Opinion ID: 22204
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Effect of AEDPA on Williams's Petition

Text: 19 Williams's petition, filed on April 22, 1997, is governed by AEDPA, which significantly restricts the availability of habeas relief to state prisoners. AEDPA amended section 2254(d) to provide in relevant part: 20 An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respectto any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim- 21 (1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or 22 (2) resulted in a decision that 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). 23 Subsection (d)(2), as amended, applies to the state court's factual determinations, while (d)(1) applies to questions of law and mixed questions of law and fact. See Lockhart v. Johnson, 104 F.3d 54, 56-57 (5th Cir. 1997). The district court based its ruling on the availability of Cage-Victor error to Williams's petition, which is purely a question of law; accordingly, subsection (d)(1) guides our analysis. The operative effect of subsection (d)(1) is that a district court may only grant habeas relief if the constitutional new rule relied upon by the petitioner was either clearly established by the Supreme Court at the time his state conviction became final, or if the Supreme Court has held that this new rule is retroactive on habeas. Muhleisen at 844. Because Williams cannot satisfy either of these criteria, we must affirm the district court's denial of his petition. 24 This Court's holding in Muhleisen affirmed the denial of a post-AEDPA habeas petition invoking the Cage-Victor rule to challenge a conviction that became final before Cage and Victor had been announced. Applying section 2254(d)(1), the Muhleisen Court stated that we can grant a writ of habeas corpus only if the state court's determination of law, on a de novo review, violated Supreme Court precedent in existence at the time of the petitioner's conviction. Muhleisen, 168 F.3d at 844 (citation omitted). Because the Supreme Court handed down Cage thirteen years after the petitioner's conviction became final on direct appeal, the Court was bound by AEDPA to deny Muhleisen's petition. In Muhleisen, as here, the petitioner raised his Cage claim in a post-conviction petition before the Louisiana Supreme Court, which in 1995, after both Cage and Sullivan, denied writs without opinion. Muhleisen at 842. See Muhleisen v. Whitley, 664 So.2d 418 (La. 1995). Id. Similarly, Williams's conviction became final long before Cage, although the Louisiana Supreme Court did not deny post-conviction writs until after both Cage and Sullivan, and under Muhleisen we must deny his petition as well. 25 In Muhleisen, we acknowledged Humphrey II's holding that in pre-AEDPA cases Cage and Victor applied retroactively on habeas, but concluded that we were bound by AEDPA to dismiss the petition. The clear import of Muhleisen is that a lower federal court's holding that Cage and Victor apply retroactively is insufficient to make them retroactive under AEDPA. It therefore seems plain to us that under Muhleisen in order for a new rule to be available under AEDPA to section 2254 petitioners, the Supreme Court itself must have held that the rule is retroactive. It has not done so with respect to Cage errors. Muhleisen; Smith, 142 F.3d at 835-36. 5 26 Nothing in the Supreme Court's recent decision in Williams v. Taylor, 120 S.Ct. 1495 (2000), is contrary to this rule of Muhleisen.In Williams, Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to parts I, III and IV; Justice O'Connor delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to part II (except for a here immaterial footnote in which Justice Scalia did not join) and part V. Williams was not concerned with whether or when under AEDPA § 2254(d) what would be new rules under Teague would be deemed to come within one of the Teague exceptions so as to be applicable retroactively. The presently relevant portion of Williams is its part II. Justice O'Connor's opinion for the Court, and Justice Stevens' separate part II opinion (in which Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer joined), each plainly reflect the common sense proposition that AEDPA's section 2254(d) does not work any expansion of the availability to state prisoners of federal habeas relief. Both Justices recognized that it worked a curtailment of habeas availability, though in Justice O'Connor's view a greater curtailment than in Justice Stevens's view. Justice Stevens states that AEDPA codifies Teague to the extent that Teague requires federal habeas courts to deny relief that is contingent upon a rule of law not clearly established at the time the state conviction became final. Id. at 1506 (emphasis added). Justice Stevens goes on to acknowledge that AEDPA has added . . . a clause limiting the area of relevant law to that 'determined by the Supreme Court of the United States'. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) . . . If this Court has not broken sufficient legal ground to establish an asked-for constitutional principle, the lower federal courts cannot themselves establish such a principle with clarity sufficient to satisfy the AEDPA bar. Id. at 1506-07. Justice O'Connor likewise concludes that § 2254(d)(1) places a new constraint on the power of a federal habeas court to grant a state prisoner's application for a writ ofhabeas corpus . . . Id. at 1523 (emphasis added). She observes that the phrase 'clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States' . . . refers to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of this Court's decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision. Id. 6 Of most relevance to present case, Justice O'Connor goes on to state the 'clearly established Federal law' phrase [in section 2254(d)(1)] bears only a slight connection to our Teague jurisprudence in that § 2254(d)(1) restricts the source of clearly established law to this Court's jurisprudence. Id. The phrase Teague jurisprudence would facially seem to include the question of whether a new rule comes within a Teague exception so as to be retroactively applicable. 27 Certainly nothing in Williams casts doubt on Muhleisen. Indeed, if anything the emphasis in Justice O'Connor's opinion for the Williams Court that habeas relief can only be based on Supreme Court jurisprudence as reflected in Supreme Court holdings, not dicta, only serves to strengthen Muhleisen. 28 Regardless of the precise contours of post-AEDPA habeas retroactivity, Muhleisen controls and mandates the dismissal of Williams's petition. As of the present time, the Supreme Court has not held (or even stated in dicta) that the Cage-Victor rule applies retroactively on collateral review, and thus Williams cannot benefit from that rule under the second Teague exception, as he could have done pre-AEDPA under Humphrey II. See Muhleisen, 168 F.3d at 844. 7