Court Opinion

ID: 9493958
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:24:51.273858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:08.190142
License: Public Domain

BOWMAN, Circuit Judge.
Dave Dormiré, Superintendent of the Jefferson City Correctional Center (the State), appeals the District Court’s conditional grant of habeas corpus relief to Antoine Bracken, who was convicted in 1994 of second-degree murder and armed criminal action and was sentenced to two concurrent terms of life imprisonment. The State’s appeal challenges the District Court’s determination that Bracken’s ha-beas petition properly raised the claim upon which it granted relief — that the trial court did not expressly find that Bracken’s confession was voluntarily given before the court admitted it into evidence. While Bracken presented a general argument in his petition that his confession was “coerced,” we find that he did not raise the voluntariness claim upon which the District Court granted relief. The claim is procedurally defaulted and we reverse the District Court.
I.
On December 28, 1992, a woman called the St. Louis Police Department to report her belief that her two-year-old daughter had been sexually abused by a man named Bryce Wade. An officer was dispatched to the residence and examined the girl but could find no signs of abuse. The next day the young girl’s mother brought the child to the hospital for a more thorough examination, which proved inconclusive. Despite the inconclusive examination, the child’s father, Terrell Moore, threatened to kill Bryce Wade for “raping” his daughter. Wade was last seen alive in late December 1992.
On March 21, 1998, a burned body was discovered in an abandoned building. The police analyzed the fingerprints from the body’s unburned fingers and positively identified the body as Bryce Wade. The fire investigator concluded that kerosene had been poured on Wade and then was ignited, and the medical examiner determined that Wade had been alive at the time he was burned.
After receiving a tip from a relative of Terrell Moore that Antoine Bracken had information regarding Wade’s death, the police picked up Bracken for questioning. Within three hours, Bracken had completed a videotaped confession in which he admitted that he and Moore had encountered Wade, whom they overpowered and dragged into an abandoned building. Bracken alleged that Moore struck Wade with a board several times and then doused him with kerosene and lit him on fire. In addition, detectives testified that Bracken took them to the abandoned building, re-enacted the assault on Wade, and identified the kerosene heater containing the kerosene that Moore had used in the assault.
The jury convicted Bracken, and the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis sentenced him to life imprisonment. Bracken sought post-conviction relief pro se under Missouri Supreme Court Rule 29.15. Counsel was reappointed and filed an amended Rule 29.15 motion on Bracken’s behalf. The motion was denied and the Missouri Court of Appeals summarily affirmed in a consolidated appeal. State v. Bracken, 916 S.W.2d 419, 420 (Mo.Ct.App.1996) (per curiam). Bracken then filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition for habeas corpus relief. The District Court conditionally granted the writ, and the State now appeals.
II.
The State argues that the District Court erred in granting relief because *701Bracken did not include in his habeas petition the claim that the trial judge faded to expressly rule on the voluntariness of his confession before admitting it into evidence as required under Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964). In Sims v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 538, 544, 87 S.Ct. 639, 17 L.Ed.2d 593 (1967), the Supreme Court expounded on its holding in Jackson by stating that “[a]l-though the judge need not make formal findings of fact or write an opinion, his conclusion that the confession is voluntary must appear from the record with unmistakable clarity.” The State argues that Bracken’s petition presented a substantive claim that as a matter of law his confession was coerced and involuntary — a different claim from the Jackson claim upon which the District Court granted conditional ha-beas relief.
Bracken first raised the general issue of the voluntariness of his confession during the trial court’s pre-trial suppression hearing. The court ultimately denied the motion. The transcript of the suppression hearing is ambiguous, however, as to whether the trial court denied the motion to suppress and admitted the contested statements into evidence because it believed the statements were voluntary, or because the court felt it was the province of the jury to decide whether the statements were voluntary.1 Despite the ambiguity, Bracken’s trial counsel did not object to the court’s failure to find the voluntariness of the statements on the record with unmistakable clarity as required under Jackson.
At trial, the videotaped confession was admitted into evidence and played for the jury. Bracken’s trial counsel renewed his earlier, general argument that the statements were involuntary, but did not argue that the trial court failed to find the volun-tariness of those statements on the record with unmistakable clarity.
After Bracken was convicted, he filed a motion for a new trial. Again, Bracken did not argue that the trial court failed to find the voluntariness of his statements on the record with unmistakable clarity. The trial court denied the motion. Bracken’s next pleading — a consolidated appeal to the Missouri Court of Appeals — squarely raised the procedural-voluntariness Jackson claim for the first and only time. The State opposed the Jackson claim on the grounds that it was procedurally defaulted and meritless. The Missouri Court of Appeals summarily denied Bracken’s appeal.
After his unsuccessful consolidated appeal to the Missouri Court of Appeals, Bracken filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas corpus petition with the District Court. Bracken’s habeas petition abandoned the procedural-voluntariness Jackson claim articulated in his consolidated appeal brief and returned to the general “coercion” argument found in his initial motions and Rule 29.15 motion. The District Court granted conditional relief on the Jackson claim and remanded to the trial court for a post-hoc finding on voluntariness.
The District Court relied on Ground Seven of Bracken’s habeas petition to *702grant relief on the Jackson claim. Mem. and Order at 10-14. Ground Seven states:

Ground Seven (7):

Petitioner’s conviction and sentence was [sic] obtained in violation of petitioner’s rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution as well as petitioner’s rights guaranteed by the Missouri Constitution in that the trial court erred to the prejudice of petitioner by overruling petitioner’s timely objection [to the] admission of State’s exhibit No. 30, a video taped [sic] confession of petitioner. This confession was coerced by the police through physical abuse of petitioner and it was the fruit of [the] poisonous tree, being the result of an illegal arrest of petitioner. By so ruling, the court denied petitioner his right to a fair and impartial jury trial pursuant to the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and Articles I, Section 10, 18(a) and 22(a) of the Missouri Constitution.
Exhaustion and Review: This issue was first presented to the Missouri Court of Appeals before bring [sic] it before this court, and the state courts have failed to address this issue under the proper standard of review, therefore, the presumption of correctness should not be afforded to the state court[] findings.
After considering the words and meaning of Ground Seven, the District Court concluded that the “sole claim” that was properly before it with respect to Ground Seven was Bracken’s “assertion that the trial court failed to make a specific finding regarding the voluntariness of his confession, in violation of his due process rights under the fourteenth amendment.” Mem. and Order at 10. The District Court does not explain how it arrived at the conclusion that the Jackson claim was the “sole claim” properly before it.
III.
We begin with a look at the plain language of Ground Seven. Ground Seven claims that the “error” occurred when the trial court “overruled] petitioner’s ... objection [to the] admission of [the] ... video taped [sic] confession.” The objection referred to in Ground Seven was the objection by Bracken’s trial counsel originally made at the close of the suppression hearing and renewed immediately before the videotape was played for the jury. Bracken’s trial counsel stated that “[m]y objection] is based on my pretrial Motion [and] shall be continued through the actual trial.” Tr. at 100. The pretrial motion was written and submitted to the trial court before the court denied Bracken’s motion to suppress. It necessarily follows that the alleged Jackson error could not be raised or preserved by way of reference to the pretrial motion, as the alleged error had not yet occurred when the motion was submitted. Trial counsel failed to supplement his general objection that relied on the pretrial motion with a specific objection that alleged Jackson error. Ground Seven, therefore, does not reference the Jackson issue.
Earlier cases have made clear that “we will not consider issues or grounds for relief that were not alleged in a prisoner’s habeas petition.” Frey v. Schuetzle, 78 F.3d 359, 360 (8th Cir.1996) (citing Williams v. Lockhart, 849 F.2d 1134, 1139 (8th Cir.1988)). Similarly, district courts must be as mindful as the appellate courts to adjudicate on the merits only those claims that the prisoner properly raises and to avoid those issues that have not been properly raised. After careful review of the entire record, we find that the words and meaning of Ground Seven cannot support the District Court’s holding; the Jackson argument is simply not found anywhere in Bracken’s petition. While it *703is our longstanding practice to construe pro se pleadings liberally, Jones v. Jerrison, 20 F.3d 849, 853 (8th Cir.1994), we cross the permissible boundary when, as here, the petition cannot reasonably be construed as raising the claim upon which the District Court granted relief.
This is not a case where the petitioner inartfully raised factual issues that implicated legal propositions that he could not reasonably be held responsible for articulating. See White v. Wyrick, 530 F.2d 818, 819 (8th Cir.1976) (per curiam) (finding pro se petition should be “interpreted liberally and ... should be construed to encompass any allegation stating federal relief’). Not only is the applicable law not set forth in Bracken’s petition to the District Court, but more importantly, none of the facts supporting the Jackson claim is set forth. This is noteworthy because the record shows that not only was Bracken aware of the Jackson argument at the time that he filed his § 2254 petition, but he also had a pre-written Jackson argument at his disposal, i.e., the Jackson claim was previously articulated in his consolidated appeal to the Missouri Court of Appeals.
We are also more apt to deem a claim preserved if the claim actually raised in the habeas petition shares the same legal analysis and standards as the different claim relied upon by the District Court, as here, or in the appeal. See Frey, 78 F.3d at 361 (“[F]ederal courts should not grant habeas relief to a petitioner based upon a legal theory that involves an entirely different analysis and legal standards than the theory actually alleged by the petitioner.”). Here, Bracken’s claim that his confession was coerced as set forth in Ground Seven is a different issue, governed by different standards, from the procedural Jackson claim. Compare Jackson, 378 U.S. at 394, 84 S.Ct. 1774 (holding that trial court must determine whether the confession was voluntary before admitting it into evidence), and Sims, 385 U.S. at 544, 87 S.Ct. 639 (“[The judge’s] conclusion that the confession is voluntary must appear from the record with unmistakable clarity.”), with Reese v. Delo, 94 F.3d 1177, 1183 (8th Cir.1996) (“In determining whether a confession is voluntary, we consider the totality of the circumstances.”), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1257, 117 S.Ct. 2421, 138 L.Ed.2d 185 (1997), and Hall v. Wolff, 539 F.2d 1146, 1150-51 (8th Cir.1976) (citing expansive list of factors to be considered in evaluating voluntariness).2
IV.
We conclude that Bracken failed to raise the Jackson claim in his habeas petition and that the District Court therefore lacked a proper basis for granting relief on that claim. We therefore reverse.

. At the conclusion of the suppression hearing, the trial court stated:
I think some of this has got to he a jury decision, the police officer came in and testified one way, and Mr. Bracken testified another way, and I wouldn't say Mr. Bracken or the police officer is lying but th[is] seems without something a little clearer I think it really gets down to a jury question, and the jury will have ample opportunity to hear from both sides ... so I will probably overrule the Motion to Suppress Evidence Identification and at the same time we will let the jury make the determination.
Tr. at 100.

. The record shows that both parties framed the Ground Seven claim to the District Court as the reasonableness of the trial court’s vol-untariness finding, not as the Jackson claim upon which the District Court ultimately granted relief. There is no indication that the District Court apprised the State that it was considering granting relief on a basis not independently set forth in Bracken's petition, and the State was therefore deprived of the opportunity to brief the Jaclcson issue or the attendant procedural default issues.