Court Opinion

ID: 9857161
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 13:52:36.738357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:05.040469
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The district court, after what seems to me to be a searching analysis under Brecht, reached a point where it was in “grave doubt” about the harmlessness of the Doyle error in Johnson’s state court trial and, citing Fry v. Pliler, resolved its state of “equipoise” by granting the habeas petition. See Fry v. Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 127 S.Ct. 2321, 2328 n. 3, 168 L.Ed.2d 16 (2007) (‘We have previously held that, when a court is ‘in virtual equipoise as to the harmlessness of the error’ under the Brecht standard, the court should ‘treat the error ... as if it affected the verdict ....’”) (quoting O’Neal v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 435, 115 S.Ct. 992, 130 L.Ed.2d 947 (1995)).
The majority resolves the question of the harmlessness of the Doyle violation by finding that the state court applied settled law reasonably under § 2254(d), and therefore does not reach the Fry/Brecht question. This seems unsettling because it points to tension between our precedent regarding “reasonableness” under § 2254(d) and the Supreme Court’s precedent on how to resolve questions of harmlessness under Brecht. In the end, I believe the legal gymnastics can, perhaps, be reduced to a difference of opinion about the effect of the error in question. The district court judge was convinced that the *407Doyle error made a difference in the outcome of Johnson’s trial (or he had grave doubts, anyway). The majority on appeal believes that a Doyle violation rarely, if ever, makes this kind of a difference and that the state court was therefore reasonable in finding it made no difference here.
Because habeas petitions are subject to de novo review, the majority analysis results in a reversal. But the majority does little to clarify how district courts are to apply § 2254(d)’s “reasonableness” inquiry in the light of Fry’s instruction to “assess the prejudicial impact of constitutional error in a state-court criminal trial under the ... standard set forth in Brecht,” and apparently to grant the petition where “grave doubts” lead to a state of “equipoise.” Fry, 127 S.Ct. at 2328 & n. 3. Although these complications are troubling, I do not find them adequate grounds to disagree with the outcome and therefore I join the majority opinion.