Opinion ID: 1467267
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: John C. Moore

Text: P.S. II This should in no way reflect negatively on Mr. Robert Tobik who I hold in high regard and respect immensely. I just feel my defense should be handled a little differently and since the eventual outcome will impact me the most that I should have input into strategy & decision making [it] part of my defense. Well into Moore's direct testimony, the trial judge held a sidebar regarding a hearsay objection and raised the contents of the letter to the prosecutor and Moore's defense counsel: The Court: Now, while we're at the side bar, we have  whatever you think is necessary in the defense. I have a letter from him in which he vacillates the letter given to me a minute ago. Tobik: I believe he also asked you not to share that with the prosecutor. Prosecutor: Of course the prosecutor demands to see that letter. It is a communication to the court. I demand that I see it. The Court: You don't see that that would compromise any defense strategies here? It has the potential for doing so. But, he wants to participate in closing arguments. He doesn't specifically ask to take over his own defense. Tobik: I think he does. He wants to take over from that point. The Court: He wants to and he later says he would like to go pro se, but I'm not sure. He wants to go as cocounsel apparently, but, he got up on the witness stand so I don't know if that's an abandonment of what he just gave me beforehand or what. Anyway, we will discuss it with him. We told him in the last trial, and I told him in this trial he is allowed  I will give him a chance to make a speech at the end of your examination. If he wants to make a statement outside of what he said, he can but he is subject  I'm sure you advised him he is subject to cross-examination and will be subject to all the rules of evidence and all the doors he may open on himself. Tobik: I think The Court: That's the danger of making such a statement. Tobik: Right. You know, of giving a speech, but he can do so if he wants. Tobik: I think he understands the procedures and the rules in the court and, you know, I think he would be responsive to both my questions and Mr. Mahoney's questions. The Court: We will inquire of him later on again to see where he is at. I can't make heads or tails from that letter, the combination of the letter and his actions here getting up on the witness stand. After direct and partial cross-examination of Moore, the court called for a break. During that break this dialogue occurred outside the presence of the jury: The Court: Have a seat, everybody, please. Now, the court received your letter here this morning. I read it after you got on the witness stand, Mr. Moore, and you have asked a couple of things. I'm not quite sure what you want, but you wanted a chance to address the jury. The court would certainly give you that. You had the chance. Your attorney asked is there anything you wanted to say. You gave your statement. That is what you are looking for. Do you want to impress the jury again at end of this? Moore: I think it's appropriate in light of I interrupted the proceedings. The Court: You want to address the jury and apologize you said for interrupting the proceedings? Moore: Right. The Court: Okay. Well, that's fine. You can do that. I will allow you to do  you would have a redirect. You can ask him the question if he has something to say to the jury. Moore: Not just the jury. It was you, too. The Court: Your apology is accepted here. You don't have to apologize to me in front of the jury. Now, if you want to do it to the jury, it's your business. I don't care about it or you can ask that open-ended question. Again, that would subject you to cross-examination for whatever you say of course. Tobik: Your Honor The Court: So you talk it over and whatever you want to do, that's fine. Okay. Have a nice break here. When the jury returned, an officer in the Scientific Investigation Unit of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department was examined and then the court took a lunch break. After the lunch break the prosecutor continued with cross-examination of Moore. Upon completion of redirect and recross-examination of Moore, the defense rested. Tobik presented Moore's closing argument. No further mention of Moore's letter or request to proceed pro se appears in the trial transcript. Moore was found guilty by the jury on the three counts against him. Moore's conviction was affirmed by the Court of Appeals of Ohio (although the imposition of consecutive sentences was reversed and remanded for resentencing), and the Supreme Court of Ohio denied leave to appeal. Moore then petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Adopting the magistrate judge's Report and Recommendation, the district court granted Moore a conditional writ of habeas corpus, subject to retrial by the state, grounded in the denial of his right to self-representation. Warden Haviland filed a timely notice of appeal to this court.
We review a district court's legal conclusions in a habeas petition de novo ( King v. Bobby, 433 F.3d 483, 489 (6th Cir.2006)). Although findings of fact are usually reviewed for clear error, when the district court's decision in a habeas case is based on a transcript from the petitioner's state court trial, and the district court thus makes `no credibility determination or other apparent finding of fact,' the district court's factual findings are reviewed de novo ( Wolfe v. Brigano, 232 F.3d 499, 501 (6th Cir.2000), quoting Moore v. Carlton, 74 F.3d 689, 691 (6th Cir.1996)). We assume factual findings of the state court are correct unless controverted by convincing contrary evidence ( Harries v. Bell, 417 F.3d 631, 635 (6th Cir.2005)). Under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(Section 2254(d)) it is appropriate to grant a prisoner's habeas petition if the adjudication of the claim in the state court system: (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 (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. Some elaboration of those alternatives will better focus the analysis. First, law is clearly established from 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)). As for the statutory requirement that the state decision be contrary to such clearly established federal law, that condition is satisfied 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 [the Supreme] Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts ( id. at 413, 120 S.Ct. 1495). Second, unreasonable application of clearly established federal law occurs if 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. ). Merely erroneous or incorrect application of clearly established federal law does not suffice to support a grant of habeas relief. Instead the state court must be objectively unreasonable as well as erroneous in its application of clearly established federal law ( id. at 409-11, 120 S.Ct. 1495).
Although courts are most frequently called upon to deal with and to enforce the Sixth Amendment guaranty that every criminal defendant facing potential incarceration has the right to counsel at all critical stages of the criminal process ( United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 223-27, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967); Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25, 92 S.Ct. 2006, 32 L.Ed.2d 530 (1972)), the Constitution also affordswith equal importancethe right to self-representation ( Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975)). [2] Those two rights are mutually exclusive, and invocation of one is necessarily intertwined with waiver of the other. Just as had earlier been done with the right to counsel ( Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963)), Faretta incorporated against the states a criminal defendant's right to self-representation via the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Faretta, 422 U.S. at 819-20, 95 S.Ct. 2525 (footnote omitted), the only clearly established federal law (within the meaning of Section 2254(d)(1)) that is relevant to this habeas petition, confirmed that right in these straightforward terms: Although not stated in the Amendment in so many words, the right to self-representationto make one's own defense personallyis thus necessarily implied by the structure of the Amendment. The right to defend is given directly to the accused; for it is he who suffers the consequences if the defense fails. Waiver of the right to counsel by an accused must be knowing, voluntary and intelligent ( Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464-65, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938)). For any such waiver to be effective, the accused should be made aware of the dangers and disadvantages of self-representation, so that the record will establish that `he knows what he is doing and his choice is made with eyes open' ( Faretta, 422 U.S. at 835, 95 S.Ct. 2525, quoting Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U.S. 269, 279, 63 S.Ct. 236, 87 L.Ed. 268 (1942)). For his part, Haviland contends that Moore's request to proceed pro se was unclear and equivocal, so that the trial judge was not required to engage in any further exploration of the matter. To the contrary, Moore twice expressly asked the judge whether he could go pro se. Instead of responding directly or promptly launching the necessary Faretta -based inquiry, the judge responded by warning Moore that he had never seen a successful pro se defendant and by then asking Moore to draft a letter over the lunch break outlining his competence and trial strategy. Moore did so, but his attorneywith the court's permissiondid not tender the letter to the court until the following morning. Moore's letter set out four alternative scenarios, the fourth of which was to proceed pro se. [3] With the trial judge having failed to grant any of Moore's first three alternatives, he was duty bound to treat the letter as a clear request to proceed pro se, written by the accused after the court had cautioned him against the soundness of that decision. Moore's request to proceed pro se was no less voluntary because it was contingent on the denial of other options that he might also find palatable ( Jones v. Jamrog, 414 F.3d 585, 592-93 (6th Cir.2005)). While the state appellate court did not explicitly hold that Moore asked unequivocally to proceed pro se, it did state that he wished to proceed pro se and requested permission to proceed pro se in his letter to the court ( State v. Moore, No. 78751, 2002 WL 664104, at - (Ohio App. Apr. 18, 2002)). Although the trial judge expressed an initial concern as to the timeliness of Moore's request, he backed off that track and instead told Moore to write him a letter outlining his proposed self-representation. For the judge then to have waited to read the letter until Moore had already taken the witness stand, rather than addressing the issue promptly, gave Moore no choice but to proceed with counsel conducting direct examination. Then for the judge not to have engaged Moore in a Faretta -compliant colloquy upon reading the letter was an unreasonable application of Faretta. Moore had made not one but two clear requests to proceed pro sethe second in a letter written after cautionary statements by the courtand it was clearly contrary to Faretta for the court to have failed to address those requests promptly and fully. Warden Haviland argues that Moore's requests were untimely and that a trial court has discretion over whether to grant a request to proceed pro se mid-trial. But Moore's requests were not rejected for untimeliness, either at trial or by the state appellate court. Although the state courts did not do so, our dissenting colleague would reject Moore's exercise of his Faretta right on untimeliness grounds. We have no quarrel of course with the notion that a defendant's invocation of the right of self-representation must be timelybut here it was not until the trial was well under way that Moore's grounds for dissatisfaction with counsel's representation arose  and he then acted swiftly. Moore can scarcely be faulted on some concept of tardiness under those circumstances. If he had not acted when he didif he had waited for the trial to conclude and then sought post-conviction relief on the basis of constitutionally ineffective representation by his appointed counselwe can be quite certain that he would have been met not only with arguments as to asserted substantive inadequacies of that contention but with the added argument that he should have raised that issue when it first arose at trial. To return to the treatment at the trial court level of Moore's requests to represent himself, the trial court flat-out failed to exercise its discretion and ultimately did not rule on those requests, but let the issue go by default instead. Such failure to make a ruling on a criminal defendant's unequivocal request to proceed pro se was objectively unreasonable in light of Faretta. Contrary to Haviland's assertions and to the state appellate court's analysis, McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U.S. 168, 104 S.Ct. 944, 79 L.Ed.2d 122 (1984) is not on point here. McKaskle addresses the constitutional boundaries of standby counsel's involvement in criminal proceedings against the wishes of a pro se defendant. Moore never became a pro se defendant, nor was his attorney standby counsel. Moore does not complain that his attorney overstepped his bounds as standby counselrather he complains that he was denied his right of self-representation. For the state appellate court to read McKaskle to find a waiver of Moore's right to self-representation was an objectively unreasonable application of that decision. Moore did take the stand and respond to questions from his attorney after his requests to proceed pro se. But by contrast with McKaskle, no presumption of acquiescence attaches to that representation by counsel, because Moore was never permitted to proceed pro se. Without having ruled on Moore's two requests for self-representation, the trial judge told Moore's attorney to call the next witness and Moore was called to testify. It would be wholly unreasonable to require Moore, in order to preserve his requests to proceed pro se, to refuse the trial court's orders to continue with the trial, especially in light of the court's having previously admonished him for disrupting the trial. Moore's responsiveness to questions posed by his attorney was neither a withdrawal of his previous requests to proceed pro se or a waiver of his right to self-representation.
Given the state courts' objectively unreasonable misapplication of the law as clearly established in Faretta, Moore's habeas petition must be granted. By failing to rule on Moore's unequivocal requests to proceed pro se, the trial court deprived him of his Sixth Amendment right to self-representation. Moore's conviction cannot stand in light of that structural error, which is not amenable to `harmless error' analysis ( McKaskle, 465 U.S. at 177 n. 8, 104 S.Ct. 944). Accordingly the district court's issuance of a conditional writ of habeas corpus is AFFIRMED.