Opinion ID: 787126
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Federal Collateral Review Before the District Court

Text: 34 On March 9, 2001, petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Petitioner presented the following claims as grounds for relief: 35 I. Petitioner was denied his constitutional right to confront witnesses against him when the prosecutor advised the jury during opening statement that petitioner had confessed to the murder, where the prosecutor without even the pretense of due diligence failed thereafter to produce the witness to the alleged confession, where defense counsel never responded to the issue of the `confession' in any way, and where the court's instruction failed utterly to remedy the enormous prejudice to the petitioner. 36 II. Petitioner was deprived of the effective assistance of counsel when trial counsel failed to object or move for mistrial based upon an obvious deprivation of the right to confront witnesses following the prosecutor's unsupported statement to the jury that the petitioner had confessed, and where appellate counsel failed to frame this issue properly as the deprivation of the right to confront witnesses in violation of the Sixth Amendment. 37 On October 15, 2002, the district court conducted an evidentiary hearing in which it found trial counsel was ineffective, and conditionally granted petitioner a writ of habeas corpus on petitioner's Confrontation Clause claim. 8 38
39 On state collateral review, the Michigan Supreme Court denied petitioner leave to appeal the trial court's denial of his motion for relief from judgment on the ground that petitioner failed to meet the burden of establishing entitlement to relief under M.C.R. 6.508(D). People v. Hicks, 463 Mich. 978, 623 N.W.2d 599 (2001). In so holding, the state court did not specify whether it was relying upon a particular subsection of M.C.R. 6.508(D). Before the district court, petitioner and respondent argued about whether the Michigan Supreme Court's denial rested upon an adequate and independent state procedural law and, in particular, about whether it relied upon subsection (3) of M.C.R. 6.508(D). M.C.R. 6.508(D)(3) provides: 40 The court may not grant relief to the defendant if the motion... alleges grounds for relief, other than jurisdictional defects, which could have been raised on appeal from the conviction and sentence or in a prior motion under this subchapter [of post-appeal relief], unless the defendant demonstrates (a) good cause for failure to raise such grounds on appeal or in the prior [post-appeal] motion, and (b) actual prejudice from the alleged irregularities that support the claim for relief. 41 Respondent argued that, in denying petitioner relief under M.C.R. § 6.508(D), the Michigan Supreme Court implicitly relied upon subsection (3). Respondent argued that subsection (3) applied because, although petitioner had presented the factual predicate for his Confrontation Clause claim to the Michigan courts on direct review by virtue of his prosecutorial misconduct claim, he had not presented the legal argument for that claim until state collateral review. Petitioner concedes that he did not expressly present his Confrontation Clause claim on direct review. However, petitioner does argue that he fairly presented his Confrontation Clause claim to the Michigan Court of Appeals on direct review based solely on his presentation of the factual predicate. Accordingly, petitioner argues that there was no basis for procedural default under M.C.R. 6.508(D)(3). Alternatively, petitioner argued that appellate counsel's failure to raise the Confrontation Clause claim on direct review constituted ineffective assistance so as to excuse such default. In support, petitioner claimed that appellate counsel buried the Confrontation Clause issue, the most significant constitutional deprivation in th[e] case, in a garden-variety prosecutorial misconduct claim, and that, to the extent that his Confrontation Clause claim is meritorious, such ineffective assistance sufficiently prejudiced him. Respondent countered that petitioner's appellate counsel did not render ineffective assistance by framing the underlying factual predicate as a prosecutorial misconduct claim — the normal and accepted legal theory — rather than as a Confrontation Clause claim — an unusual and creative legal theory. Petitioner also asserted that the Michigan Supreme Court's arbitrary and ambiguous form order denying him leave to appeal his post-conviction motion for relief from judgment did not constitute an adequate state procedural ground. 42 The district court held that the Michigan Supreme Court, in denying petitioner leave to appeal his motion for relief from judgment under M.C.R. 6.508(D), relied upon subsection (2), not (3). 9 Hicks v. Straub, 239 F.Supp.2d 697, 706-07 (E.D.Mich.2003). M.C.R. 6.508(D)(2) provides: 43 The court may not grant relief to the defendant if the motion... alleges grounds for relief which were decided against the defendant in a prior appeal or proceeding under this subchapter [of post-appeal relief], unless the defendant establishes that a retroactive change in the law has undermined the prior decision; 44 In so holding, the district court reasoned that, although [p]etitioner could have presented his Confrontation Clause claim in a clearer manner, he fairly presented [it] to the Michigan state courts on direct review. Id. at 706. The district court underscored that petitioner, in his brief to the Michigan Court of Appeals, argued that the prosecutor engaged in misconduct by relaying in his opening statement petitioner's alleged confession to the murder and then subsequently failing, because of a lack of due diligence, to produce that inmate as a witness at trial. Id. Relying upon McMeans v. Brigano, 228 F.3d 674, 681 (6th Cir.2000), the district court concluded that the facts underlying the prosecutorial misconduct claim ... [that petitioner presented] in his state court briefs were `well within the mainstream of constitutional law' [on the Confrontation Clause] such that the Michigan state courts should have recognized and addressed the Confrontation Clause issue. Id. In further support, the district court posited that petitioner had expressly presented his Confrontation Clause claim, as such, on state collateral review, and that the Michigan trial court, on such review, had agreed with the prosecutor that petitioner's motion for relief from judgment only presented claims that he had previously presented to the state courts on direct review. 10 Id. According to the district court, because petitioner fairly presented his Confrontation Clause claim to the Michigan courts on direct review, the courts, not petitioner, bear the blame for their failure to recognize and to rule upon that claim. Id. The district court found that the state courts' failure to recognize and to address petitioner's fairly-presented Confrontation Clause claim in denying petitioner relief on direct review constituted a constructive denial of that claim for purposes of M.C.R. 6.508(D)(2). Id. at 707. After finding that the Michigan Supreme Court denied petitioner leave to appeal under M.C.R. 6.508(D)(2), the court held that this state procedural law is inadequate to bar federal habeas review because it is simply a rule of res judicata barring a defendant from re [-]litigating claims in a motion for relief from judgment which were decided adversely to him in a prior state court decision. 11 Id. Thus, the district court found that petitioner had not procedurally defaulted his Confrontation Clause claim on state collateral review. Id. 45
46 Before the district court, respondent argued that, to the extent petitioner fairly presented his Confrontation Clause claim to the state courts on direct review by virtue of presenting the factual basis underlying his prosecutorial misconduct claim, petitioner, nevertheless, procedurally defaulted that claim. As respondent pointed out, the Michigan Court of Appeals, on direct review, found that petitioner had procedurally defaulted his prosecutorial misconduct claim by failing to object at trial to its underlying factual predicate — the prosecutor's opening statement relaying petitioner's purported confession. Respondent further argued that trial counsel's failure to object to this alleged Confrontation Clause violation did not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel so as to excuse any such default. Respondent asserted that petitioner's trial counsel chose not to object or move for a mistrial when the state failed to produce Brand as a matter of trial strategy. Specifically, respondent maintained that the failure of Brand to appear was a fortunate turn of events because Brand's testimony would only have strengthened the prosecution's case. Moreover, according to respondent, had trial counsel objected and received a mistrial, there would have been the risk that the government, at the re-trial, would have been able to produce Brand as a witness. 47 The district court held that, in case the Michigan Court of Appeals, on direct review, found petitioner's Confrontation Clause claim procedurally defaulted due to his trial counsel's failure to object to that underlying violation at trial, 12 that failure constituted ineffective assistance and, thus, excused any such procedural default. After conducting an evidentiary hearing on the matter, the district court agreed with petitioner that trial counsel's assistance was objectively unreasonable for the following reasons: 1) it should have been obvious to him that the prosecutor's failure to produce Brand at trial violated petitioner's right to confrontation; 2) he had no strategic reason not to object to this Confrontation Clause violation; 3) his purported reason for failing to object — that he did not want the prosecution to produce Brand as a witness at any re-trial — was unreasonable and wholly unsupported by the record due to the availability of substantial impeachment material against Brand; 13 and 4) he did not even obtain an adequate curative instruction because the instruction that the trial court gave did not reference Brand as the jail inmate to whom petitioner allegedly confessed. Id. at 712-13. The district court found that, because the prosecutor's unsupported opening statement violated petitioner's right to confront the witnesses against him, trial counsel's deficient representation sufficiently prejudiced petitioner. Id. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), the district court further found that the prior-state court adjudication denying petitioner's ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim on the merits constituted an unreasonable application of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), the pertinent, clearly-established Supreme Court precedent. Id. Thus, the district court found the procedural default doctrine did not bar its review of petitioner's Confrontation Clause claim on the merits. Id.
48 Relying upon Harris v. Stovall, 212 F.3d 940 (6th Cir.2000), the district court held that, where, as here, the petitioner fairly presented his federal constitutional claim of a violation of the confrontation clause to the state courts on direct review, and those courts, in denying that claim, failed to address it, a federal court must conduct an independent review of that state court's decision under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Id. at 707. The court reasoned that such a denial constituted an adjudication on the merits — albeit without any reasoning — for purposes of triggering § 2254(d). Id. 49 In reviewing petitioner's Confrontation Clause Claim, the district court found that the prosecutor's opening statement relaying petitioner's purported confession violated petitioner's right to confrontation, and that this violation was not harmless error. Id. at 711. The district court further found, pursuant to § 2254(d), that the prior state-court denial of petitioner's Confrontation Clause claim on the merits was an unreasonable application of the pertinent, clearly-established Supreme Court precedent. Id. at 712; see generally Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 403, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965), Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968), and Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 89 S.Ct. 1420, 22 L.Ed.2d 684 (1969). Consequently, the district court conditionally granted petitioner's application for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 on his Confrontation Clause claim. Id. at 714.