Opinion ID: 1322788
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: AEDPA's Unreasonable Determination of the Facts Requirement

Text: Smulls also claims that the Missouri courts' denial of his Batson claim involves an unreasonable determination of the facts based on the evidence contained in the record. The deference owed to the state trial court pursuant to § 2254(e)(1) includes deference to its credibility determinations. A federal court can only grant habeas relief if the state court's credibility determinations were objectively unreasonable based on the record. See Rice, 546 U.S. at 338-39, 126 S.Ct. 969. Thus, a federal habeas court can only grant [a] petition if it was unreasonable to credit the prosecutor's race-neutral explanations for the Batson challenge. Id. at 338, 126 S.Ct. 969. Moreover, ... our deference to trial court fact-finding is doubly great when considering Batson challenges because of the unique awareness [on the part of the trial court] of the totality of the circumstances surrounding voir dire. Simmons v. Luebbers, 299 F.3d 929, 942 (8th Cir.2002) (internal marks omitted), cert. denied, 538 U.S. 923, 123 S.Ct. 1582, 155 L.Ed.2d 314 (2003); see also Uttecht, 127 S.Ct. at 2224 (noting the deference due a trial court in assessing the demeanor of the venire, and of the individuals who compose it, a factor of critical importance in assessing the attitude and qualifications of potential jurors); Hightower v. Schofield, 365 F.3d 1008, 1034-35 (11th Cir.2004) (accepting the Georgia trial court's finding, without further elaboration, that the defendant failed to establish purposeful discrimination where the defendant provided no evidence to the trial court to discredit the prosecutor's proffered justifications, leaving the trial court free to accept the prosecutor's reasons at face value (internal marks and brackets omitted)), vacated by 545 U.S. 1124, 125 S.Ct. 2929, 162 L.Ed.2d 863 (2005), reinstated by 459 F.3d 1067, 1072 (11th Cir.2006). Under AEDPA, it is not just the trial court's findings that are presumed to be correct. The presumption, codified pre-AEDPA in § 2254(d), applies to factual determinations made by the appellate court as well. Sumner v. Mata, 449 U.S. 539, 547, 101 S.Ct. 764, 66 L.Ed.2d 722 (1981) (subsequent history omitted). The statute makes no distinction between the factual determinations of a state trial court and those of a state appellate court. Id. at 546, 101 S.Ct. 764. As we noted in Jones v. Jones, 938 F.2d 838, 842-43 (8th Cir.1991),  Sumner requires us to also consider whether the [appellate court] made any finding of fact regarding the prosecutor's peremptory challenges. See also Weaver v. Bowersox, 241 F.3d 1024, 1031 (8th Cir.2001) (noting that factual findings made by state appellate courts are entitled to the same presumption of correctness as findings of state trial courts). The Supreme Court of Missouri considered the circumstances shown by the trial court record and concluded that the prosecutor's reasons were the type typically found to be race neutral and that the trial court did not clearly err in denying the challenge. The supreme court also noted that the prosecutor's strike of Ms. Sidney was supported by his strike of Ms. Dillard, a similarly situated white venireperson struck on the basis of her occupation as a postal worker and her confrontational demeanor. In addition to the trial court's findings, these unanimous findings by the Supreme Court of Missouri are likewise entitled to substantial deference, and are presumed to be correct unless rebutted by clear and convincing evidence to the contrary. Smulls points to evidence in the record that allegedly indicates that the prosecutor's proffered reasons were pretextual. Specifically, Smulls points out that Ms. Sidney worked as a manager in Monsanto Corporation's mail distribution department rather than as a postal service worker as allegedly characterized by the prosecutor. A close examination of the record reveals that Smulls overstates his case. For instance, the prosecutor recognized that Ms. Sidney worked for Monsanto when he first explained his reasons for striking her. He also noted that she worked in the mail department, which he equated with postal service workers who he asserted generally lack ambition. ( See Appellant's App. at 14-15 ([Ms. Sidney] indicated that she is a mail sorter for Monsanto Company. That she sorts mail for, I believe she said, 5,000 people.... It's been my experience in the nine years that I've been a prosecutor that I treat people who work as mail sorters and as mail carriers, letter carriers and people who work for the U.S. Post Office with great suspicion....).) Thus, the prosecutor did not falsely state that Ms. Sidney was a postal service worker, but accurately recognized that she worked for Monsanto. The prosecutor also compared Ms. Sidney to Ms. Dillard, a white juror whom he struck based on her mail-related occupation. The Supreme Court of Missouri found this comparison to support the trial court's determination that the prosecutor had a valid race-neutral justification for striking Ms. Sidney. Although Smulls points to differences between the two jurors, similarly situated for purposes of justifying the use of peremptory strikes does not require similarity in all respects. [P]otential jurors are not products of a set of cookie cutters. Miller-El II, 545 U.S. at 247 n. 6, 125 S.Ct. 2317 (None of our cases announces a rule that no comparison is probative unless the situation of the individuals compared is identical in all respects, and there is no reason to accept one.). The two jurors are similar enough that we cannot say on this record that the prosecutor's stated reason  Ms. Sidney's occupation  was a pretext for racial discrimination. In addition to Ms. Sidney's occupation, the prosecutor listed her demeanor, which he interpreted from a glare on her face and an irritated answer, as further justification for the strike. Smulls cites no Supreme Court case requiring that a prosecutor's justification based on demeanor must be supported by evidence on the record before the trial judge can accept the justification. In Rice, the trial court accepted the prosecutor's justification based on the challenged juror's demeanor (a rolling of the eyes in response to a question from the court) even though the court itself did not witness the negative demeanor. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit determined that the trial court unreasonably credited the prosecutor's justification for a strike where the claimed negative demeanor was not corroborated by the record. Collins v. Rice, 348 F.3d 1082, 1095-96 (9th Cir.2003). In reversing, the Supreme Court held that the most generous reading [of the record] would suggest only that the trial court had reason to question the prosecutor's credibility regarding Juror 16's alleged improper demeanor. Rice, 546 U.S. at 341, 126 S.Ct. 969. Where [r]easonable minds reviewing the record might disagree about the prosecutor's credibility, ... habeas review... does not suffice to supersede the trial court's credibility determination. Id. at 341-42, 126 S.Ct. 969. Smulls also claims that the prosecutor lied when he said that he had previous problems with postal service workers serving on juries, when in fact a postal service worker in the case he specifically referred to voted to convict, even though the case ended in a hung jury. Regardless of whether the prosecutor lied or instead was merely mistaken about the postal service worker's actions in the specific prior case to which he referred, it was up to the trial court to judge his credibility and determine whether to accept his proffered reasons for striking Ms. Sidney. While this discrepancy disclosed by the later established record may give a reviewing court reason to question the prosecutor's justifications, it does not compel such a conclusion. [T]he critical question in determining whether a prisoner has proved purposeful discrimination at step three is the persuasiveness of the prosecutor's justification for his peremptory strike. Miller-El I, 537 U.S. at 338-39, 123 S.Ct. 1029. Typically, the decisive question is whether the judge should believe the prosecutor's race-neutral explanations. There is seldom much evidence on the issue, and the best evidence often will be the demeanor of the attorney who exercises the challenge. As with the state of mind of a juror, evaluation of the prosecutor's state of mind based on demeanor and credibility lies `peculiarly within a trial judge's province.' Id. at 339, 123 S.Ct. 1029 (quoting Witt, 469 U.S. at 428, 105 S.Ct. 844). From the perspective of the deference given to the state trial court in assessing the prosecutor's credibility, this case is indistinguishable from Rice and Hernandez. In Hernandez, [5] the prosecutor said he struck Spanish-speaking veniremembers because an interpreter would be used at trial, and he was afraid that Spanish-speaking jurors would not defer to the interpreter's translations. 500 U.S. at 356, 111 S.Ct. 1859. The strikes resulted in the removal of several Latinos from the jury of a Latino defendant. Although the defendant argued that the prosecutor's reasons were merely an excuse for striking Latinos, the Supreme Court refused to overturn the state trial court's acceptance of the prosecutor's justification for the strikes or its ultimate determination that the prosecutor's strikes were not racially motivated. Id. at 369, 111 S.Ct. 1859 ([W]here there are two permissible views of the evidence, the factfinder's choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous. (internal marks omitted)). In Rice, the Ninth Circuit determined that a state court clearly erred in accepting the prosecutor's race-neutral justifications, in part because the prosecutor's reliance on the juror's young age was contradicted by the record, which established that one of the stricken jurors was a grandmother, and also because the prosecutor originally relied on gender, an impermissible basis in itself. See 348 F.3d at 1094-95. Despite these misgivings about whether the prosecutor had a race-based motive for striking the jurors, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit's rejection of the trial court's credibility assessment. Reasonable minds reviewing the record might disagree about the prosecutor's credibility, but on habeas review that does not suffice to supersede the trial court's credibility determination. Rice, 546 U.S. at 341-42, 126 S.Ct. 969. The same is true here. While discrepancies in the record may raise a question about the prosecutor's motive, they are not so overwhelming in this case that they leave us with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed. Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 370, 111 S.Ct. 1859 (plurality opinion) (internal marks omitted). The state trial court's credibility determination concerning the prosecutor's stated reasons must stand on habeas review. Smulls argues that the fact that the prosecution struck the only black juror establishes that the prosecutor's stated reasons were pretextual. That fact alone, however, when considered together with the record as a whole, does not provide the clear and convincing evidence necessary to rebut the presumption of correctness afforded to the state courts' determinations, particularly the state supreme court's conclusion that the prosecution's strike was race neutral. Cf. Miller-El II, 545 U.S. at 262-66, 125 S.Ct. 2317 (holding that the state court's acceptance of the prosecutor's explanation for striking ten of the eleven qualified black venirepersons was shown to be erroneous by clear and convincing evidence, including the prosecution's use of the jury shuffle, disparate venire questions posed to black and white jurors, comparison of similarly situated black and white jurors, and the admitted practice of the Dallas County Prosecutor's Office of removing minorities from juries). This case contains nowhere near the strong circumstantial evidence present in Miller-El II that compelled the Supreme Court to conclude that the trial court made an unreasonable determination of the facts when it upheld the ten peremptory strikes. The purpose of Batson and its progeny is to insure that trial attorneys do not strike prospective jurors for unconstitutional reasons. The state trial court's ill-advised comments made on the second day do not make the prosecutor's proffered reasons any less race neutral, and they have no bearing on whether those reasons were asserted in good faith. Cf. id. at 252, 125 S.Ct. 2317 (noting that it is the prosecutor's actual reason for the strike that is relevant in a Batson challenge, and the fact that the Court of Appeals could come up with a substitute reason to justify the strikes does nothing to satisfy the prosecutor[']s burden of stating a racially neutral explanation for [his] own actions. (emphasis added)). We note that the prosecutor never wavered from the initial reasons he presented to the trial court. From the first time he was asked to justify the strike of Ms. Sidney, the prosecutor stated that he struck Ms. Sidney based on her occupation and her demeanor, reasons he also used to strike a white juror. The record supports the trial court's and the Supreme Court of Missouri's acceptance of these reasons, Smulls has failed to present clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, and the trial court's regrettable subsequent statements do not change that fact. In summary, the state courts' Batson ruling was not contrary to and did not involve an unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent, nor was it based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented to the state courts. We are not permitted to grant habeas relief to a state prisoner because we might have ruled differently on the Batson objection, nor do we sit as a court of initial review over state trial judges. Applying AEDPA's restrictive review provisions (both as to the law applicable and as to the facts found by the state courts), the district court correctly denied Smulls' § 2254 petition based on the Batson challenge. As for Smulls' Batson  related ineffective assistance of counsel claims, the original panel unanimously agreed that those claims were without merit, and we reinstate the panel opinion to the extent that it affirmed the dismissal of those claims. See Smulls, 467 F.3d at 1116 n. 2.