The most crucial factor in convicting Martin was his victim’s 

testimony that he raped her. The testimony of the rumor focused 

not on the idea that Martin had molested another child but rather 

on explaining how and why, after so many years, Martin’s victim

came forward. The trial court considered its prejudicial effect but 

determined that it had probative value because it helped the victim 

tell her story. 

The trial court also granted Martin’s request for limiting instructions, and—before each witness’s testimony and again before 

deliberations—it told the jury that the statement should be considered only as proof of how the allegations were first reported. Although Martin argues that, in some circumstances, a jury instruction can’t cure unfair prejudice, he offers no explanation for why 

this is one of those instances. The jury is presumed to have followed the trial court’s limiting instructions, and there’s nothing in 

the record to indicate that it didn’t. See Richardson v. Marsh, 481 

U.S. 200, 211 (1987).

Finally, the objected-to testimony lacked credibility. The 

witnesses made no representation that the accusation was true, the 

victim’s sister said that she didn’t believe it sounded like something 

Martin would do, and the state referred to it only as a “rumor.” 

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For all of these reasons, the district court’s denial of Martin’s 

section 2254 habeas petition is affirmed.

AFFIRMED.

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