Source: http://openjurist.org/127/f3d/409
Timestamp: 2015-09-01 07:56:03
Document Index: 737711970

Matched Legal Cases: ['art. 37', '§ 2244', '§ 2253', '§ 107', '§ 848', '§ 2251', '§ 848', '§ 2251', '§ 2254', '§ 2251', '§ 2251', '§ 2251', '§ 2251', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 2254', '§ 2254']

127 F3d 409 Nobles v. L Johnson | OpenJurist
127 F. 3d 409 - Nobles v. L Johnson Home
127 F3d 409 Nobles v. L Johnson 127 F.3d 409
Jonathan Wayne NOBLES, Petitioner-Appellant,v.Gary L. JOHNSON, Director, Texas Department of CriminalJustice, Institutional Division, Respondent-Appellee.
No. 97-50093.
Oct. 28, 1997.
David A. Sheppard, Austin, TX, Daniel William Dworin, Austin, TX, for Petitioner-Appellant.
Laura Bayouth Popps, Assistant Attorney General, Margaret Portman Griffey, Austin, TX, for Respondent-Appellee.
Appellant Jonathan Wayne Nobles ("Nobles") appeals the district court's denial of his application for writ of habeas corpus. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
Appellant Nobles broke into a house in Austin, Texas where Mitzi Nalley and her roommate Kelly Farquar were living. Nobles brutally stabbed Nalley and Farquar to death and severely injured Nalley's boyfriend, Ron Ross. Ross survived the attack, despite receiving nineteen stab wounds and losing an eye.
After the murders, Nobles went home and called his friend Marlly O'Brien, asking her to come over and help him.1 She found Nobles in the bathroom with his arm, which had been badly cut, wrapped in a towel. There was blood all over the bathroom. Nobles then changed clothes, cleaned the bathroom, and put everything with blood on it into a trash bag which he placed in the trunk of O'Brien's car. O'Brien dropped Nobles off at a friend's house, where Nobles shaved his beard and had his arm taped up. O'Brien later picked Nobles up and let him borrow her car while she went to work. Nobles lied to O'Brien and his other friends about what had happened, saying he had been involved in a fight.
Based on physical evidence from the murder scene2 and on information obtained from O'Brien and others, Nobles was arrested. Nobles confessed to the murders and then led police to where he had hidden the trash bag, containing the murder weapon and the blood-soaked clothes he had worn during the killings.
In 1987 a jury found Nobles guilty of the murders of Nalley and Farquar. The jury responded affirmatively to the two special sentencing issues submitted pursuant to former Article 37.071 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Tex.Code Crim. P. Ann. art. 37.071(b)(West 1981), and the trial court imposed the death penalty.
Nobles's conviction and sentence were automatically appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which affirmed both. Nobles v. State, 843 S.W.2d 503 (Tex.Crim.App.1992). In 1993 Nobles filed a state habeas petition which the trial court and the Court of Criminal Appeals denied. The United States Supreme Court denied Nobles's petition for writ of certiorari on February 21, 1995.
Nobles moved the United States District Court for appointment of counsel and to proceed in forma pauperis on a petition for federal writ of habeas corpus. The district court granted a stay of execution and appointed counsel who petitioned for writ of habeas corpus. The district court denied Nobles's petition for habeas relief and Nobles appealed. The district court granted a certificate of appealability on all of Nobles's claims.
Nobles's Certificate of Appealability addresses the applicability of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the prosecution's use of an edited confession, and the effectiveness of counsel. We address each of these issues in turn.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA") of 1996, Pub.L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996), amended, inter alia, § 2244 and §§ 2253-2255 of chapter 153 of title 28 of the United States Code, the provisions that govern all habeas proceedings in federal courts. See 110 Stat. 1217-21. The AEDPA also created a new chapter 154, applicable to habeas proceedings against a state in capital cases. New chapter 154 applies, however, only if a state "opts in" by establishing certain mechanisms for the appointment and compensation of competent counsel.3 See 110 Stat. 1221-26. The AEDPA became effective on April 24, 1996.
In Lindh v. Murphy, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997), the Supreme Court held that § 107(c) of the AEDPA, which explicitly made new chapter 154 applicable to cases pending on the effective date of the Act, created a "negative implication ... that the new provisions of chapter 153 generally apply only to cases filed after the Act became effective." Lindh, --- U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 2068 (emphasis added). Lindh effectively overruled our decision in Drinkard v. Johnson, 97 F.3d 751 (5th Cir.1996), in which we held that the AEDPA's amendments to chapter 153 were procedural in nature and therefore applied to cases pending on the effective date of the Act without having "retroactive" effect.4 Drinkard, 97 F.3d at 764-66. Thus, under Lindh, if a case was "filed" before April 24, 1996, the pre-AEDPA habeas standards apply.
Nobles filed his habeas petition on June 28, 1996, after the AEDPA's effective date. Before the effective date, however, Nobles had moved the district court for appointment of counsel and to proceed in forma pauperis.5 The district court denied Nobles's habeas petition before Lindh was decided and thus relied on Drinkard and Mata in applying the AEDPA to Nobles's petition. See Drinkard, 97 F.3d at 764-66; Mata, 99 F.3d at 1266. Nobles contends that because he made a "filing" (i.e., his motion for appointment of counsel) in his federal habeas action before the AEDPA's effective date, his case was therefore "pending" under Lindh and thus not subject to the AEDPA.6 Lindh, however, does not define when a case is "pending" for purposes of application vel non of the AEDPA; in fact, Lindh uses the expressions "cases pending," "cases filed," and "applications pending" interchangeably.7
In McFarland v. Scott, 512 U.S. 849, 114 S.Ct. 2568, 129 L.Ed.2d 666 (1994), the Supreme Court held that a "post conviction proceeding" under 21 U.S.C. § 848(q)(4)(B)8 commences with a death row defendant's motion requesting the appointment of counsel for his federal habeas proceeding. McFarland, 512 U.S. at 856-57, 114 S.Ct. at 2572-73. The Court also held that "once a capital defendant invokes his right to appointed counsel, the federal court also has jurisdiction under [28 U.S.C.] § 2251 to enter a stay of execution." McFarland, 512 U.S. at 858, 114 S.Ct. at 2573. Reading the two sections in pari materia, the Court found that the terms "post conviction proceeding" in § 848(q)(4)(B) and "habeas corpus proceeding" in § 2251 referred to the same event, i.e., habeas proceedings under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2254 and 2255. Id.
One could read McFarland to stand for the proposition that when a capital defendant moves for appointment of habeas counsel, his case is "pending" even though no habeas application has been filed. Justice Thomas, dissenting in McFarland, took such a view of the majority's reasoning:
Thus, after today, the "proceeding" to which § 2251 refers will have two different meanings depending upon whether the stay is sought by a capital or non-capital prisoner. In the former situation, a "habeas corpus proceeding" under § 2251 will be "pending" once a motion for appointment for counsel is filed. In the latter, no matter how many preliminary motions a prisoner might file, a proceeding will not be "pending" until an application for habeas relief is filed.
McFarland, 512 U.S. at 872 n. 3, 114 S.Ct. at 2580 n. 3 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (emphasis added).9 Justice O'Connor, concurring in part and dissenting in part, agreed with the dissent that a habeas proceeding was not "pending" under § 2251 upon filing of a motion for appointment of counsel. McFarland, 512 U.S. at 862, 114 S.Ct. at 2575 (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) ("[T]he text and structure of the federal habeas statute suggest that the stay provision contained in § 2251 is intended to apply only after a petition has been filed.").10
Our recent decision in Williams v. Cain, 125 F.3d 269 (5th Cir.1997), construes McFarland and resolves the issue. In Williams, we found that McFarland did not "answer the question of what date a habeas petition becomes 'pending' for determining the applicability of substantive statutes." Williams, 125 F.3d at 274, 1997 WL 612739, at * 3. The date of a capital defendant's motion for appointment of counsel is therefore irrelevant to the question whether his case is "pending" for purposes of Lindh and the applicability of the AEDPA. Thus, under Williams, "the relevant date for determining the applicability of the AEDPA to habeas corpus petitions is the date that the actual habeas corpus petition is filed." Id.
Since Nobles did not file his petition for habeas corpus relief until June 28, 1996--some two months after the AEDPA's effective date--Williams instructs that we apply the AEDPA standards to Nobles's petition.
Nobles claims the prosecution knowingly used false evidence against him when it introduced at trial an edited version of his taped confession that omitted remarks indicating Nobles did not remember certain details of the murders. Nobles argues that had the jury considered these remarks, it could have found that, because of mental impairment from drugs and alcohol, he had not deliberately committed the murders.11 He further contends that in closing argument the prosecutor compounded the misrepresentation by emphasizing the lack of evidence that Nobles had been unaware of his actions. For these reasons, Nobles concludes that he was denied the fundamentally fair and impartial trial guaranteed him by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
To establish a due process violation based on the State's knowing use of false or misleading evidence, Nobles must show (1) the evidence was false, (2) the evidence was material, and (3) the prosecution knew that the evidence was false. Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 153-154, 92 S.Ct. 763, 765-766, 31 L.Ed.2d 104 (1972); Boyle v. Johnson, 93 F.3d 180, 186 (5th Cir.1996). Evidence is "false" if, inter alia, it is "specific misleading evidence important to the prosecution's case in chief." See Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 647, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 1873, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974). False evidence is "material" only "if there is any reasonable likelihood that [it] could have affected the jury's verdict." Westley v. Johnson, 83 F.3d 714, 726 (5th Cir.1996), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 773, 136 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997).
The state habeas court denied this claim, finding that "[Nobles's] allegations do not suggest ... the presentation of false evidence by the State." The district court observed that the state court addressed the "falsity" of the evidence but made no findings as to its "materiality." The district court then found that the edited confession "was, at least to some degree, misleading in an important way," but ruled that Nobles's claim failed the "materiality" prong of the Giglio test. Specifically, the district court found that Nobles's asserted memory loss was not credible given his detailed descriptions of trivial events before and after the murders, and that, in any case, such evidence was cumulative of other evidence presented to the jury.12 Thus, the court found no "reasonable likelihood the jury would have returned a different verdict at the guilt or punishment stages of trial if it had heard the unedited confession." Nobles v. Johnson, No. A95-CA-703 SS, mem. op. at 19 (W.D.Tex. Dec. 19, 1996).131.
We need not decide whether the edited confession constituted "false evidence" under Giglio, because we agree with the district court that the confession, even if "false," was not "material," because it could not have reasonably affected the jury's determination that Nobles deliberately committed the murders.
Whether false evidence is "material" under Giglio is a mixed question of law and fact. United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 679 n. 8, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 3382 n. 8, 87 L.Ed.2d 481. (1985); Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264, 271-72, 79 S.Ct. 1173, 1178-79, 3 L.Ed.2d 1217 (1959). When reviewing a mixed question of law and fact under the AEDPA, a federal court may grant habeas relief only if it determines that the state court decision rested on "an unreasonable application of[ ] clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court," to the facts of the case. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)(West 1997); see Drinkard, 97 F.3d at 767-68. An application of law to facts is unreasonable "only when it can be said that reasonable jurists considering the question would be of one view that the state court ruling was incorrect." Drinkard, 97 F.3d at 769.
Before applying amended § 2254(d)(1), we must first determine whether Nobles's Giglio claim was "adjudicated on the merits" in the state court proceedings. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(West 1997). We feel some reservation about applying the more stringent AEDPA standards to this claim because we are not convinced that the state habeas court sufficiently addressed Nobles's Giglio claim. As the district court observed, the state habeas court did not address the "materiality" prong of Giglio but simply ruled, without evidentiary hearing, that "applicant's allegations do not suggest ... the presentation of false evidence by the state."14
We need not determine, however, whether the state habeas court sufficiently adjudicated Nobles's Giglio claim on the merits for purposes of amended § 2254(d), because we find that the allegedly misleading edited confession was not "material" even applying the pre-AEDPA de novo standard of review. See Gochicoa v. Johnson, 118 F.3d 440, 445 (5th Cir.1997); 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(West 1994).
Nobles claims the prosecution selectively edited his confession to omit portions which supported his defense of mental impairment. His abridged confession, Nobles contends, presented to the jury a "more inculpatory statement" than his actual, unedited confession. Nobles offers as a primary example the following excerpt heard by the jury:
I remember going out for a walk so I could catch my breath. I did have a knife in my hand and I felt the warmth hit my hand.
The unedited version reads as follows:
Okay, well anyway at the point that I got back home and I walked out the door I don't remember. I remember going out for a walk so I could catch my breath. The next thing I remember was getting kicked in the face and hearing a girl scream it had to be a woman scream and I did not lunge out and for some reason I had a knife in my hand. I did have a knife in my hand because I did not reach out and stab anybody but I felt somebody run at me after I got kicked or hit or whatever but somebody moved into me and I felt the warmth hit my hand.
Nobles contends this example, and others like it, show that the prosecution cobbled together unrelated bits of his confession to present a misleading picture of his culpability.15