Opinion ID: 77872
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Appearance-of-Partiality Claim

Text: In his § 2254 petition and on appeal, Davis has not alleged, and there is no evidence that Judge Teel had, any actual bias against Davis. There is also no allegation of any error in Judge Teel's detention or certification rulings. Rather, Davis's claim is (1) that Judge Teel's impartiality might reasonably have been questioned when he presided over hearings where his brother was a prosecutor, (2) that Judge Teel should have recused sua sponte due to the appearance of partiality, and (3) that the Supreme Court has clearly established that an appearance of partiality by a state judge violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and requires reversal of a state criminal conviction. Before discussing the Due Process Clause, we stress that the need to foster an appearance of impartiality in the judiciary is not only important but also well enshrined in the statutes and ethical canons governing both state and federal judges. For example, the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics require that [a] judge should disqualify himself in a proceeding in which . . . his impartiality might reasonably be questioned, which includes cases where a person within the fourth degree of relationship to the judge is a party to the proceeding or an officer, director, or trustee of a party or has an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding. Ala. Canons Jud. Ethics 3C(1)(d)(i)-(ii). [10] Similarly, both the federal recusal statute and the Code of Conduct for United States Judges require recusal in any proceeding where a judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned. 28 U.S.C. § 455(a); Code of Conduct for United States Judges Canon 3C(1); see also Model Code of Jud. Conduct R. 2.11 (2007) (same). The judiciary's concern with maintaining appearances of impartiality stems from the recognized need for an unimpeachable judicial system in which the public has unwavering confidence. Potashnick v. Port City Constr. Co., 609 F.2d 1101, 1111 (5th Cir.1980) [11] (discussing § 455, the federal recusal statute). [12] Furthermore, we have no doubt that a federal judge would have been required to recuse if faced with the same situation as Judge Teel where the judge's brother appeared as an attorney representing a party before Judge Teel. Both the federal recusal statute and Code of Judicial Conduct for Federal Judges, unlike the Alabama Canons, provide that a judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned when someone within the third degree of relationship [to the judge] . . . [i]s acting as a lawyer in the proceeding. 28 U.S.C. § 455(b)(5)(ii); Code of Conduct for United States Judges Canon 3C(1)(d)(ii). [13] However, in the instant case, our habeas review under § 2254(d) does not concern application of the federal recusal statute or federal canons because they do not govern state judges. See 28 U.S.C. § 455(a); Introduction to the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. Furthermore, we need not decide whether the Alabama appellate court's determination that recusal was not required under the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics was correct under Alabama law. We will not question the Alabama appellate court's application of state law in federal habeas corpus review. See Carrizales v. Wainwright, 699 F.2d 1053, 1055 (11th Cir.1983) (A state's interpretation of its own laws or rules provides no basis for federal habeas corpus relief, since no question of a constitutional nature is involved.). Instead, our habeas review here narrowly concerns only the Due Process Clause and whether the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals' rejection of Davis's federal constitutional due process claim constituted an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court's precedent in 1984. [14] In ascertaining clearly established Federal law regarding the Due Process Clause for our § 2254(d)(1) analysis, we look to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme] Court's decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision. [15] Williams, 529 U.S. at 412, 120 S.Ct. at 1523, 146 L.Ed.2d 389. We fully agree with Davis that [a] fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process. Callahan v. Campbell, 427 F.3d 897, 928 (11th Cir.2005) (quoting In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136-37, 75 S.Ct. 623, 625, 99 L.Ed. 942 (1955)). However, there is no claim, much less showing, of any error or actual bias by Judge Teel. Rather, Davis makes only an appearance claim, and, as outlined below, none of the Supreme Court cases relied upon by Davis establishes that an appearance problem violates the Due Process Clause. In two of the cases cited by Davis, the judge in question had an actual pecuniary interest in the litigation. See Ward v. Village of Monroeville, 409 U.S. 57, 93 S.Ct. 80, 34 L.Ed.2d 267 (1972); Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749 (1927). For example, in Tumey, the mayor of a village who served as the judge in a defendant's criminal trial was paid a portion of the court fees and costs only if the defendant was convicted. Tumey, 273 U.S. at 520, 47 S.Ct. at 440. The Supreme Court concluded that a criminal defendant's due process rights are violated when the judge has a direct, personal, substantial pecuniary interest in reaching a conclusion against the defendant. Id. at 523, 47 S.Ct. at 441. Accordingly, the Tumey Court found a due process violation because the mayor-judge had a direct, personal, substantial pecuniary interest in convicting the defendant. Id. However, in discussing due process, the Tumey Court cautioned that [a]ll questions of judicial qualification may not involve constitutional validity and [t]hus matters of kinship, personal bias, state policy, remoteness of interest would seem generally to be matters merely of legislative discretion. Id. at 523, 47 S.Ct. at 441; see also Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Lavoie, 475 U.S. 813, 820, 106 S.Ct. 1580, 1584, 89 L.Ed.2d 823 (1986) (stating that `[m]ost matters relating to judicial disqualification [do] not rise to a constitutional level' (quoting FTC v. Cement Inst., 333 U.S. 683, 702, 68 S.Ct. 793, 804, 92 L.Ed. 1010 (1948)) (second alteration in original)); Del Vecchio, 31 F.3d at 1391 (Easterbrook, J., concurring) (concluding that disqualification for `appearance of impropriety' is a subject for statutes, codes of ethics, and common law, rather than a constitutional command and that [n]one of [the Supreme] Court's constitutional decisions . . . establishes that an `appearance' problem . . . invalidates a judgment). [16] Similarly, in Ward, the mayor-judge who presided over traffic court was responsible for the town's finances and, as a judge, imposed traffic court fines that were a major part of the town's income. Ward, 409 U.S. at 58, 93 S.Ct. at 82. The bias in Ward, like Tumey, derived from a pecuniary interest in the litigation, not an appearance situation. Thus, Tumey and Ward are not on point. Davis additionally cites two Supreme Court cases involving contempt proceedings that also are totally different from his case. In Offutt v. United States, 348 U.S. 11, 75 S.Ct. 11, 99 L.Ed. 11 (1954), the Supreme Court reversed a contempt sanction imposed on trial counsel for a criminal defendant immediately after the criminal trial. The Court of Appeals had reduced counsel's contempt sentence from 10 days to 48 hours based on the trial judge's personal animosity and hostility to trial counsel during the criminal trial. Id. at 12-13, 15-16, 75 S.Ct. at 12-14. The Supreme Court reversed the entire contempt sanction against trial counsel because the trial judge had permitted himself to become personally embroiled with counsel and failed to represent the impersonal authority of law. Id. at 15-17, 75 S.Ct. at 14-15 (emphasis added). While the appearance created by the trial judge's interactions with trial counsel was part of the problem, it is clear that the trial judge's outbursts and personal animosity in Offutt demonstrated an actual bias against counsel in the contempt proceeding. Davis also relies heavily on language from In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 75 S.Ct. 623, 99 L.Ed. 942 (1955), which prohibited a judge from performing prosecutorial and judicial functions in the same case. The judge acted as a one-man grand jury, and two witnesses appeared before him. Id. at 134, 75 S.Ct. at 624. The same judge in Murchison later charged the witnesses with contempt based on their grand jury testimony, then tried them and convicted them. Id. at 134-35, 75 S.Ct. at 624-25. In fact, the judge, during the contempt proceedings, had recalled his own personal impressions from the grand jury proceedings, so there was explicit evidence present of the influence of the grand jury proceedings on the judge. Id. at 138, 75 S.Ct. at 626. The holding of Murchison is that a judge may not serve as both an investigator in a grand jury and as a judge in a contempt proceeding based on testimony before the grand jury. [17] Furthermore, our circuit, as well as the Third and Seventh Circuits, already have rejected the claim that Murchison holds that an appearance of bias violates the Due Process Clause. Callahan, 427 F.3d at 928-29; Johnson, 369 F.3d at 260-63; Del Vecchio, 31 F.3d at 1371-74. In Callahan, this Court briefly discussed and agreed with the Third Circuit's decision in Johnson, noting that the Third Circuit was asked to read Murchison as holding that the appearance of bias violated the Due Process Clause. Callahan, 427 F.3d at 928. This Court in Callahan then agreed with the Third Circuit that `[ Murchison 's] holding, as opposed to dicta, is confined to the basic constitutional principle of prohibiting a judge from adjudicating a case where he was also an investigator for the government.' Id. (quoting Johnson, 369 F.3d at 260) (alteration in original). [18] In Callahan's case, however, the state trial judge was not an investigator for the government, and thus this Court concluded that  Murchison is not on point and that [t]he state court's rejection of Callahan's claim based on [the state trial judge's] failure to recuse himself was not `contrary to' or an `unreasonable application of' clearly established Supreme Court precedent. [19] Id. at 929. The Seventh Circuit not only interpreted the Supreme Court's Murchison decision the same way but also considered all the relevant Supreme Court precedent over the past 100 years and concluded that [t]he Supreme Court has never rested the vaunted principle of due process on something as subjective and transitory as appearance. Del Vecchio, 31 F.3d at 1371-72. In reviewing Supreme Court precedent, we note that the Supreme Court has used language, albeit in dicta, that endorses the importance of an appearance standard in the judicial process. See Murchison, 349 U.S. at 136, 75 S.Ct. at 625 ([T]o perform its high function in the best way `justice must satisfy the appearance of justice.' (quoting Offutt, 348 U.S. at 14, 75 S.Ct. at 13)); Tumey, 273 U.S. at 532, 47 S.Ct. at 444 (Every procedure which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge to forget the burden of proof required to convict the defendant, or which might lead him not to hold the balance nice, clear, and true between the state and the accused denies the latter due process of law.). [20] The Supreme Court also has observed, albeit in dicta too, that [a]ll questions of judicial qualification may not involve constitutional validity and, specifically, that matters of kinship . . . would seem generally to be matters merely of legislative discretion. Tumey, 273 U.S. at 523, 47 S.Ct. at 441. In any event, the Supreme Court has told us that under § 2254(d)(1) we must look to Supreme Court holdings, not dicta. Williams, 529 U.S. at 412, 120 S.Ct. at 1523. Apparently recognizing that the Supreme Court's holdings have not addressed the appearance of partiality, much less kinship issues in pre-trial juvenile court proceedings, Davis contends that our analysis of the contours of the Due Process Clause's requirement of a fair and impartial tribunal should be informed by the kinship disqualification standard in the federal recusal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 455, and our decision in Potashnick interpreting § 455. This Court concluded in Potashnick that the district court judge should have recused where his father was a senior partner in the law firm representing the plaintiff because, under § 455(b)(5)(iii), a partner in a law firm related within the third degree to a judge always will have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of a proceeding involving the partner's law firm. Potashnick, 609 F.2d at 1113. Thus, in addition to the kinship relationship in Potashnick, the judge's father, as a law firm partner, had a pecuniary interest in the matter before the district court judge. [21] More importantly, this Court and other circuits uniformly have concluded that the federal recusal statute establishes stricter grounds for disqualification than the Due Process Clause. See United States v. Alabama, 828 F.2d 1532, 1540 n. 22 (11th Cir.1987) (addressing a district court judge's failure to recuse under 28 U.S.C. §§ 144 and 455, rather than the Due Process Clause, because the statutory grounds for disqualification are stricter than the requirements of due process); see also United States v. Sypolt, 346 F.3d 838, 840 (8th Cir.2003) (stating that the federal recusal statute reaches farther than the due process clause); United States v. Couch, 896 F.2d 78, 81 (5th Cir. 1990) (stating that section 455 and the Due Process Clause are not coterminous). To be sure, judges properly are held to stricter ethical codes of judicial conduct than simply the constitutional minimum standards. But a § 455 violation stemming from the appearance standard does not automatically mean the defendant was denied constitutional due process. And although there may certainly be areas where the requirements of § 455 and the Due Process Clause overlap in assuring a fair and impartial tribunal (such as actual bias, for example), nothing in Potashnick, a § 455 case, mentions, much less analyzes, the Due Process Clause. In any event, our review under § 2254(d)(1) is confined to determining whether the state court decision was an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the decisions from the Supreme Court in 1984. Putman v. Head, 268 F.3d 1223, 1241 (11th Cir.2001). There is simply no Supreme Court holding establishing that the type of appearance problem alleged here violates the Due Process Clause or that Davis lacked an impartial tribunal. Indeed, the record here shows that: (1) Judge Teel presided over only the pre-trial juvenile court proceedings; (2) Judge Teel's brother was one of four attorneys representing the State and had no pecuniary interest in the outcome of the case; (3) Judge Teel ruled in favor of Davis at the first detention hearing; and (4) as Davis acknowledged at oral argument, nothing about the juvenile court proceedings was presented to the jury during Davis's criminal jury trial in the Alabama Circuit Court. There is no claim by Davis of any actual bias by Judge Teel or any legal or evidentiary error in any of Judge Teel's pre-trial rulings. Given the Supreme Court's precedent in 1984 and the facts of this case, we cannot say that the decision by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals was an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law to the facts of this case under § 2254(d)(1). AFFIRMED.