Opinion ID: 2765930
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mr. Dixon’s Claims

Text: We turn now to the claims for which Mr. Dixon requests a COA. A COA will issue “only if the applicant has made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right.” 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2). This standard requires “a demonstration that . . . includes showing that reasonable jurists could debate whether (or, for that matter, agree that) the petition should have been resolved in a different manner or that the issues presented were adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further.” Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, the applicant must show that the district court’s resolution of the constitutional claim was either “debatable or wrong.” Id. If the application was denied on procedural grounds, the applicant faces a double hurdle. Not only must the applicant make a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right, but he must also show “that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the district court was correct in its procedural ruling.” Id. “Where a plain procedural bar is present and the district court is correct to invoke it to dispose of the case, a reasonable jurist could not conclude either that the district court erred in dismissing the petition or that the petitioner should be allowed to proceed further.” Id. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), provides that when a claim has been adjudicated on the merits in a state court, a federal court can grant habeas relief only if the applicant establishes that the state-court decision was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, 5 as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” or “was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), (2). As we have explained: Under the “contrary to” clause, we grant relief only 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 Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts. Gipson v. Jordan, 376 F.3d 1193, 1196 (10th Cir. 2004) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Relief is provided under the “unreasonable application” clause “only if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from the Supreme Court’s decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner’s case.” Id. (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, a federal court may not issue a habeas writ simply because it concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. See id. Rather, that application must have been unreasonable. Therefore, for those of Mr. Dixon’s claims that the state courts adjudicated on the merits, “AEDPA’s deferential treatment of state court decisions must be incorporated into our consideration of [his] request for [a] COA.” Dockins v. Hines, 374 F.3d 935, 938 (10th Cir. 2004).
Most of Mr. Dixon’s claims are procedurally barred. “Before a federal court may grant habeas relief to a state prisoner, the prisoner must exhaust his remedies in state court.” O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 842 (1999); see 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1). If 6 the prisoner has not exhausted a claim, we will find a procedural default if the “unexhausted claim . . . would be procedurally barred under state law if the petitioner returned to state court to exhaust it.” Moore v. Schoeman, 288 F.3d 1231, 1233 n.3 (10th Cir. 2002). In its order of April 14, 2014, the district court organized Mr. Dixon’s many claims into five main claims, with multiple subclaims in each, and dismissed most of the subclaims as procedurally barred. See Dixon, 2014 WL 1466610, at –3, . We follow the district court’s numbering. The subclaims dismissed by the district court were either not exhausted because they were not presented at all to the state courts on direct appeal or in postconviction proceedings and would now be barred under Colorado law, see id. at  (subclaims 1(a), 1(c), 1(d)(i), 1(d)(ii), 1(e)(ii), and 1(e)(iii)); id. at  (subclaims 2(b), 2(d)(i), 2(e), and 2(g)), or were not presented properly and are likewise procedurally barred, see id. at  (subclaim 1(d)(iii)); id. at  (subclaim 2(c)(ii), insofar as it argues a violation of Mr. Dixon’s right to confront witnesses); id. at –9 (subclaims 2(a), 2(c)(i), and 2(d)(ii)); id. at –11 (claims 3, 4, and 5, related to ineffective assistance of counsel). Mr. Dixon can overcome a procedural bar if he can show “cause and prejudice or a fundamental miscarriage of justice.” Cummings v. Sirmons, 506 F.3d 1211, 1224 (10th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). A prisoner may establish a fundamental miscarriage of justice by showing actual innocence, see Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 314–15 (1995), which Mr. Dixon claims. But he must support that claim “with new 7 reliable evidence—whether it be exculpatory scientific evidence, trustworthy eyewitness accounts, or critical physical evidence—that was not presented at trial.” Id. at 324. Mr. Dixon has presented nothing new, so his actual-innocence argument cannot lift the procedural bar. A more complicated question is whether Mr. Dixon has shown cause to excuse the procedural default of his claims of ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC). According to the district court (again, Mr. Dixon does not dispute the district court’s description of his legal proceedings), the postconviction state trial court addressed Mr. Dixon’s IAC claims on the merits in a detailed order. See Dixon, 2014 WL 1466610, at . On Mr. Dixon’s postconviction appeal, however, the Colorado Court of Appeals refused to consider his IAC claims, ruling that they were underdeveloped or belatedly raised in his reply brief. See id. at –11. The district court therefore held that they were procedurally defaulted. See id. at . Mr. Dixon argued in the district court that he had shown excusable cause for his procedural default because he was without counsel during his state postconviction proceedings. Even construing Mr. Dixon’s request for a COA liberally, we doubt that he has renewed that argument. Regardless, the argument is unavailing. We recognize that when postconviction proceedings provide the first opportunity for a prisoner to raise an IAC claim, “[i]nadequate assistance of counsel at initial-review collateral proceedings may establish cause for a prisoner’s procedural default of a claim of ineffective assistance at trial.” Martinez v. Ryan, 132 S. Ct. 1309, 1315 (2012); see also Trevino v. Thaler, 133 8 S. Ct. 1911, 1921 (2013). This is because the postconviction trial court will be the prisoner’s first opportunity to present his IAC claim, so he may need effective counsel to ensure that some court adjudicates the merits of that claim. See Martinez, 132 S. Ct. at 1317. But Mr. Dixon raises no argument that his IAC claims were not adequately addressed by the Colorado district court. And once an issue has been properly considered in postconviction proceedings at the trial-court level, a later procedural default cannot be excused by ineffective assistance of counsel. “While counsel’s errors in these [additional] proceedings preclude any further review of the prisoner’s claim, the claim will have been addressed by one court, whether it be the trial court, the appellate court on direct review, or the trial court in an initial-review collateral proceeding.” Id. at 1316. Here, Mr. Dixon’s IAC claim was addressed on the merits by the postconviction trial court. It was only on appeal that his denial of counsel potentially resulted in a procedural bar to further pursuit of his IAC claims. He can demand no more than what he received: a proceeding in which his “claims [were] addressed by the state habeas trial court.” Id.; see id. at 1319 (noting, with apparent approval, Colorado’s screening procedure for collateral attacks).
Only four of Mr. Dixon’s subclaims survive: 1(b)(i), 1(b)(ii), 1(e)(1), and 1(f). We address each in turn.