Opinion ID: 44614
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Claims Six, Seven, and Eight

Text: 18 For his next three claims, Coleman contends that his statement to the police should have been excluded at his trial, claiming the police beat him and denied him requested counsel. The trial court held a pretrial hearing, during which the police who interviewed Coleman testified that he was read the Miranda warnings and waived his rights. At this hearing, Coleman never claimed that he had requested or been denied counsel. Based on the evidence adduced at the hearing, the trial court denied Coleman's motion to suppress. During the state habeas process, Coleman introduced unsworn, unnotarized statements from three individuals who were not present at the interrogation, purportedly in support of his newly-alleged claim. The state habeas court determined that the police who interviewed Coleman were credible, implicitly rejecting the credibility of the statements offered by Coleman. Noting that the offered statements were internally inconsistent and lacked any indicia of reliability, the district court found that Coleman had failed to rebut the presumption of correctness afforded the state habeas court's factual findings and credibility determinations. 19 To prove that his confession was coerced and that he was denied requested counsel, Coleman offers only the same unsworn statements of three individuals who were not present at the time Coleman made his statement to the police. Not only were these statements not competent evidence for purposes of defeating the Director's motion for summary judgment below, see FED.R.CIV.P. 56(e), they also, as the district court noted, contradict one another. Further, the fact that these statements were not offered to the trial court at the suppression hearing casts doubt on their reliability. Coleman has not offered clear and convincing evidence to rebut the presumption of correctness we afford the state habeas court's factual findings under AEDPA. Reasonable jurists would not find the district court's determination debatable.