Court Opinion

ID: 9475769
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:37:26.158106+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:54.398618
License: Public Domain

NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The embarrassed history of this case on appeal stems from the original majority’s decision to rely on a fact that was not presented to the state appellate court as relevant to the defendant’s sufficiency of the evidence argument. To wit: by sua sponte relying on Mr. Ferguson’s prior trafficking conviction to prove his present guilt, this court created constitutional problems that had not arisen in the courts below. This is why federal courts normally refrain from deciding habeas issues on the basis of facts not presented to the state courts. Sampson v. Love, 782 F.2d 53 (6th Cir.1986).
The history of Mr. Ferguson’s sufficiency of the evidence argument is as follows. At trial Mr. Ferguson’s counsel made a motion for a directed verdict based upon the insufficiency of the evidence. The trial court overruled the motion without discussion. When Mr. Ferguson appealed his conviction in state court on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to sustain his conviction, he did not include as evidence of his present guilt the prior trafficking conviction. The prosecution also ignored defendant’s prior conviction in the course of its argument on appeal that the evidence was sufficient. The prosecution’s failure to rely on the prior conviction as evidence of defendant’s guilt was consistent with its apparent belief that the prior conviction was admitted only for the purpose of the Kentucky recidivism statute. The prosecution explained to the jury during voir dire: “[Y]ou heard the Court read the record of an earlier conviction, and the reason its [sic] in circuit court is that this is the second charge for trafficking in marijuana, so that would be — the statutes are written so that this carries a felony penalty.” Tr. 8. Accordingly, in its opening statement the prosecution pointed to defendant’s proximity to the marijuana and the amount of marijuana as evidence of his intent to sell the marijuana, but noted only that the prior conviction was “necessary to bring the kind of penalty that we are seeking here today.” Tr. 17. In light of this, it is not surprising that the state appellate court ignored the prior conviction in its review of the evidence supporting the present conviction. The state court only noted:
The evidence showed there were 3 plastic bags of marijuana in the back seat of the car where appellant had been seated. This evidence is sufficient to submit to the jury on a charge of trafficking____
After the defendant was denied further review in the state courts, he filed a petition for habeas corpus relief in the federal district court. Once again, neither petitioner nor the state argued in the federal briefs that the prior conviction had any bearing whatsoever on the sufficiency of the evidence issue. The state merely pointed out petitioner’s proximity to the marijuana, petitioner’s dilated eyes, and the amount of the marijuana in the bag. Although the magistrate’s report and recommendation nevertheless listed the prior conviction as support for the current conviction, petitioner’s objections to the report stated that the prior conviction was admitted only to enhance the penalty, and the district court’s order did not list the prior conviction among the evidence supporting a conviction.
After the district court denied his petition, Mr. Ferguson appealed his sufficiency of the evidence claim to this court. Again, the state’s brief made no mention of the prior conviction in support of its argument for sustaining the conviction. Nor do I believe that any such arguments were made at oral argument. Nevertheless, a majority of the panel upheld the conviction based upon its decision to consider the pri- or conviction as evidence of guilt despite the fact that the parties and the state court had not considered the prior conviction in the context of the sufficiency of the evidence issue.
*1246This sua sponte consideration of facts not relied upon by the parties in state court runs contra to this court’s concern for comity in Sampson, 782 F.2d 53. In Sampson, we held that when a petition for habeas relief relies on evidence not presented to the state courts, and that evidence would place the claim in a significantly different light, petitioner must go back to state court to exhaust his claim. In the case at hand, not petitioner but this court has chosen to rely on a fact neither presented to the state appellate court nor considered by that court in its decision of the sufficiency of the evidence issue. The remedy for the exhaustion problem thus created is not to dismiss the claim as unexhausted, but to restrict this court’s analysis to the facts and issues presented by the parties and addressed by the state court. It would be nonsensical for this court to dismiss as unexhausted all claims for which we could sua sponte dig up arguably relevant facts that were neither presented to nor considered by the state courts.1
To reiterate, before the federal appellate court’s analysis of this case, the prior conviction had not been viewed as evidence of guilt. Mr. Ferguson had no reason to object to the admission of evidence which he believed to have been admitted only for the purpose of enhancing his penalty. Only when this court made the assumption that the jury used the evidence in order to find Mr. Ferguson guilty did the Dawson v. Cowan, 531 F.2d 1374 (6th Cir.1976), issue arise.
To justify its decision to rely on the prior conviction as evidence of Mr. Ferguson’s guilt, the majority points out that evidence of a prior conviction can sometimes be admitted to prove intent. While this rule of evidence is certainly indisputable, in the case before us no foundation was laid nor did the prosecution argue that the prior conviction demonstrated Mr. Ferguson’s intent to sell the drugs. Reading the entire transcript of the trial, it is manifest that the prosecution introduced the prior conviction to enhance the penalty if Mr. Ferguson was convicted.
Although in the closing argument the prosecution did intersperse the fact of defendant’s prior conviction more than was proper, the prosecution’s opening statement, the limited testimony on the prior conviction, the prosecution’s consistent reliance then and now on the physical evidence of guilt, and the trial court’s jury instructions, all indicate that the parties and trial court assumed that the prior conviction was admitted only for enhancement purposes. It is inappropriate for us to assume that the jury somehow knew the rules of evidence and so went ahead and also used the prior conviction to demonstrate intent and only intent. The only indication to the jury of the appropriate use of the prior conviction was that the prior conviction was relevant to the enhancement of the penalty. Other than that, the jury had no way of knowing how it could appropriately use the prior conviction, for neither the parties nor the judge indicated to the jury the legitimate uses of a prior conviction other than to enhance a penalty.
Altogether, this court has created the exhaustion and procedural problems discussed in the present majority opinion by improperly considering evidence that was not presented to the state appellate court as relevant to the conviction. Moreover, this court has improperly assumed that the evidence was indeed relevant to the conviction, despite the prosecution’s failure to argue and the state court’s failure to find that such evidence had any legitimate bearing on guilt. The obvious solution is for *1247this court to consider only the evidence cited in the parties’ briefs and the state court’s opinion in order to evaluate the sufficiency of the evidence. As the original majority opinion stated,
Without proof of the prior trafficking conviction, the conclusion that Ferguson intended to sell any of the relatively small quantity of marijuana found with him on the back seat of the car would have been strained.
Ferguson v. Knight, 792 F.2d 581, 583 (6th Cir.1986). I cannot in good conscience or consistent with my oath, agree to affirm the judgment below. Justice is being mocked here. Accordingly, I would grant Mr. Ferguson’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

. See Justice O’Connors’ discussion in Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 124 n. 25, 102 S.Ct. 1558, 1570 n. 25, 71 L.Ed.2d 783 (1982), pointing out that:
A creative appellate judge could almost always distill from these allegations an unexhausted due process claim. If such a claim were present, Rose v. Lundy, 455 U.S. 509 [102 S.Ct. 1198, 71 L.Ed.2d 379] (1982), would mandate dismissal of the entire petition. In this case, however, the District Judge did not identify the claim that Justice Brennan proffers. Under these circumstances, we are reluctant to interpolate an unexhausted claim not directly presented by the petition. Rose v. Lundy does not compel such harsh treatment of habeas petitions.