Opinion ID: 32085
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: perez’s claims on appeal

Text: Perez raises three claims rejected by the district court as potential grounds for a COA: (1) denial of his right to a public trial; (2) ineffective assistance of trial counsel; and (3) unconstitutionality of the Texas capital sentencing system as applied to Perez. In a claim not presented to the district court, Perez also asserts that courts reviewing his ineffective assistance of counsel claims have consistently applied the wrong standard.
Perez claims that he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial because the courtroom in which the trial was being held was tucked away at the end of a long corridor without any signs indicating what was going on inside. In addition, on the first day of trial while a preliminary hearing and jury selection were being conducted, the doors to the courtroom were locked and windowless, and a large sign on one of the doors admonished passersby to “Knock, No Admittance.” Perez raised the public trial objection in the trial court on that first day of trial, 6 and the trial court agreed to make several changes. The door with the combination lock was unlocked and could be readily opened without the need to seek permission to enter. The trial court also placed a sign in the corridor identifying the room as the one where Perez’s trial was being held and stating again that the door was unlocked. Evidence indicates that courtroom was in an area of the building open to the public, and several of Perez’s family members were able to locate the room and be present during the trial. There is no evidence that any member of the public who attempted to gain access to the courtroom during the trial was turned away or was otherwise unable to locate and observe the proceedings. The district court considered the evidence concerning the public nature of the courtroom and found that the state habeas court’s conclusion that the trial proceedings had not been affirmatively “closed” for the purposes of Sixth Amendment analysis was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law. United States v. Al-Smadi, 15 F.3d 153, 154 (10th Cir. 1994) (“The denial of a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a public trial requires some affirmative act by the trial court meant to exclude persons from the courtroom.”). Perez presents no new arguments that would cause jurists of reason to find the district court’s resolution of this issue to be debatable. Therefore, he has not made a substantial 7 showing of the denial of a constitutional right, and we decline to grant a COA on this issue.
As his second ground, Perez argues that the district court should have found that Perez’s trial counsel fell below the standards for effective counsel set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). Perez contends that trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to request a hearing to suppress Perez’s confession to the police and also by failing to contest the admissibility of the confession during trial. Perez argues that his trial counsel should have used the circumstances surrounding the confession — aggressive police tactics resulting from a high-profile case, lack of sleep, Perez’s youth, the fact that he was strip-searched, and the fact that the police took three statements from him within a sevenhour period — as evidence that the confession was involuntary and should be suppressed. Instead, trial counsel did not even request a pre-trial suppression hearing and, when one was conducted at the behest of the prosecution, posed little in the way of cross-examination of the officers present during the taking of the statements. In addition, Perez also argues that trial counsel made little effort during trial to challenge the confession in front of the jury. 8 The district court extensively reviewed the circumstances of the statements, the pre-trial hearing, and the trial. The court concluded that the state habeas court’s finding that Perez failed to demonstrate either that trial counsel could have made a tenable argument for suppressing the confession or that there was a reasonable probability that such an argument would have been successful was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694 (stating that, in order to obtain relief, petitioner must demonstrate both that counsel’s performance was objectively unreasonable and that, but for counsel’s ineffective performance, there is a reasonable probability that a different outcome would have been reached). Perez’s arguments to this court do not persuade us that jurists of reason would find the district court’s resolution of this issue debatable. Because he has failed to make a substantial showing of the denial of the constitutional right to effective counsel, we decline to grant a COA. C. Unconstitutionality of Texas Capital Sentencing Procedure as Applied to Perez The final ground Perez presented to the district court was a claim that Texas’ capital sentencing system was unconstitutional as applied to Perez because it failed to mandate an individualized assessment of the emotional and mental status of someone still a minor at the time the crime was committed. Perez 9 argues that Supreme Court precedent requires that states give 17year-old defendants potentially subject to a capital charge the procedural safeguard of either: (1) a juvenile transfer statute that provides for individualized consideration of the maturity of the defendant; or (2) a statute codifying age as a mitigating factor in capital cases. Because Texas has neither, but instead permits the jury to consider youth as a mitigating factor when weighing its answers to the special issues during the sentencing phase, Perez argues that the Texas capital system is unconstitutional as applied to 17-year-old defendants. Perez also argues that, had an individualized assessment of his particular case been conducted, he likely would not have been found eligible to be prosecuted as an adult facing the death penalty. The district court thoroughly reviewed the relevant Supreme Court precedent concerning the status of the juvenile death penalty and the constitutionality of the Texas capital sentencing scheme, finding that the Supreme Court had never held that a state’s failure to consider each individual defendant’s mental and emotional maturity would violate the constitution. See also Roach v. Angelone, 176 F.3d 210, 225 (4th Cir. 1999) (“[T]he Supreme Court simply did not hold that juvenile transfer statutes which do not provide for individualized consideration of the minor’s maturity and moral responsibility violate the Constitution.”). The district court concluded that the state 10 habeas court’s finding that a jury has ample opportunity to include a defendant’s youth as a relevant mitigating circumstance when considering either the “future dangerousness” special issue or the mitigation special issue during the sentencing phase was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law. Perez again presents no new arguments or evidence to persuade us that the district court erred in its conclusion. It would not be debatable among jurists of reason whether the Texas system appropriately accounts for a defendant’s youth in the sentencing phase of a capital trial. Perez has failed to make a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right, and he is not entitled to a COA on this issue. D. Appropriate Standard of Review for Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claims Perez’s final claim, one not raised in the district court, is that courts have been using the incorrect standard to analyze his ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Perez argues that the standard set out in United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648 (1984), rather than the Strickland standard, is the correct legal framework through which to view his claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. As stated, Perez did not present this claim to the district court. We do not consider claims raised by a habeas petitioner for the first time in this court on appeal from the district 11 court’s denial of habeas relief. Johnson v. Puckett, 176 F.3d 809, 814 (5th Cir. 1999). Therefore, we decline to grant a COA on this ground.