Opinion ID: 770602
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Unreasonable application of precedent

Text: 75 Where the state-court decision is not directly opposed to Supreme Court precedent, but involves an application of the high court's caselaw, federal habeas petitions are judged under the unreasonable application standard. In Williams v. Taylor, the Supreme Court clarified the reasonableness standard in two ways: 76 First, the reasonableness of an application of federal law is judged by an objective standard. See Williams v. Taylor, 120 S.Ct. at 1521-22. Rather than decide reasonableness by reference to the decisions of all reasonable jurists, which might lead a federal habeas court to rest[] its determination ... on the simple fact that at least one of the Nation's jurists has applied the relevant federal law in the same manner the state court did, federal courts should ask whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable. Id.; see also Clark, 214 F.3d at 320-21; Barnabei v. Angelone, 214 F.3d 463, 469 (4th Cir. 2000). 77 Second, an unreasonable application of federal law is different from an application that is simply incorrect or erroneous. See Williams v. Taylor, 120 S.Ct. at 1522-23. The Court emphasized that: 78 In § 2254(d)(1), Congress specifically used the word unreasonable, and not a term like erroneous or incorrect. Under § 2254(d)(1)'s unreasonable application clause, then, a federal habeas court may not issue the writ simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Rather, that application must also be unreasonable. 79 120 S.Ct. at 1522; accord Hameen, 212 F.3d at 235. 80 The Supreme Court also somewhat clarified what it means for a state-court decision to be an unreasonable application of ... clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court. In particular, Williams v. Taylor considered a prisoner's claim that the state-court decision ... correctly identifie[d] the governing legal rule but applie[d] it unreasonably to the facts of [the] particular prisoner's case. 120 S.Ct. at 1520; accord Hill v. Johnson, 210 F.3d 481, 485 (5th Cir. 2000). The Supreme Court ruled that under the proper standard for evaluating claims of unreasonable application, such a claim, if valid, certainly would qualify as a decision 'involv[ing] an unreasonable application of ... clearly established Federal law.' Williams v. Taylor, 120 S.Ct. at 1520 (alterations in original); accord Clark, 214 F.3d at 320. 81 The present appeal, however, presents a slightly different question. While Williams v. Taylor involved the reasonableness of the application of a legal principle that clearly governed the set of facts presented, see 120 S.Ct. at 1511 (ruling that the merits of [petitioner's] claim are squarely governed by Supreme Court precedent), on this appeal petitioner would have us extend the Supreme Court's fair-notice caselaw to situations materially different from those considered in the high court's precedents. Specifically, petitioner contends that it was objectively unreasonable for the state courts to refuse to apply the Supreme Court's fair-notice precedents, which deal with ambiguity in the statute defining the charged offense, to a situation in which the state prisoner was not charged with violation of the ambiguous statute. 82 In Williams v. Taylor, the Supreme Court explicitly declined to determine whether an unreasonable refusal to extend a constitutional doctrine is sufficient to warrant federal habeas relief under AEDPA: 83 The Fourth Circuit also held in [Green v. French, 143 F.3d 865, 869-70 (4th Cir. 1998),] that state-court decisions that unreasonably extend a legal principle from our precedent to a new context where it should not apply (or unreasonably refuse to extend a legal principle to a new context where it should apply) should be analyzed under §2254(d)(1)'s unreasonable application clause. Although that holding may perhaps be correct, the classification does have some problems of precision. ... Today's case does not require us to decide how such extension of legal principle cases should be treated under § 2254(d)(1). For now it is sufficient to hold that when a state-court decision unreasonably applies the law of this Court to the facts of a prisoner's case, a federal court applying § 2254(d)(1) may conclude that the state-court decision falls within that provision's unreasonable application clause. 84 Id. at 1521 (emphasis added; citation omitted); accord Clark, 214 F.3d at 320. (Justice O'Connor's elaboration on the problems of precision presented by the Fourth Circuit's holding is set forth in the margin. 7 ) 85 In a recent plurality opinion that announced the judgment of the Supreme Court, four Justices agreed that [a] state determination may be set aside under [AEDPA's] standard if, under clearly established federal law, the state court was unreasonable in refusing to extend the governing legal principle to a context in which the principle should have controlled. Ramdass v. Angelone, 530 U.S., 120 S.Ct. 2113, 2120 (2000) (plurality opinion of Kennedy, J., in which Rehnquist, C.J., and Scalia and Thomas, JJ., join). This proposition failed to command a majority of the Court. See id. at 2127 (O'Connor, J., concurring in the judgment) (agreeing with the plurality that the state court's decision was neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, Supreme Court law, but restating the AEDPA standard for herself with reference to Williams v. Taylor, which declined to answer this question); id. at 2142 (Stevens, J., with whom Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, JJ., join, dissenting) (opining that the state court's decision was contrary to established Supreme Court precedent). Justice O'Connor's opinion is arguably more narrow than the plurality's and therefore constitutes the holding of the Court. See Marks, 430 U.S. at 193, 97 S.Ct. at 993 (ruling that, where no opinion earns a majority, the holding of the Court is that position taken by the Justice or Justices who concurred in the judgment on the narrowest ground). 86 Because we ultimately determine that the state court's application of the fair-notice precedents was not objectively unreasonable, see post, at 44-49, we decline to decide on this appeal whether unreasonable refusals to extend Supreme Court precedents are sufficient to satisfy AEDPA's requirement of an unreasonable application of Supreme Court caselaw. Instead, we assume arguendo that an unreasonable refusal to extend a Supreme Court precedent to cover other situations would satisfy §2254(d)(1), and move on to examine whether the refusal to extend challenged here was unreasonable. 87 In all of the Supreme Court fair-notice precedents petitioner cites, the defendant was charged under the allegedly ambiguous statute. See ante, at 34-35 (listing cases). Here, however, Lurie was not charged with violation of §352-e(2), and the implications of that provision were introduced only on redirect examination, to demonstrate that the attorney general's office believed that it was the sponsor's obligation to disclose material changes in the offering plan to buyers, who would otherwise rely on the materially false offering plan. Thus Lurie's claim is not that the statute under which he was charged was phrased such that he could not know his actions to be illegal. Rather, he relies on a more attenuated theory: 88 (i) The fraud statutes under which Lurie were charged were clear enough, see ante, at 6-7 (listing the statutes under which Lurie was charged); 89 (ii) however, the jury was allowed to infer that Lurie's behavior was fraudulent on the basis of an official's testimony as to the state's understanding of Lurie's obligations under one particular uncharged statute of the state real estate securities fraud laws; 90 (iii) therefore, because the interpretation offered was the broader of (at least) two plausible interpretations of the uncharged statute, and because Lurie's actions would not have violated that particular statute under the narrower interpretation, the jury was not entitled to consider his noncompliance with the broader interpretation in its deliberations as to Lurie's intent to defraud potential investors in violation of the charged statutes. 91 Lurie is asking this Court to hold that it is objectively unreasonable for state courts to receive evidence bearing on a defendant's state of mind where (i) that evidence takes the form of testimony as to the defendant's legal obligations under uncharged statutes, and (ii) those legal obligations are subject to a less expansive interpretation, under which the defendant was in compliance with those specific obligations. 92 This is a cantilevered extension of the Supreme Court's fair-notice precedents, which focus on ambiguities in the charged violation. On this appeal, we need not decide that such an extension is never warranted; rather, we conclude that the state courts' decision to decline such extension on these facts cannot be considered objectively unreasonable. 93 The requirement of fair notice is justified by the concern that defendants will be convicted of criminal outlawry based not on a clearly proscribed crime, but instead based upon a theory derive[d] ... from some ambiguous implication of the statute defining the crime. United States v. Universal C.I.T. Credit Corp., 344 U.S. 218, 222, 73 S.Ct. 227, 229 (1952). That concern is not implicated here. Lurie was charged under statutes proscribing fraud and larceny--not violation of §352-e(2). Actions in derogation of §352-e(2) are neither necessary nor sufficient to convict a defendant of fraud in connection with real estate securities, and we see no evidence here the jury considered them to be so in convicting Lurie. 8 The Appellate Division made that point in its opinion on Lurie's direct appeal: 94 [DiStephan] explained the conversion process and the statutory requirements, and informed the jury of the nature and timing of defendants' disclosures. She never testified as to the ultimate issue; rather, she left for the jury to decide whether the evidence of defendants' conduct, viewed in the context of the statutory requirements, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants intentionally engaged in a fraudulent scheme to obtain money from unsuspecting purchasers and shareholders. 95 People v. Lurie, 673 N.Y.S.2d 60, 63 (1st Dep't 1998). Lurie contends that the jury might have concluded that Lurie was violating the statutory requirements and therefore--ipso facto--committing fraud. But there is no reason to think that the jury believed that Lurie's purported (but uncharged) violation of this technical statutory requirement was itself sufficient to demonstrate knowing, intentional fraud. 9 96 The state court ruling challenged by Lurie is evidentiary in character. Lurie was a sponsor of a cooperative real estate venture regulated by the attorney general, and DiStephan's testimony expressed the attorney general's regulatory policy. That testimony was admitted to show that Lurie, as a commercial participant in the regulated industry, would know that he was deviating from industry norms and the conventional understanding of the real estate securities disclosure laws. And that showing is arguably relevant to whether Lurie harbored fraudulent intent in deciding to sell apartments, because (i) it evidences the common understanding of the sponsor's obligation to potential purchasers, and (ii) it confirms the intuition that selling apartments on the basis of an offering plan that one knows to be materially false is inconsistent with full and fair disclosure to purchasers and consistent with fraudulent intent. 97 That ruling may have been sound or not. But the question here is whether that ruling was objectively unreasonable in light of the extant Supreme Court fair-notice caselaw. We conclude that it was not. 98 Introduction of the regulatory assumption did not preclude Lurie's introduction of evidence that he believed that the disclosure laws allowed him to sell during the pendency of an amendment. More important, it did not preclude the jury from determining that Lurie's conduct was inept and uninformed rather than fraudulent, or that (even if Lurie believed himself to be in technical compliance with the disclosure laws) his sale of apartments to buyers who were relying on information he knew to be materially false was nonetheless fraudulent. DiStephan's testimony notwithstanding, the jury was still required to find Lurie guilty of fraud only if it determined that he fulfilled the mens rea requirement of the charged crimes. 99 In short, the evidentiary ruling may have been sound or not, but the refusal by the New York courts to apply the rule of lenity to a statute that was neither charged nor mentioned at trial is not an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent. The district court does not demonstrate that its decision is an application of Supreme Court precedents in terms of AEDPA's requirements. 10 We therefore reverse, and hold that the refusal of the New York courts to apply the Supreme Court's fair-notice guarantees in this attenuated context did not amount to an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent.