Opinion ID: 148961
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Does Ruiz Require Reversal Here?

Text: To succeed on his Rule 60(b)(6) motion, Balentine must demonstrate a basis for relief from the district court's 2008 judgment, as affirmed by this court. The issue before the district court in late September 2009 was whether something about the Court of Criminal Appeals September 22, 2009 decision was a basis to overturn the district court's 2008 judgment that the Wiggins claim could not be exhausted at that late date. The Supreme Court has considered whether a Rule 60(b) motion, filed several years after the inmate's Section 2254 application had been denied, was an available procedural option. Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. at 527-28, 125 S.Ct. 2641. Although a Rule 60(b) motion should be denied if it challenges on the merits an earlier denial of habeas relief, [t]hat is not the case ... when a Rule 60(b) motion attacks, not the substance of the federal court's resolution of a claim on the merits, but some defect in the integrity of the federal habeas proceedings. When no claim is presented, there is no basis for contending that the Rule 60(b) motion should be treated like a habeas corpus application. If neither the motion itself nor the federal judgment from which it seeks relief substantively addresses federal grounds for setting aside the movant's state conviction, allowing the motion to proceed as denominated creates no inconsistency with the habeas statute or rules. Id. at 532-33, 125 S.Ct. 2641 (footnote omitted). This means that in order for Balentine to proceed, he must have raised in his Rule 60(b) motion something other than a merits-based ruling in the earlier judgment. Balentine argues that on September 22, 2009, the Court of Criminal Appeals reached the merits, thereby vitiating our earlier conclusion that the unexhausted claim was no longer a viable one in state court. According to Balentine, this is not an attack on a merits ruling in the earlier federal decision, but an undermining of a procedural ruling regarding the inability of Balentine to exhaust. For guidance in analyzing whether there was anything vitiating about the Texas court's latest Balentine ruling, we again turn to Ruiz, the seminal application of Gonzalez in this Circuit. The district court in Ruiz's Section 2254 proceedings denied habeas relief because his ineffective assistance claims were procedurally defaulted. As we explained on appeal, the district court made clear that his ruling rested on his conclusion that Texas law precludes petitioner from obtaining a ruling on the merits of his currently unexhausted claims ... in a successive state habeas corpus application. Ruiz's federal counsel asked the federal district court to stay the federal proceeding to allow Ruiz to return to state court to exhaust the ineffective-assistance claim, pointing to the [Court of Criminal Appeals's] then-recent abandonment of its refusal to accept a state court habeas application so long as the petitioner had a federal habeas petition pending. Ruiz, 504 F.3d at 525. Ruiz had appealed the initial denial of relief, and we affirmed. Ruiz v. Quarterman, 460 F.3d 638 (5th Cir.2006). At the time the Ruiz federal district court made its first rulings, Texas had not abandoned its bar to successive petitions. Ruiz, 504 F.3d at 529. However, after the district court's ruling, Texas undermined that barrier: While the district court's conclusion of futility was sound when made, it has been undermined by recent decisions by the [Court of Criminal Appeals]. In January 2007, the [Court of Criminal Appeals] decided Ex parte Hood, [211 S.W.3d 767 (Tex.Crim.App.2007),] indicating for the first time that there are judicially-created exceptions to section five. Before this decision, neither Ruiz nor the district court had reason to believe that the [Court of Criminal Appeals] would create an equitable exception to the successor bar. On April 25, 2007, the [Court of Criminal Appeals] decided Ex parte Campbell, [226 S.W.3d 418 (Tex.Crim.App.2007),] which, as we explained above, held that the Texas procedural bar based on factual unavailability incorporates a question of federal constitutional law. Before this decision, neither Ruiz nor the district court had any basis to view the state successor provision as anything but an independent and adequate state ground. Id. After this court's initial affirmance, Ruiz returned to state court and received a ruling from the Court of Criminal Appeals. Its unpublished order stated, We have reviewed these claims and find that they do not meet the requirements for consideration of subsequent claims under Article 11.071, Section 5. This application is dismissed as an abuse of the writ.... Losing in state court, Ruiz filed his Rule 60(b)(6) motion in federal district court. It was denied. Ruiz, 504 F.3d at 529. On appeal, we held that this was a proper Rule 60(b)(6) motion. We quoted language from Gonzalez that there is no new habeas claim if a petitioner merely asserts that a previous ruling which precluded a merits determination was in errorfor example, a denial for such reasons as failure to exhaust, procedural default, or statute-of-limitations bar. Gonzalez, 545 U.S. at 532 n. 4, 125 S.Ct. 2641. We now turn to the case before us. Like Ruiz, Balentine requested a stay of the federal proceedings so he could return to state court to exhaust the ineffective assistance claim, and that stay was denied in 2008. The relief from judgment that Balentine seeks now is to set aside the 2008 decision not to enter a stay that would have allowed him to return to state court. We have already determined that, subsequent to that 2008 denial, Balentine received a merits ruling from the Court of Criminal Appeals. He returned to state court without a stay, exhausted his Wiggins claim under our construction of the Court of Criminal Appeals's order, and is now back. Balentine now seeks to be put in the position a stay would have placed him in his initial Section 2254 proceeding; granting him relief from the 2008 denial of a stay would allow him to proceed as if this were the original Section 2254 application, exhaustion completed. We now analyze whether the stay was properly denied in 2008. The rules for entering stays were well-explained by the district court at that time. Prior to AEDPA, federal petitions were dismissed, not stayed, so that petitioners could return to state court. See Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509, 519, 102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379 (1982). With AEDPA, though, a one-year deadline was created, which meant such a practice would almost certainly bar the inmate on his return to federal court after the renewed state proceedings concluded. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d). After AEDPA, the Supreme Court allowed Section 2254 proceedings to be stayed in quite limited situations. Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 277, 125 S.Ct. 1528, 161 L.Ed.2d 440 (2005). The limits were created by AEDPA's rules, which sought to reduce delays in the post-conviction relief process, require total exhaustion, and, joining those two concerns, prevent inmates from piecemealing their claims. Id. at 276, 125 S.Ct. 1528. To meet AEDPA' commands as well as serve the interests presented in stay requests, this balance was required: For these reasons, stay and abeyance should be available only in limited circumstances. Because granting a stay effectively excuses a petitioner's failure to present his claims first to the state courts, stay and abeyance is only appropriate when the district court determines there was good cause for the petitioner's failure to exhaust his claims first in state court. Moreover, even if a petitioner had good cause for that failure, the district court would abuse its discretion if it were to grant him a stay when his unexhausted claims are plainly meritless. Id. at 277, 125 S.Ct. 1528. In its March 31, 2008 order denying Balentine a stay, the district court quoted this part of Rhines. The district court concluded that Balentine's return to state court with a second habeas application would have been futile. The order cited one of our first opinions to apply Rhines, which held a state procedural bar would make a claim meritless under Rhines. See Neville v. Dretke, 423 F.3d 474, 479-80 (5th Cir.2005). The district court found that Balentine's unexhausted Wiggins claim would encounter such a procedural bar. The district court also concluded that even if at times the Court of Criminal Appeals ignored procedural barsoccasional acts of gracethe state rule would remain an adequate one because the procedural bar must be applied regularly but need not always be applied. See Amos v. Scott, 61 F.3d 333, 342 (5th Cir.1995). [2] Then on September 28, 2009, the district court denied relief from its 2008 judgment. It found that the Court of Criminal Appeals's September 22, 2009 order was not on the merits. It analyzed Ruiz as being limited to its peculiar facts of a hard-to-decipher split vote at the Court of Criminal Appeals. The district court also concluded that the Hughes abuse of the writ language made the Texas court's ruling an independent and adequate state ground. We find only one flaw in this reasoning, but it affects all the conclusions. We have explained why we do not consider Ruiz to be a case limited to the peculiar facts of the four-vote Court of Criminal Appeals decision. Because we have found Ruiz to require us to hold that the Court of Criminal Appeals decided the case on the merits, the rest of the district court's ruling also falls. The Ruiz court held that the equities relevant to Rule 60(b)(6) applied to the re-considering [of] a dismissal of a claim now freed of the baggage threatening the jurisdiction of the court. Ruiz, 504 F.3d at 531. Therefore, in reviewing the denial of Rule 60(b) relief in Ruiz, the opinion weighed the equities under Rule 60(b). Id. at 528-32. The Ruiz court noted that the district court, in its opinion denying the original Section 2254 application, had found Ruiz's claims of ineffective assistance of counsel to be significant, potentially meritorious arguments that could not be reached by the court because of the failure to exhaust. Id. at 530. The district court nonetheless denied a stay for what it considered the futile exercise of returning to state court to present the claims. Id. Among the weightier statements by the Ruiz court, though perhaps not a holding, was this: We are given no rational reason to conclude that the equities run against Ruiz, despite the fundamental unfairness of his habeas proceedings.... Whatever be the explanation, in this difficult area of the law of capital punishment, we are met with the inescapable conclusion that the district court's balancing of equities was infected by its first holdingsthat the claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel were again not before it and that it had been correct in holding that the state court would not decide the case on a return to it. And of course if this first conclusion of the district court were sound then it lacked jurisdiction over the resulting successive writ. Id. at 530-31. On this basis, the Ruiz court found an abuse of discretion. As in Ruiz, here there was strong concern expressed in the earlier Section 2254 proceedings as to the effectiveness of Balentine's prior counsel. The magistrate judge's Report and Recommendation of September 27, 2007, adopted by the district court, made these observations about Balentine's trial: No mitigation evidence concerning petitioner's background, childhood, or family was presented at his trial, and trial counsel called no witnesses at the punishment phase. Other than the criminal history from the prosecution, petitioner's counsel presented no facts about petitioner's background, childhood, or family to the jury. While this omission, if in fact it was an omission, presents a substantial question, it does not necessarily compel a finding of deficient performance if counsel's actions were based upon a reasonable tactical decision.... A decision to not present mitigating evidence may be reasonable if based upon evidence in their investigation to suggest that a mitigation case, in its own right, would have been counterproductive, or that further investigation would have been fruitless. Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 525, 123 S.Ct. at 2537. ... The fact that trial counsel may have determined the defense [of denying guilt] to be petitioner's best defense would not, however, justify a failure to investigate and obtain all available mitigation evidence. Indeed, before counsel could make a decision as to whether mitigation evidence should be offered, counsel would have to know what evidence there was. The record before this Court does not reflect the extent of trial counsel's investigation or knowledge of mitigation evidence at the time of trial. We only know none was presented. Therefore, a review of the merits of this claim would require this Court to allow further discovery, and/or hold an evidentiary hearing to hear testimony from trial counsel and defense investigators regarding the extent of the defense investigation in preparation for the punishment phase of petitioner's trial, whether any mitigation evidence was obtained, and, if so, why it was not presented. Such additional discovery and an evidentiary hearing are not warranted, and, in fact, are prohibited by Fifth Circuit precedent because the claims asserted in grounds seven and eight are unexhausted and procedurally barred. We interpret these points, based on a review of the record of the Section 2254 proceedings, to indicate that absent the exhaustion issue, there was reason for an evidentiary hearing. The Ruiz court made it clear that we review the denial of Rule 60(b) relief for an abuse of discretion, but that we exercise care if denial of relief precludes examination of the full merits of the cause because in such instances `even a slight abuse may justify reversal.' Id. at 532 (quoting Seven Elves, Inc. v. Eskenazi, 635 F.2d 396, 402 (5th Cir.1981)). Balentine's equities compare closely to those of Ruiz in these ways: (1) There were serious concerns that constitutionally ineffective lawyering occurred due to counsel's failure to investigate for mitigation evidence. (2) In the Section 2254 proceedings, the Ruiz district court found serious defects in trial court representation regarding investigating for mitigation evidence, but held the issue to be defaulted. Here the district court similarly adopted the magistrate judge's finding of serious issues of ineffectiveness, and stated that an evidentiary hearing would be needed to be certain. (3) In the initial federal habeas cases for both, the inmate sought a stay and remand to state court, and both were denied as futile. (4) In both, the Court of Criminal Appeals in considering the successive application under Article 11.071, Section 5, issued an order that, under the Ruiz interpretation, is not clearly based on an adequate state ground independent of the merits. Therefore, the merits by imputation were reached by the Texas court in the successive application in each case, vitiating the district court's finding that a stay and return to state court to exhaust would be futile. (5) On return to federal district court, Rule 60(b) relief was denied. Ruiz controls. The procedural hurdle regarding exhaustion that was perceived in the Section 2254 proceedings has been eliminated. The equities weigh in favor of Balentine in the same manner as they did for Ruiz. Balentine is entitled to have relief granted from the 2008 denial of a stay. The district court on remand should consider that Balentine now has an exhausted state Wiggins claim. That claim should be reviewed, in conjunction with any necessary evidentiary hearing, under the appropriate AEDPA deferential standards.