Opinion ID: 1390193
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Goldblum's Second Federal Habeas Corpus Petition and Appeal

Text: On February 26, 2004, Goldblum filed a motion with us seeking authorization under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3) to file a second petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which we granted on March 29, 2004. Goldblum promptly filed his second application for a writ of habeas corpus in the district court on April 2, 2004, asserting the following claims as recast before the magistrate judge: 1. Trial counsel (as well as successor state counsel) were ineffective for failing to investigate, preserve and produce vital scientific evidence of blood spatter that would have proven that the Commonwealth's principal witness, Clarence Miller, was the person who stabbed and killed the victim, Mr. Wilhelm. 2. Trial counsel (as well as successor state counsel) was ineffective for failing to object to the state trial court's erroneous and prejudicial instruction regarding accomplice liability. Specifically, there was no objection to (a) the trial court's failure to instruct the jury that it could not find [Goldblum] as an accomplice unless they found beyond a reasonable doubt that [Goldblum] acted with the specific intent to kill in acting as an accomplice or (b) the trial court's instruction to the jury that Clarence Miller was an accomplice of [Goldblum]. 3. The trial court's instruction to the jury on accomplice liability was constitutionally flawed and deprived [Goldblum] of due process of law. 4. The Commonwealth's loss and/or destruction of the investigative files was done intentionally and with the purpose of depriving [Goldblum] of evidence that would support his legal claims, including his claim of innocence, all in violation of [Goldblum's] right to due process of law. 5. Newly discovered evidence regarding the Commonwealth's principal witness, Clarence Miller, provides strong proof that [Goldblum] is innocent of the crime of murder and that the conviction was based on perjured testimony. Mr. Miller has admitted stabbing the victim and, while he continues to insist that [Goldblum] was also involved, his admissions to a Warden and the State Attorney General are entirely inconsistent with his trial testimony, and are supportive of [Goldblum's] claims of innocence. In these circumstances, this evidence provides grounds for a new trial on grounds of due process of law. 6. The state courts failed to provide [Goldblum] with a full and fair post-conviction hearing on these claims and thereby denied him due process of law. Appellant's br. at 29. On October 28, 2005, a magistrate judge to whom the district court assigned the matter, without holding an evidentiary hearing, issued a Report and Recommendation dismissing Goldblum's second application for a writ of habeas corpus on the procedural ground that it did not satisfy the requirements for second petitions. Based on our opinion in In re Minarik, 166 F.3d 591 (3d Cir.1999), in which we discussed the retroactivity of the AEDPA's gatekeeping provision, the magistrate judge examined Goldblum's second application under both section 2244 of the AEDPA and its predecessor, the abuse-of-the-writ doctrine. She began with her analysis under the AEDPA standard found in 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b), [7] and recommended dismissal of Goldblum's six claims because Goldblum either had presented them in his first habeas corpus application, thus requiring their dismissal under section 2244(b)(1), or he had not presented them, and the claims did not rely on a new rule of constitutional law or meet the two-part standard of section 2244(b)(2)(B). The magistrate judge next analyzed the claims under the pre-AEDPA standard to determine if there [was] a conflict between pre- and post-ADEA standards in which event the claims, if any, the pre-AEDPA regime did not bar would have to be addressed on their merits in order to circumvent a retroactivity issue with respect to the application of the AEDPA. We discuss this retroactivity problem in detail below. The magistrate judge set forth the abuse-of-the-writ standard discussed in Minarik, 166 F.3d 591, in which we concluded that there is an abuse of the writ precluding claims presented in second petitions unless (a) petitioner establishes cause for not including the claim in the first petition and prejudice, or (b) there would be a fundamental miscarriage of justice if the claim is not reviewed on its merits. She held that Goldblum did not establish cause for his failure to present his first claim (ineffective assistance of counsel relating to the blood spatter evidence) in the original habeas corpus petition, nor was there a fundamental miscarriage of justice as there was no physical evidence depicting the blood spatter which would have allowed counsel to pursue the defense. She gave a presumption of correctness to the PCRA court's factual findings, rebuttable only by clear and convincing evidence under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1), with respect to the state court's conclusion as to the speculativeness of Dr. Wecht's testimony. The magistrate judge also refused to grant Goldblum an evidentiary hearing under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2), as she found that the state court had developed the factual basis of his claims sufficiently in conducting a lengthy hearing on the issue of ineffective assistance and the state-court record included extensive exhibits. She further concluded that even if Dr. Wecht's testimony had been introduced at trial, it certainly was not outcome determinative in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt implicating Goldblum in the murder, and thus, there was no miscarriage of justice. The magistrate judge concluded with respect to the second and third claims (ineffective assistance of counsel relating to his failure to object to the jury instruction regarding accomplice liability), that there was no cause as the law governing the instruction was known at the time that Goldblum filed his original habeas corpus petition. Nor was there a miscarriage of justice in which the alleged error probably resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent as the jury charge sufficiently informed the jury that specific intent was required to convict for first-degree murder on accomplice liability. Similarly, as to the fifth claim (Miller's admissions), the magistrate judge found that there was no actual prejudice as Miller's out-of-court declaration, which we will describe below, did not exonerate Goldblum. In fact, Miller continues to assert that Goldblum participated in the killing, although Miller now admits that he, too, inflicted some of the wounds. The magistrate judge also recommended dismissal of Goldblum's fourth and sixth claims for similar reasons, but we need not elaborate on this reasoning as this appeal does not focus on these claims. Based on her conclusions that neither the AEDPA nor the pre-AEDPA abuse-of-the-writ doctrine permitted Goldblum's second application, the magistrate judge recommended that the court dismiss Goldblum's second petition and that a certificate of appealability (COA) not be issued. On December 13, 2005, the district court issued an order adopting the magistrate judge's Report and Recommendation as the opinion of the court, dismissing the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and denying the COA. Goldblum appealed on January 12, 2006. On November 6, 2006, we issued a COA limited to the following question: [W]hether the District Court erred in concluding that Goldblum's habeas petition constitutes an abuse of the writ, as Goldblum has shown that reasonable jurists would debate not only whether the District Court was correct in that procedural ruling but also whether his petition states a valid constitutional claim. See Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484, 120 S.Ct. 1595, 1604, 146 L.Ed.2d 542 (2000). App. at 3. Goldblum's central arguments on this appeal are that the magistrate judge, and thus the district court, erred in the following three ways: she (1) was required to conduct an evidentiary hearing to determine whether Goldblum abused the writ; (2) applied the wrong legal standard under the cause element of the abuse-of-the-writ doctrine; and (3) wrongly found that Goldblum is not actually innocent of the murder for which he has been convicted, thus excusing his procedural noncompliance under the abuse-of-the-writ doctrine.