Court Opinion

ID: 9497207
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:45:54.467608+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:03.770374
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially:
Because I agree that his claim fails whether we apply Jackson as a freestanding test on habeas review or filter Jackson through AEDPA, I concur in the rejection of Bruce’s insufficient evidence claim on the former ground. I write separately, however, to express the preferable view that AEDPA requires us to evaluate state courts’ applications of Jackson for objective unreasonableness.
As the court’s opinion correctly notes, this question remains open in our circuit, see Chein v. Shumsky, 373 F.3d 978, 982 (9th Cir.2004) (en banc), but five of our sister circuits have concluded that a sufficiency of the evidence claim presents a legal determination that must be evaluated through the AEDPA standard of review embodied in § 2254(d)(1). See Torres v. Mullin, 317 F.3d 1145, 1151-52 (10th Cir. 2003); Ponnapula v. Spitzer, 297 F.3d 172, 180 (2d Cir.2002); Sanford v. Yukins, 288 F.3d 855, 863 (6th Cir.2002); Piaskowski v. Bett, 256 F.3d 687, 691 (7th Cir.2001); Hurtado v. Tucker, 245 F.3d 7, 16 (1st *959Cir.2001).1 These circuits have reasoned, in the words of the Tenth Circuit, that “[t]he amendments to the habeas corpus statutes set forth in AEDPA have added an additional degree of deference to state courts’ resolution of sufficiency of the evidence questions.” Torres, 317 F.3d at 1151. No circuit has explicitly held that a state court’s Jackson inquiry is exempt from AEDPA’s standard of review.
Because the Jackson test presents a quintessential^ legal question — whether as a matter of fundamental due process a conviction is underpinned by sufficient evidence — I agree with those of our sister circuits that evaluate sufficiency of the evidence claims under § 2254(d)(1). See Jackson, 443 U.S. at 313-14, 99 S.Ct. 2781 (“This is the first of our cases to expressly consider the question whether the due process standard recognized in Winship constitutionally protects an accused against conviction except upon evidence that is sufficient fairly to support a conclusion that every element of the crime has been established beyond a reasonable doubt.”). Such a view also comports with the common understanding of sufficiency of the evidence claims as matters of law. See Schlup v. Deb, 513 U.S. 298, 330,115 S.Ct. 851, 130 L.Ed.2d 808 (1995) (“Under Jackson, the question whether the trier of fact has power to make a finding of guilt requires a binary response: Either the trier of fact has power as a matter of law or it does not.”); Carmell v. Texas, 529 U.S. 513, 547, 120 S.Ct. 1620, 146 L.Ed.2d 577 (2000) (“Sufficiency of the evidence rules (by definition) do just that — they inform us whether the evidence introduced is sufficient to convict as a matter of law[.]”); Griffin v. United States, 502 U.S. 46, 59, 112 S.Ct. 466, 116 L.Ed.2d 371 (1991) (“In one sense ‘legal error’ includes inadequacy of evidence — namely when the phrase is used as a term of art to designate those mistakes that it is the business of judges (in jury cases) and of appellate courts to identify and correct. In this sense ‘legal error’ occurs when a jury, properly instructed as to the law, convicts on the basis of evidence that no reasonable person could regard as sufficient.”). Given this understanding of the nature of the Jackson inquiry, AEDPA commands that we review state-court legal determinations of sufficiency of the evidence claims under § 2254(d)(1).2
This conclusion is not affected by Bruce’s invocation of § 2254(d)(2), which provides that a habeas court may grant relief if a state-court decision was “based *960on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” At first glance, § 2254(d)(2) would appear to be implicated by sufficiency of the evidence claims; and the Tenth Circuit was formerly the site of debate over whether sufficiency claims involved legal or factual determinations under AEDPA. See Fields v. Gibson, 277 F.3d 1203, 1220-21 (10th Cir. 2002); Romano v. Gibson, 239 F.3d 1156, 1164 n. 2 (10th Cir.2001); Moore v. Gibson, 195 F.3d 1152, 1176-77 (10th Cir.1999) (each noting split in intracircuit caselaw but avoiding the question because petitioner’s claim did not satisfy either standard); but see Torres v. Mullin, 317 F.3d 1145, 1151 (10th Cir.2003) (concluding that “sufficiency of the evidence is properly viewed as a legal question”). But while the Jackson inquiry necessarily involves a close review of the facts, the Court was careful to explain that it did not intend to disturb the jury’s traditional role as factfinder:
This familiar standard gives full play to the responsibility of the trier of fact fairly to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts. Once a defendant has been found guilty of the crime charged, the factfinder’s role as weigher of the evidence is preserved through a legal conclusion that upon judicial review all of the evidence is to be considered in the light most favorable to the prosecution. The criterion thus impinges upon “jury” discretion only to the extent necessary to guarantee the fundamental due process of law.
Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781 (emphasis in original). Review under Jackson thus “does not require scrutiny of the reasoning process actually used by the factfinder — if known.” Id. at 319 n. 13, 99 S.Ct. 2781. And our recent decision in Taylor v. Maddox makes clear that review under § 2254(d)(2)’s “unreasonable determination” clause involves precisely this “determin[ation] that the state-court fact-finding process is defective in some material way, or perhaps non-existent[.]” Taylor, 366 F.3d at 1000. Because Bruce does not here challenge the jury’s factfinding process but rather the constitutional sufficiency of the proof against him, it is clear that § 2254(d)(1) provides the relevant standard of review.
AEDPA’s language is plain: we must uphold a state-court conviction unless it is “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Jackson is undoubtedly the “clearly established Federal law” governing sufficiency of the evidence claims on habeas review. AEDPA here clearly mandates not a direct application of Jackson, but a deferential review of a state court’s application of Jackson.

. The Fourth Circuit, in an opinion later reversed by the Supreme Court on other grounds, evaluated an application of Jackson by the Maryland Court of Appeal for unreasonableness under § 2254(d)(1). See Wiggins v. Corcoran, 288 F.3d 629, 637-39 (4th Cir. 2002), rev’d on other grounds sub nom. Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 123 S.Ct. 2527, 156 L.Ed.2d 471 (2003). The Eighth Circuit has assessed a state court’s application of Jackson for objective unreasonableness under either § 2254(d)(1) or (d)(2). See Weston v. Dormire, 272 F.3d 1109, 1112 (8th Cir.2001). And the Fifth Circuit has accorded AEDPA deference under § 2254(d) to a state court's application of Jackson in the context of a petitioner's claim that a jury's finding of future dangerousness was unsupported by sufficient evidence. See Martinez v. Johnson, 255 F.3d 229, 244-45 (5th Cir.2001).

. To be sure, a plurality of the Supreme Court has suggested that Jackson may present a “mixed constitutional question” requiring the application of law to fact. See Wright v. West, 505 U.S. 277, 289-90, 112 S.Ct. 2482, 120 L.Ed.2d 225 (1992) (plurality op.). But even if Jackson is conceived of in this manner, our review of state-court sufficiency determinations must still lie under § 2254(d)(1). See Williams, 529 U.S. at 408-09, 120 S.Ct. 1495; Davis, 333 F.3d at 990.