Opinion ID: 625291
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: AEDPA and the Kentucky Plurality Decision

Text: The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254, permits us to grant habeas relief only where a state court judgment 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 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). Clearly established federal law refers to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme Court's] decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). A decision is contrary to clearly established federal law if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by [the Supreme] Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than this Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts. Id. at 412-13, 120 S.Ct. 1495. An unreasonable application of clearly established federal law occurs where the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from [the Supreme Court's] decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case. Id. at 413, 120 S.Ct. 1495; Harrington v. Richter, ___ U.S. ___, 131 S.Ct. 770, 785, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011). We ask whether fairminded jurists could disagree as to the decision. Harrington, 131 S.Ct. at 786 (quoting Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 664, 124 S.Ct. 2140, 158 L.Ed.2d 938 (2004)). We are reminded that an unreasonable application of law is different from an incorrect application of law. Williams, 529 U.S. at 410, 120 S.Ct. 1495; Harrington, 131 S.Ct. at 785.
Peak's Confrontation Clause right was unquestionably violated. At Peak's trial, the prosecution admitted into evidence over Peak's objectionand played three timeshis non-testifying, co-conspirator's testimonial hearsay confession implicating Peak as the triggerman. Meeks never took the stand, and the exception in Crawford did not apply because Meeks was available and Peak had not had a prior opportunity to cross-examine him. This constitutional violation is clear under the simplest, most straightforward application of the Confrontation Clause and Supreme Court jurisprudence, as outlined above. See Lilly, 527 U.S. at 131, 119 S.Ct. 1887 ([T]he admission of a nontestifying accomplice's confession, which shifted responsibility and implicated the defendant as the triggerman, `plainly denie[s] the defendant the right of cross-examination secured by the Confrontation Clause.' (quoting Douglas v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 415, 419, 85 S.Ct. 1074, 13 L.Ed.2d 934 (1965)) (internal alteration omitted)). Despite this incontrovertible violation, the Kentucky Supreme Court plurality ruled that Peak's Confrontation Clause rights were not violated. The Kentucky Supreme Court thus unreasonably applied the Sixth Amendment to Peak's case and unreasonably extended a legal principle that permits the use of testimonial hearsay when the prosecution is unable to call its witnesses to the stand, see Crawford, 541 U.S. at 42-43, 124 S.Ct. 1354, to situations where the prosecution is able to do so but chooses not to. It also permitted the admission of a non-testifying accomplice's confession implicating Peak, contrary to the rule in Bruton, 391 U.S. at 132, 88 S.Ct. 1620. Habeas relief is therefore warranted under the standards set forth in § 2254(d)(1), as interpreted by Williams and Harrington, and their progeny. Also indicative of the Kentucky Supreme Court's unreasonable application of the Confrontation Clause in Peak's case is the fact that the Kentucky Supreme Court itself recently reconsidered the issue and came to the opposite conclusion. See Coleman v. Commonwealth, No. 2008-SC-72-MR, 2009 WL 3526657, 2009 Ky. Unpub. LEXIS 128 (Ky. Oct. 29, 2009). The Kentucky Supreme Court majority in Coleman correctly held that there is a Confrontation Clause violation where the prosecution admits witnesses' untested accusations against a defendant without calling the witnesses to the stand, despite the fact that the witnesses [are] present in the courthouse under the prosecution's subpoena and are able and allegedly willing to testify. Id. at , 2009 Ky. Unpub. LEXIS 128 at -11. The Kentucky Supreme Court went so far as to hold that [t]he only possible conclusion in this situation is that the defendant's [Confrontation Clause] rights were violated. Id. at , 2009 Ky. Unpub. LEXIS 128 at . While the fact that the relevant Coleman and Peak factual scenarios are nearly identical but yielded different results does not necessarily establish unreasonableness under § 2254(d)(2), it does raise[] a red flag to possible `extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice system.' Rice v. White, 660 F.3d 242, 255 (6th Cir.2011). Finally, one of our sister circuits recently applied Crawford to a habeas claim nearly identical to Peak's claim. See Jones v. Basinger, 635 F.3d 1030, 1041 (7th Cir.2011). In Jones, during a defendant's trial for robbery and murder, the prosecution admitted a testimonial, hearsay accusation of a declarant who had been subpoenaed by the prosecution and was available to testify, without calling that witness to the stand. Id. The court found no reasonable room for doubt that the Confrontation Clause was violated by this conduct and that habeas relief was warranted due to the state court's clear error, beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement, in permitting such a violation. Id. at 1043, 1052. In sum, the Kentucky Supreme Court plurality was objectively unreasonable in its application of the Sixth Amendment, and its decision was contrary to clearly established federal law.
Despite the centuries old rule that the prosecution must put its witnesses on the stand, the majority here suggests that it was not unreasonable for a Kentucky Supreme Court plurality to interpret the Confrontation Clause to mean that so long as the prosecution's witnesses are sitting in a pew in the back of the courtroom and allege that they are willing to testify, the defendant's right to be confronted with his accusers is satisfiedeven if the prosecution has admitted those witnesses' untested, out-of-court accusations into evidence without calling them to the stand. The majority would grant the defendant the mere privilege of calling the prosecution's witnesses to the stand, on his own initiative, rather than the right, in the language of the Sixth Amendment, to be confronted with those witnesses. This is in direct contradiction to the plain language of the Sixth Amendment and our Supreme Court's jurisprudence. See Section II, supra. The majority endeavors to explain its irrational decision. Specifically, the majority believes that the Kentucky Supreme Court plurality's decision was not unreasonable, because although some points [of] Crawford seem[] to equate confrontation with cross-examination[,] ... Crawford also contains language that suggests that confrontation requires only that the witness be made available to be called at trial, not that the witness be put on the stand for immediate cross-examination. (Maj. Op. at 473.) This latter proposition is flatly incorrect. Although Supreme Court jurisprudence includes language such as appears at trial, see Crawford, 541 U.S. at 53-54, 59, 124 S.Ct. 1354; Davis, 547 U.S. at 822 n. 1, 126 S.Ct. 2266 (drawing language from Crawford ), this language, standing alone and as used by the majority, is ripped from its context. The language at issue in Crawford is as follows: the Framers would not have allowed admission of testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial unless he was unavailable to testify, and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-examination, Crawford, 541 U.S. at 53-54, 124 S.Ct. 1354, [the English common law] conditioned admissibility of an absent witness's examination on unavailability and a prior opportunity to cross-examine, id. at 54, 124 S.Ct. 1354, and [t]estimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial have been admitted only where the declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine, id. at 59, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The crucial difference between the circumstances of the present case and the holding in Crawford is that in each of these statements, the Supreme Court frames the Crawford test as applying to situations where the prosecution was unable to call the witnesses to the stand, not situations where the prosecution was able to call the witness to the stand but simply chose not to, as in the instant case. Furthermore, as discussed above, the plain meaning of appear at trial, in the Confrontation Clause context, must mean that the accusers are brought to the stand by the prosecution and not merely that they are in the courtroom. For a witness to be in the courtroom but not testifyor for a witness take the stand but refuse to testifywould render meaningless the design of the Confrontation Clause to prevent the evils of the use of ex parte examinations against the defendant. Bryant, 131 S.Ct. at 1152. It would fail to address the need for the witness to be sworn in and impressed with the seriousness of the matter, the defendant's cross-examination, and the jury's ability to decide the witness' credibility first-hand. Green, 399 U.S. at 158, 90 S.Ct. 1930; Craig, 497 U.S. at 845-46, 110 S.Ct. 3157. Moreover, the defendant cannot be required to cure the prosecution's error of failing to call the witness to the stand by the defendant calling the witness as a hostile witness and asking leading questions, because the Supreme Court has interpreted the plain language of the Confrontation Clause as providing defendant with a right and not a privilege. Taylor, 484 U.S. at 410, 108 S.Ct. 646. The other allegedly problematic language in Crawford, which the Kentucky Supreme Court plurality explicitly relied on in making its decision, is similarly taken out of context. Footnote nine of Justice Scalia's majority opinion provides, When the declarant appears for cross-examination at trial, the Confrontation Clause places no constraints at all on the use of his prior testimonial statements.... The Clause does not bar admission of a statement so long as the declarant is present at trial to defend or explain it. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 59 n. 9, 124 S.Ct. 1354. That footnote was part of a discussion of scenarios where, again, a witness was actually put on the stand by the prosecution to testify, but the reliability of his testimony was at issue. Thus, the present at trial language did not provide a new interpretation of the Sixth Amendment that permits the admission of testimonial hearsay when the declarant is merely seated in the courtroom but not brought to the stand. The reasoning of the Kentucky Supreme Court's dissent on this matter is persuasive: [In that footnote], Justice Scalia was responding to concerns expressed in Chief Justice Rehnquist's dissenting opinion that the reliability of some out-of-court statements cannot be replicated even if the declarant testifies to the same matters in court. ... Obviously, both Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Rehnquist were assuming that the declarant would testify, but the Chief Justice believed that the prior statement might be more reliable than the in-court testimony. Peak v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 197 S.W.3d 536, 550-51 (Ky.2006) (Cooper, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). It was thus patently unreasonable for the Kentucky justices in the plurality to use the present at trial language in footnote nine to reject the plain language of the Sixth Amendment.