Court Opinion

ID: 9600130
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:24:34.069501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:48.999972
License: Public Domain

BEA, Circuit Judge,
with whom,
KLEINFELD, TALLMAN, CALLAHAN, BYBEE, and N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judges, join,
dissenting from the order denying the petition for rehearing en banc:
One of two things must be true. Either (1) the majority’s conclusion that Randy Moore suffered prejudice depends on some *1167egregious and highly creative appellate fact-finding by which the majority concludes that Moore’s confessions to his brother and a friend lacked inculpatory detail; or (2) the majority has invented a new, virtually per se rule that counsel’s failure to file a meritorious motion to suppress a defendant’s confession to the police always entitles a habeas petitioner to relief under Strickland, no matter how many other people the defendant confesses to. In either case, rehearing was warranted to correct the panel’s error. I join fully in Judge Callahan’s dissent from the order denying rehearing en banc, but write separately to emphasize my concern with the majority’s treatment of the state court’s factual determinations.
The facts, briefly, are these: Randy Moore, along with two accomplices, Lonnie Woolhiser and Roy Salyer, assaulted Kenneth Rodgers, tied him up, threw him in the trunk of their car, drove him to an isolated spot, blindfolded him, marched him into the woods, and then ‘accidentally’ shot him in the temple at point-blank range. Moore pleaded guilty to felony murder and was sentenced to 300 months’ imprisonment. Despite the fact that Moore confessed to being the trigger man, not once, not twice, but three times, and despite the fact that Moore told his counsel that these confessions were true, and despite the fact that the state court found that a motion to suppress would have been fruitless, the majority holds that Moore’s counsel’s failure to file a motion to suppress one of the three separate confessions constituted ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984).
The majority concludes the state court’s determination Moore did not receive ineffective assistance of counsel was unreasonable, at least in part, because the record is devoid of evidence about which details of the crime Moore divulged in his confessions to Ziegler and Raymond Moore. Moore v. Czerniak, 534 F.3d 1128, 1131 (9th Cir.2008); id. at 1147 n. 21 (“Moore’s taped confession would have been the only full account of the events ----”); id. at 1148 (“[I]t is far from clear what those witnesses would have said [if called to testify] ....”); id. at 1148-49 n. 24. This, charitably put, is imaginative appellate fact-finding made possible only by ignoring some inconvenient facts in the record.
To the contrary, Moore’s counsel, Kim Jordan, averred Moore had given “full”1 confessions to both Ziegler and Raymond Moore. Jordan used this word — “full”— three times in his affidavit. Jordan’s statement is some of the most probative evidence we could have of the extent and content of these confessions — counsel’s knowledge is based, at least in part, on communications with the defendant, and it is, after all, Jordan’s performance we are now evaluating.
The state court credited Jordan’s affidavit and found “[b]oth Raymond Moore and the friend [Ziegler] could have been called as witnesses to repeat petitioner’s confession. A motion to suppress would have been fruitless.” In doing so, the state court even cited to the portion of Jordan’s affidavit describing the confessions as “full.”
The majority first concludes this finding is inadequate because the state court did not expressly find that the two prior confessions were “full.” This cramped reading is both incorrect and contrary to longstanding, controlling precedent regarding implied findings. “[N]ot every finding of *1168fact need be stated on the record in infinite detail and clarity.... When a state trial court holds a hearing on a motion to suppress evidence and rules on the motion, a federal district court may assume that the state court found the facts necessary to support the state court’s decision.... ” Knaubert v. Goldsmith, 791 F.2d 722, 727 (9th Cir.1986).
In any case, says the majority, such a finding of fact, had it been made, would have been unreasonable under Taylor v. Maddox, 366 F.3d 992, 1000-01 (9th Cir.2004), because the state court ignored “highly probative” and “relevant” evidence that contradicts Jordan’s statement that Ziegler heard a full confession. Moore, 534 F.3d at 1149 n. 24. This “highly probative” and “relevant” evidence consists, in its entirety, of Ziegler’s statement to police that she had not heard the details of Moore’s confession until the day of the police interrogation. That Ziegler heard Moore’s confession for the first time that day hardly proves she didn’t hear the confession until she was in the police interrogation room itself; that interrogation did not begin until the late afternoon. Moore had ample opportunity to confess to her before he arrived at the police station. Even Moore’s briefs describe Ziegler’s statements about when she heard the confession as “ambiguous” and “equivocal.”
As important as the evidence that is in the record as to the fullness of Moore’s confession to Ziegler is the evidence that isn’t. Moore has not provided a shred of evidence to support his claims that his confessions to Ziegler and to his brother Raymond lacked inculpatory detail, that Moore did not confess to Ziegler prior to the police interrogation, or that Ziegler and Raymond would have been reluctant witnesses at trial. For example, Moore could have, but did not, offer proof by way of affidavits or declarations from Ziegler or Raymond to corroborate his present contentions. As Moore’s habeas counsel explained, “Nobody knows what Raymond Moore, Mrs. Ziegler, or [Roy] Salyer would have said” at trial. Our ignorance on this score is entirely caused by Moore and he must bear the consequences, for on all aspects of the Strickland inquiry, Moore bears the burden of proof. Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 25, 123 S.Ct. 357, 154 L.Ed.2d 279 (2002). The state court reasonably could have inferred the falsity of Moore’s present claims that his confessions to Ziegler and brother Raymond lacked critical details, and hence probative force, from his failure to offer evidence to buttress them.
The majority was not free to ignore the state court’s findings as to the completeness of Moore’s confessions to Raymond and Ziegler unless it could point to record evidence showing such findings of completeness to be objectively unreasonable. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). Here, the panel has simply substituted its own view of the facts for that of the state court. Doing so in this case is especially troubling. As is often the case in habeas proceedings, the record the petitioner has provided is thin and leaves many gaps to be filled by the finder of fact. But we cannot do so ourselves; that is the role of the state courts and, under appropriate circumstances, the federal district court. It is never our role.
If the panel majority’s expressed doubts about the fullness of Moore’s confessions are unnecessary to the decision, then the need for rehearing is all the more obvious. If such is the case, the majority has created a new, virtually per se rule that the failure to file a meritorious motion to suppress a defendant’s confession to the police is always prejudicial. If the existence of two separate, independent, and mutually corroborating confessions, given to persons to whom the defendant was personally close, is insufficient to establish harmless *1169error, little will be. After all, a “confession is like no other evidence.” Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 296, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991).
The majority correctly observes that there were also multiple confessions in Fulminante. But the differences between this case and Fulminante are stark. The second confession in Fulminante was given: (1) to a single individual; (2) to a virtual stranger, whose only connection to Fulminante was the fact that she was the wife of the investigating officer; (3) to a person whose credibility was made dubious by her failure to report Fulminante to the authorities and by the fact that, after Fulminante confessed, she voluntarily associated with him despite her stated disgust at his actions; and (4) to a person who reported the confession to authorities under highly suspicious circumstances. Id. at 298-99, 111 S.Ct. 1246. Here, Moore’s twin confessions to close associates — one of them his own brother — whose testimony the jury would have had little reason to doubt, bear little resemblance to the single confession in Fulminante.
Even if, on direct appeal, we might conclude that Moore’s counsel’s failure to file a motion to suppress the confession to the police entitled Moore to relief under Strickland, it strains credulity to claim that the state court’s decision was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, the Fulminante decision.
For these reasons, and the reasons persuasively set forth by Judges Bybee and Callahan, I respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.

. Full: “2." Complete in every detail <a full account of the incident>.” Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary 511 (1984).