Court Opinion

ID: 9493434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:07:54.827536+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:50.265827
License: Public Domain

BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The habeas court in this case believed that it had essentially unlimited discretion to conduct an evidentiary hearing on the petitioner’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Such discretion is, however, an artifact of a bygone era. As this court recognized in Mitchell v. Rees, the modern Supreme Court has substantially pared back the ability of federal courts to retry cases already tried in the state courts. I would therefore hold that the district court in this case improvidently granted the petitioner an evidentiary hearing. I concur in all other parts of Judge Siler’s opinion.
I
In 1963, the Supreme Court invested federal habeas courts with broad discretion in most aspects of collateral review of state criminal judgments. Contending that the common law conceived of the Great Writ as a remedy available for any kind of governmental detention contrary to fundamental law, the Court in Fay v. Noia declared that “federal court jurisdiction is conferred by the allegation of an unconstitutional restraint and is not defeated by anything that may occur in ... state court proceedings.” Fay, 372 U.S. 391, 426, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963). This broad conception led the Court to hold that even a petitioner who had procedurally defaulted his claims in state court could obtain habeas relief, subject to the district court’s “discretion” to deny relief when the orderly procedure of the state courts had been deliberately bypassed. Id. at 434, 438, 83 S.Ct. 822. In parallel fashion, the Court empowered federal habeas courts to conduct evidentiary hearings even when a petitioner had failed to develop the facts in state court proceedings. “In every case,” the Supreme Court wrote in Townsend v. Sain, the district judge “has the power, constrained only by his sound discretion, to receive evidence bearing upon the applicant’s constitutional claim.” Townsend, 372 U.S. 293, 318, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963). Townsend limited the discretion of habeas courts in this regard only by requiring that evidentiary hearings be held under six circumstances that would call into question the integrity of state court factfinding. Id. at 313, 83 S.Ct. 745.
The generation following Fay and Townsend has witnessed a sea-change in the law of habeas corpus. This change *716has been spurred by an increased attentiveness to considerations of comity and the values of “our federal system.” Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 731, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991). The idealistic predictions of Fay and Townsend that federal district judges, mindful of their delicate role in the maintenance of proper federal-state relations, would not employ their discretion to subvert the integrity of state criminal justice, had been proven wrong. Townsend, 372 U.S. at 318, 83 S.Ct. 745; see also Fay, 372 U.S. at 433, 83 S.Ct. 822 (suggesting that the plenary power of inquiry on federal habe-as corpus would not create incentives for defendants to withhold claims in state proceedings). The law reviews and the popular press echoed with calls for the unelected federal judiciary to desist from frustrating the outcomes of democratic process, particularly in capital cases. See generally Barry Friedman, The History of the Countermajoritarian Difficulty, Part One: The Road to Judicial Supremacy, 73 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 333 (1998) (tracing the history of the countermajoritarian difficulty); see also Thomas Goldsmith, Activists Want Nixon Impeached: Group Takes Message to Centennial Park, The Tennessean, Mar. 26, 2000, at IB (noting current calls for the impeachment of a federal district court judge on the ground that his personal bias against the death penalty makes him unfit to hear cases in which it is a factor). Fay was overruled. See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 87-88, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977).
Recognizing that in a federal system, the States should have the first opportunity to address and correct violations of state prisoners’ federal rights, and that Fay had undervalued the important interests served by state procedural rules, the Supreme Court replaced Fay’s “deliberate bypass” standard with a cause-and-prejudice inquiry. Coleman, 501 U.S. at 731, 750, 111 S.Ct. 2546. “In all cases in which a state prisoner has defaulted his federal claims in state court pursuant to an independent and adequate state procedural rule, federal habeas review of the claims is barred unless the prisoner can demonstrate cause for the default and actual prejudice as a result of the alleged violation of federal law, or demonstrate that failure to consider the claims will result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice.” Id. at 750, 111 S.Ct. 2546 (emphasis supplied). In view of the significant harm suffered by States when federal courts failed to respect state procedural rules, federal court “discretion” to consider a habeas petitioner’s federal claims was inappropriate when the petitioner had deprived the state courts of an opportunity to address those claims in the first instance.
Townsend’s holding with respect to evi-dentiary hearings, too, was overruled. Just as a district court had no discretion to' consider federal claims that a habeas petitioner had not submitted to the state courts, neither could it have discretion to allow a petitioner to develop facts that had not been fairly presented to the state courts. See Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, 504 U.S. 1, 7-8, 112 S.Ct. 1715, 118 L.Ed.2d 318 (1992) (stating that it is “irrational to distinguish between failing to properly assert a federal claim in state court and failing in state court to properly develop such a claim”). Thus, in Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, the Supreme Court applied the cause-and-prejudice standard to determine whether a state prisoner who had failed to develop material facts in state court was entitled to an evidentiary hearing on habeas corpus. Id. at 11, 112 S.Ct. 1715.
Keeney was a case in which a petitioner sought a federal evidentiary hearing but did not receive one. See id. at 4,112 S.Ct. 1715. Taking his cue from this, fact, Judge Siler interprets Keeney to mean that a showing of cause and prejudice requires a habeas court to conduct an evidentiary hearing, but that even in the absence of such a showing, the court retains discretion to hold a hearing. See ante at 719. In my view, neither the language nor the *717reasoning of Keeney will support this interpretation. In addition, the Supreme Court’s recent pronouncements in Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 420, 120 S.Ct. 1479, 146 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), strongly corroborate a reading of Keeney that limits the authority of habeas courts to order evidentiary hearings.
The Keeney Court granted certiorari to decide “the correct standard for excusing a habeas petitioner’s failure to develop a material fact in state-court proceedings.” Keeney, 504 U.S. at 5, 112 S.Ct. 1715. Ultimately, the Court determined that “the ‘cause-and-prejudice’ standard embodies the correct accommodation between the competing concerns implicated in a federal court’s habeas power.” Id. at 7, 112 S.Ct. 1715. As a purely textual matter, nothing in the Court’s framing of the question, or in its resolution of that question, suggests that the Court was restricting its holding to those circumstances in which a habeas petitioner is “entitled” to an evidentiary hearing.
More importantly, the logic that the Court followed to arrive at the cause-and-prejudice standard will not admit of such a construction. The Court based its holding on a quintet of values embedded in our federal system: comity, finality, judicial economy, channeling of claims to the appropriate forum, and uniformity in the law of habeas corpus. Id. at 8-10, 112 S.Ct. 1715. It is difficult to understand how any of these values would be served by a system that entitled state prisoners to eviden-tiary hearings only upon a showing of cause and prejudice, but nevertheless invested the habeas courts with bottomless discretion to order hearings where they are not required. Such a system still would deny the States the opportunity to correct their own constitutional errors, would multiply the opportunities to reliti-gate convictions, and would consume scarce judicial resources.
Of particular concern is the disruption to the values of proper forum allocation and uniformity that would attend survival of the Toimsend doctrine. The Supreme Court likened the former value to the requirement of exhaustion, noting: “Just as the State must afford the petitioner a full and fair hearing on his federal claim, so must the petitioner afford the State a full and fair opportunity to address and resolve the claim on the merits.” Id. at 10, 112 S.Ct. 1715. A doctrine that allows a habeas court to conduct an evidentiary hearing where the petitioner has, without cause, failed to develop facts in state court re-engineers this two-way street into a blind alley. Even though the state court is the appropriate forum for resolution of factual questions in the first instance, Toimsend creates “incentives for the deferral of factfinding to later federal court proceedings” — which can only “degrade the accuracy and efficiency of judicial proceedings.” Id. at 9, 112 S.Ct. 1715.
Similarly, the Keeney Court rested its holding on a symmetry between the. jurisprudence of procedural default and that governing factfinding in the habeas courts. “There is no good reason to maintain in one area of habeas law a standard that has been rejected in the area in which it was principally enunciated,” wrote the Court. “And little can be said for holding a habeas petitioner to one standard for failing to bring a claim in state court and excusing the petitioner under another, lower standard for failing to develop the factual basis of that claim in the same forum.” Id. at 10, 112 S.Ct. 1715. A dogged fidelity to Townsend disrupts this symmetry. Absent a showing of cause and prejudice, a habeas court would have no discretion to entertain a claim that had been procedurally defaulted in state court, but would have discretion to conduct an evidentiary hearing on a claim raised but insufficiently developed in state court, even where the petitioner did not show cause and prejudice for his failure to develop the factual record in the state court. Given the importance that the Keeney Court ascribed to uniformity in the law of habeas corpus, *718that cannot be a correct reading of the case.
This Court has recognized that Keeney implicitly withdrew the discretion that Townsend had granted. In Mitchell v. Rees,1 we reversed a district court for ordering an evidentiary hearing on a habe-as petitioner’s Batson challenge without requiring the petitioner to establish either (1) cause and prejudice for his failure to adequately develop the material facts in the state court proceedings, or (2) that not holding an evidentiary hearing would result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice. Mitchell, 114 F.3d 571, 579 (6th Cir.1997). “[A] district court abuses its discretion,” we said, “by ordering such a hearing without first requiring the petitioner to make the requisite showing.” Id. at 577. We have been joined in this understanding by at least one other Circuit. See Mathis v. Zant, 975 F.2d 1493, 1497 (11th Cir.1992).
Our understanding is buttressed by - a ease decided by the Supreme Court just this Term, Williams v. Taylor. In Williams, the Court interpreted 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2), a statute enacted four years after the decision in Keeney. . Section 2254(e)(2) provides: “If the [habeas] applicant has failed to develop the factual basis of a claim in State court proceedings, the court shall not hold an evidentiary hearing on the claim unless the applicant” satisfies certain conditions. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2) (emphasis supplied). In deciding the level of fault connoted by the term “fail”, the Court determined that the opening clause of § 2254(e)(2) is essentially a codification of the holding in Keeney: “Congress intended to preserve at least one aspect of Keeney’s, holding: prisoners who are at fault for the deficiency in the state-court record must satisfy a heightened standard to obtain an evidentiary hearing.” Williams, — U.S. at -, 120 S.Ct. at 1489. As this language suggests, the Supreme Court itself does not read Keeney as deciding when a petitioner is entitled to an evidentiary hearing; rather, the case sets forth what a petitioner must do in order to obtain one. See also id. at-, 120 S.Ct. at 1488 (“We required the prisoner [in Keeney ] to demonstrate cause and prejudice excusing the default before he could receive a hearing on his claim _” (emphasis supplied)).
Keeney, Mitchell, and Williams thus command that a petitioner who has not developed facts in state court must justify his failure to do so through a showing of cause and prejudice before he may present those facts to a federal habeas court.
II
In Tennessee’s post-conviction courts, petitioner Abdur’Rahman claimed that his trial counsel had rendered ineffective assistance by failing to investigate his mental health and criminal histories sufficiently to paint a sympathetic picture of his abusive childhood and resulting serious mental illness at sentencing. The state court conducted an evidentiary hearing, at which it considered the testimony of one Dr. Barry Nurcombe; Abdur’Rahman’s school, military, and prison records; the transcript of a previous trial; records of the Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute; records of social services departments; the affidavit of Mark Jones, Abdur’Rahman’s brother; and a great deal of other evidence. At the conclusion of the hearing, the court held that Abdur’Rahman’s trial counsel had been constitutionally deficient — reasonable attorneys would have investigated the accused’s mental health and criminal histories. The court concluded, however, that counsel’s faulty performance *719did not prejudice Abdur’Rahman. The evidence introduced at the hearing, the court noted, contained extensive documentation that Abdur’Rahman had had a past of profound violence, but no serious mental illness. Deciding that this information “looks like a mine field for any trial attorney to tiptoe through,” the court denied post-conviction relief.
In his petition for federal habeas relief, Abdur’Rahman renewed his contention that trial counsels’ deficient performance at sentencing had resulted in prejudice. Over the State’s objection, the district court conducted an evidentiary hearing on the ineffective assistance claim. Although the State confronted the district court with Mitchell, the court cited an unpublished district court order for the proposition that the granting of an evidentiary hearing is discretionary. The district court proceeded to consider a significant volume of evidence, including the testimony of seven live witnesses, that was not presented to the state courts. Largely on the basis of this evidence, the district court concluded that Abdur’Rahman had been prejudiced because his trial attorneys could have shown such mitigating circumstances as childhood abuse, serious mental illness, and the defendant’s good qualities.
In doing so, the district court erred. Upon authority of Keeney and Mitchell, the district court could not order an evi-dentiary hearing until Abdur’Rahman showed cause for his failure to develop the factual record fully in the state courts. Ordinarily we would vacate the order partially granting the writ of habeas corpus and the order for the evidentiary hearing, Mitchell, 114 F.3d at 579, and remand the matter to the district court to afford Ab-dur’Rahman the opportunity to bring forward evidence establishing cause and prejudice, Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, 504 U.S. at 11, 112 S.Ct. 1715. In this case, however, such a disposition is unnecessary; the evidence that Abdur’Rahman adduced at the federal evidentiary hearing is plainly insufficient to undermine confidence in the jury’s sentence. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). As Judge Siler points out, the additional evidence presented to the habeas court merely supplemented the factual findings made by the post-conviction trial court. What the state court said in 1995 holds true today: “It is unrealistic to expect the jury to change the result because of testimony about the petitioner’s troubled background and mental illness in the face of a prior murder conviction which is added to two additional aggravating circumstances including the heinousness of the killing.” I therefore concur that the order granting the writ as to Abdur’Rahman’s death sentence should be reversed.

. To the extent that Mitchell suggested that a district court is without authority to hold an evidentiary hearing without first finding that one of the factors listed in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) applies, I agree with Judge Siler that its statement is "overbroad”. See Kee-ney, 504 U.S. at 10 n. 5, 112 S.Ct. at 1720 n. 5 (noting that § 2254(d) "indicates no assumption that the presence or absence of any of the statutory exception will determine whether a hearing is held”).