Opinion ID: 1188826
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: First Ground for Relief

Text: The magistrate judge found that habeas relief was not available to Pudelski on his first ground for relief because he alleged error in the proceedings related to his motion for new trial, which the magistrate judge considered a post-conviction proceeding. This is a legal determination that is reviewed de novo. Lucas v. O'Dea, 179 F.3d 412, 416 (6th Cir.1999). Pudelski argues, and the State agrees, that the magistrate judge improperly found that the motion for new trial constituted a post-conviction proceeding. Appellant Br. p. 17-19; Appellee Br. p. 23-24. We agree with the parties and have concluded that Pudelski's motion for new trial was not a post-conviction proceeding, and that his claim in this particular case is reviewable as a habeas claim. The magistrate judge relied on Kirby v. Dutton, 794 F.2d 245 (6th Cir.1986) for the proposition that habeas corpus relief is not available to challenge alleged errors in state post-conviction proceedings. Although Kirby is good law in the Sixth Circuit, in our opinion the magistrate judge misapplied Kirby to the facts of the present case. In Kirby, the petitioner filed a state post-conviction proceeding attempting to overturn his conviction of two counts of assault with intent to commit murder, and pursuant to Tennessee law the state court appointed counsel to represent the petitioner in the post-conviction proceedings. The petitioner's post-conviction action was dismissed, and on appeal of that decision the petitioner alleged that his appointed counsel had rendered ineffective assistance in the post-conviction proceeding. The Tennessee appellate courts rejected the petitioner's appeals, and he then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court in the Middle District of Tennessee claiming ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment. The district court denied the petition on the ground that the Sixth Amendment applied only to criminal proceedings, not post-conviction proceedings that were civil in nature, and the petitioner appealed to this court. Id. at 245. On appeal, a panel of this court found that it was unnecessary to review the correctness of the district court's determination and instead held that the petitioner's claims could not be brought in a federal habeas corpus petition. Id. at 246. After noting that the essence of habeas corpus is an attack by a person in custody upon the legality of that custody, id. ( quoting Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 484, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973)), the court reasoned that allegations of constitutional violations in post-conviction proceedings did not in any way [relate] to [the petitioner's] confinement, id. at 248, and did not come within the traditional scope of habeas corpus. The court decline[d] to allow the scope of the writ to reach this second tier of complaints about deficiencies in state post-conviction proceedings, and affirmed the district court's denial of the petition. Id. Kirby is inapplicable to this case. Pudelski filed his motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, pursuant to Ohio Criminal Rule 33, on October 1, 1999, two weeks after he was sentenced and before he commenced his direct appeal. JA 113. After he filed his direct appeal on October 28, 1999 he asked the Eighth District Court of Appeals to stay the appeal pending the resolution of his motion for new trial in the trial court, which the court of appeals granted. Once the trial court denied the motion for new trial, the court of appeals considered the denial of that motion along with and at the same time as Pudelski's direct appeal of his conviction. See State v. Pudelski, 2001 WL 259215. Pudelski's pre-appeal motion for new trial was part of the original proceedings and was not collateral to his conviction or a post-conviction proceeding. A conviction is not final until all appeals are exhausted, and in this case Pudelski moved for a new trial before his direct appeal was even taken. The court of appeals, moreover, considered the trial court's denial of Pudelski's motion for new trial as part of his direct appeal of his conviction, which shows that Pudelski's motion for new trial was not a collateral attack on his conviction or a post-conviction proceeding. Persuasive authority from other circuit courts considering motions for new trial filed under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33, which is similar to Ohio Criminal Rule 33, supports this conclusion. The petitioner in Kitchen v. United States, 227 F.3d 1014 (7th Cir.2000), had been convicted of cocaine and firearms charges in federal court, and he appealed his conviction to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. While the direct appeal was pending, he filed a Rule 33 motion for new trial based on newly discovered evidence, and the Seventh Circuit stayed the appeal pending the resolution of the motion for new trial. Id. at 1016-17. The district court denied the motion, and the petitioner desired to appeal that decision to the court of appeals. His attorney, however, inadvertently failed to file a notice of appeal, and the Seventh Circuit proceeded to consider the petitioner's direct appeal without considering the denial of the motion for new trial. The court of appeals affirmed the petitioner's conviction, and he then filed a § 2255 petition for a writ of habeas corpus, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment for the failure to file the notice of appeal denying the Rule 33 motion. The district court denied the petition. Id. at 1017. The petitioner then appealed that decision to the Seventh Circuit. The Seventh Circuit began by asking whether the petitioner had a right to the assistance of counsel during the Rule 33 motion for a new trial proceedings. Criminal defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to counsel from the time when proceedings have been initiated against them until the termination of the direct appeal, id. at 1018, and so the question of whether the petitioner had a right to the assistance of counsel depended on whether the Rule 33 motion for new trial was part of the initial proceeding or was a collateral proceeding. The court of appeals noted that the timing of the Rule 33 motion was an important factor in the decision, id., and after noting that the petitioner filed his Rule 33 motion for new trial well before the decision of his direct appeal, id., held that it is wide of the mark to label a pre-appeal motion for a new trial as a collateral attack. We have noted the converse proposition that [w]hen made following the outcome of a direct appeal, a Rule 33 motion plainly is `collateral' in the usual sense of that term. Here, however, [the petitioner's] direct appeal had not yet been decided, so his motion for a new trial clearly did not follow the outcome of his direct appeal. Instead we can say that his motion for a new trial was in aid of the appeal of the conviction and sentence. The conclusion that [the petitioner's] motion for a new trial was not a collateral attack is further supported by the procedural consideration that, had [the petitioner's] counsel filed a notice of appeal from the denial of the motion, the Rule 33 appeal could have been consolidated with [the petitioner's] direct appeal. It would make no sense to label a pre-direct appeal Rule 33 motion as a collateral attack on the conviction, when the appeal from such a proceeding could be consolidated with the direct appeal of the conviction. A properly denominated collateral attack on a defendant's conviction... could never be consolidated with the direct appeal, and is not even part of the criminal proceeding itself. Therefore, because [the petitioner's] motion for a new trial was decided before our decision in his direct appeal, it may not be deemed a collateral attack on his conviction[.] Id. at 1019 (internal citations omitted). After finding the petitioner's counsel's performance deficient, the court of appeals affirmed the denial of the petition because the petitioner had not established prejudice. See also United States v. Berger, 375 F.3d 1223, 1226 (11 th Cir.2004) ( citing Kitchen for the proposition that [a] post-conviction, pre -appeal Rule 33 motion is considered part of a defendant's direct appeal (emphasis in original)). The facts surrounding Pudelski's motion for new trial are even more squarely in favor of finding that his motion for new trial is not a collateral proceeding than the facts in Kitchen. Unlike the petitioner in Kitchen, Pudelski filed his motion for new trial before even filing his direct appeal. Furthermore, unlike the petitioner in Kitchen, Pudelski did actually appeal the denial of his motion for new trial to the Eighth District Court of Appeals, which then did actually consolidate and consider that issue along with the rest of Pudelski's direct appeal. Pudelski's motion for new trial was not a collateral attack on his conviction: it was instead a part of the direct appeal of his conviction. We hold that when a state defendant files a motion for new trial before filing a direct appeal, and when the denial of that motion is then consolidated with and reviewed during the direct appeal, the motion for new trial is part of the original criminal proceedings and is not a collateral proceeding. In such a situation the rule in Kirby is inapplicable. Because Pudelski filed his motion for new trial before he filed his direct appeal and the denial of that motion was reviewed during the direct appeal, the magistrate judge and district court erred in finding that the denial of his motion for new trial constituted a collateral proceeding. Habeas relief is available on Pudelski's first ground for relief.
On the merits of that ground for relief, however, habeas relief is not warranted. Pudelski's first ground for relief argues that the trial court abused its discretion and misapplied Ohio law when denying his motion for new trial based on newly discovered evidence, and that this ruling and the Eighth District Court of Appeals' affirmance denied him due process of law. Pudelski does not cite to or identify any federal law that these rulings are contrary to or an unreasonable application of, and even though he invokes the concept of federal due process, his claim is clearly premised on issues of state law. State law issues are not subject to habeas review, see Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 67-68, 112 S.Ct. 475, 116 L.Ed.2d 385 (1991), and this Court can review the denial of Pudelski's motion for new trial only for constitutional error. To establish a constitutional due process claim, Pudelski must demonstrate that the trial court's denial of his motion for new trial was so egregious that it violated his right to a fundamentally fair trial. See Fleming v. Metrish, 556 F.3d 520, 535 (6th Cir.2009); Baze v. Parker, 371 F.3d 310, 324 (6th Cir.2004). The trial court's and court of appeals' rulings were not so egregious, because even if the new photograph of Pudelski's daughter had been presented at trial, reasonable jurors could still have found him guilty. At trial, the State's theory of the case was that the child died from a cerebral edema, or a swelling of the brain, as a result of a blunt impact that also caused a linear skull fracture on the back right side of the child's head. The assistant coroner who performed the autopsy and the coroner both testified that the skull fracture was a new injury, less than 24 hours old, based on their observations that there was fresh blood underneath the scalp, that there were no signs of healing at the site of the injury, that there was no scar tissue present, and that the edges of the fracture were sharp as opposed to dull, which are all consistent with a new as opposed to an old injury. Based on the fact that the child did not have any head injuries when her mother went to bed, and on the fact that Pudelski fed the child at midnight, the State argued that Pudelski was responsible for causing the skull fracture and subsequent brain swelling. Testimony from other witnesses, such as the medical personnel who delivered the child, had established the presence of a caput, or bruise, on the back right side of the child's head after birth, but the coroner and assistant coroner concluded that this bruise was a separate injury from the skull fracture. They reached this conclusion because, during the autopsy, the assistant coroner discovered the presence of macrophages, white blood cells that clean up cellular debris (including blood from a bruise), at the caput's location. Macrophages do not appear immediately and would not be present at the site of a new injury: in this case, no macrophages were present at the site of the skull fracture, indicating that it was a new injury separate from the bruise present at birth. Pudelski's theory of defense was that the infant had suffered a head injury during birth that caused the skull fracture found by the assistant coroner during the autopsy. Pudelski argued that this fracture had nothing to do with the infant's death, which Pudelski attributed to sudden infant death syndrome. To support this theory, Pudelski presented expert testimony from Drs. Robert Kiwi, Jan Leestma, and Michael Baden. These doctors all testified that, in their opinion, the skull fracture occurred during the child's birth, and that the skull fracture had no relationship to the child's eventual death, the cause of which they considered undetermined. See, e.g., JA 1286. None of the doctors was able to cite to any definitive evidence that the child suffered an injury during birth; rather, they based their opinions on their review of the birth records and the autopsy report. The State focused on this lack of direct proof in its closing argument, and argued that no skull fracture was present at the time of the child's birth. Pudelski now presents new evidence in the form of a photograph, taken a day after the infant's birth, showing a large bruise on the back right portion of the child's head. Pudelski argues that this photograph conclusively proves that his daughter was born with a substantial head/skull injury in the exact location of the skull fracture and blunt force injury that killed his daughter. According to Pudelski, [t]he support the new photograph would add to [his] experts' testimony [who theorized but could not prove the existence of such an injury] discloses a strong probability that it would change the result if a new trial is granted. Appellant Br. p. 20, 24. We do not agree. First, this photograph is not conclusive evidence that the child had a skull fracture at the time of her birth. Testimony at trial from one of Pudelski's own experts, Dr. Richard Kiwi, established that an x-ray is necessary to establish the presence of a linear skull fracture. JA 1277. This photograph is not an x-ray, and the mere depiction of a red bruise on the child's head does not establish that a skull fracture existed underneath the bruise. Given the fact that the bruise overlays the area in which the fracture was eventually found, the photograph may make it slightly more probable that a fracture existed at the time of birth. However, it does not conclusively establish that fact, as Pudelski argues, especially in light of the strong evidence that the State presented at trial, such as the lack of signs of healing and the sharp edges of the fracture, indicating that the fracture was a new injury that had occurred within 24 hours of the child's death. Second, this photograph is entirely cumulative. Pudelski's experts all opined at trial that the skull fracture existed at birth and did not contribute to the child's death, and the jury heard and rejected this theory. The photograph does not add anything of significance to the evidence and theories presented at trial. Moreover, testimony at trial had already established that the child had a large red bruise on the back right side of her head at birth, i.e. the caput testified to by the medical personnel who delivered the child. The jury thus already knew that such a bruise existed on the child's head at birth and could have considered the argument that the bruise indicated the existence of a skull fracture at birth, as Pudelski's experts opined. The jury was not convinced, however, and found that the skull fracture and resulting cerebral edema were new injuries. A photograph of the bruise, when direct testimony had already established its existence, adds nothing of significance to the evidence presented at trial and would not compel a juror to credit Pudelski's expert witness testimony and discredit the State's evidence. Even if the jury had been presented with the photograph, Pudelski has not shown that the result of the trial would have been different. The trial court did not abuse its discretion or misapply Ohio law when denying Pudelski's motion for new trial, and the denial of the motion did not infringe on Pudelski's due process rights or his right to a fundamentally fair trial. The court of appeals' affirmance of the trial court's decision was reasonable and likewise did not deny Pudelski a fundamentally fair trial or violate his right to due process of law. Pudelski is not entitled to habeas relief on his first ground for relief.