Court Opinion

ID: 9494490
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:38:42.318817+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:26.035776
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, in which
SUHRHEINRICH and BATCHELDER, Circuit Judges, join.
Although some have attacked the very notion of referring to death penalty litigation as involving characteristics of a game, with tactics, moves, and rules, see O’Guinn v. Dutton, 88 F.3d 1409, 1413 n. 1 (6th Cir.1996) (Merritt, J. concurring), the broad definitions used in the study of “game theory,” and in legal courses on the subject, certainly apply. The condemned in almost all cases seeks to avoid allowing the legal system to reach a condition of finality, despite the very strong value that finality has, even in a death penalty case. See McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 492, 111 S.Ct. 1454, 113 L.Ed.2d 517 (1991).
The state almost always seeks finality— either it will succeed in carrying out the mandates of the state legal system, or it can at least move on to some other case.
All well and good. The system provides many pathways of appeal, reconsideration and contemplation. But when federal lower courts are involved, under current statutes, upheld by the Supreme Court, it all comes down to Section 2254 — statutory ha-beas corpus. See Felker v. Turpin, 518 U.S. 651, 662, 116 S.Ct. 2333, 135 L.Ed.2d 827 (1996). See also 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(E).
The Supreme Court specifically and unanimously upheld this scheme — in Felker v. Turpin it upheld all the restrictions on habeas contained in Section 2254 and AEDPA, leaving only the original writ of habeas to the Supreme Court as the avenue of the “great writ” that may not be suspended, except in cases of insurrection. Id. at 662-65, 116 S.Ct. 2333.
So, to avoid finality, a prisoner must follow Section 2254. It gives him a full and fair habeas hearing. Byrd has had that, from 1994 to 2000. This court considered the matter, issued an opinion, that opinion was subject to a petition for en banc rehearing, and though narrowly, Byrd did not succeed. Byrd v. Collins, 209 F.3d 486, rehearing denied, No. 96-3202, amended en banc order (6th Cir. Aug. 22, 2000). The Supreme Court denied certiorari. Byrd v. Collins, 531 U.S. 1082, 121 S.Ct. 786, 148 L.Ed.2d 682 (2001).
At that point, the system clearly gives him two, and only two, options. He may move this court for permission to file a second or successive habeas. If granted that permission, he files his habeas in district court and proceeds. If his motion is denied, the denial is not subject to rehearing. Or, if he contends that under pre-AEDPA law he does not need such permission, he can file a habeas in district court, and see if the district court agrees with him. In either case, the case continues on the road to finality. Byrd has chosen to do neither. He filed a document that does not admit to being a second or successive habeas. The panel ruled that it was.
In a somewhat similar, possibly pre-AEDPA, case, Robert Coe’s filing in district court to raise a Ford competency issue was held by the panel to be a pre-AEDPA petition that the district court was permitted to deal with. The district court ruled promptly, and the system was permitted to operate. See Coe v. Bell, 209 F.3d 815 (6th Cir.2000). Byrd could have *595filed in district court, if he thought AED-PA doesn’t apply, but he didn’t.
What Byrd did instead was to file a petition for rehearing en banc of the denial. This was clearly not permitted. Nevertheless, this court issued an order, based on motions not made known to some members of the court, ordering in advance that such a petition be filed and submitted to the court. See Order filed September 11, 2001 in Case No. 01-3927, 269 F.3d 561. Such a petition was filed, and submitted to the court. At the request of a member of the panel, a poll on the granting of the en banc petition was ordered, and a voting ballot issued on Sept. 27.
However, on September 28, the proposition on which the court was asked to vote was changed, apparently, to be a request “to determine whether the en banc court shall, sua sponte ” not re-hear the action of the panel and grant permission for a second or successive habeas petition, but rather to “remand” the case to the district court “for the development of a factual record sufficient to permit a consideration of a petition to file a second petition.” A majority of the active judges of the court have now supported this proposition. This action has no conceivable connection to Section 2254 jurisprudence, whatsoever.
Indeed, Byrd perhaps gives the game away in his most recent filing where he states that “this Court sits less as an appellate court and more as a fact-finder on the actual innocence claim.” See “Motion For Leave to File a Motion Requesting Referral of His Case to a Special Master Pursuant to FRAP 48,” at 8, filed September 26, 2001. Truer words were never spoken, nor words that more accurately represent how the court is failing to apply Section 2254. Byrd wants us (and apparently a majority of the court agrees) to be involved in a fact-finding process, as to matters willfully withheld from the court for over a decade, or now brought up at the last minute, when the persons involved were fully available to the defense at trial, at state habeas, and at federal habeas and never brought forth until now.
Quite simply, the claim of actual innocence, for habeas purposes, does not mean that a judge would have ruled differently had he been on the jury; or on the state bench; or on the state or federal habeas courts; it has to mean that a particular legal standard, set down in the statutes and cases we are sworn to uphold, has been met. See Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 400-01, 113 S.Ct. 853, 122 L.Ed.2d 203 (1993).
There are a variety of ways that Byrd could have attempted to pursue those issues under the rules. He has chosen not to.
For every one of those avenues leads to finality. Instead, he, with the approval of this court, has concocted a procedure unknown to the law, where this court takes control of matters not properly before it, “remands” them to a court where they have never been, and commands that the matters then be returned to this court, in 45 days or so, for this court, only then, to consider whether permission to file a second habeas should be granted by the full court.
Subsequent to the close of the voting on the proposition stated above, see supra p. 594, the court has prepared a very extensive order of “remand” that only adds to the astonishing series of irregularities that have occurred in this case. First, the cited cases of Triestman and Krimmel provide no support for the ability of the entire court to “rehear” the actions of a panel with respect to a motion for permission to file a second or successive habeas petition. See Triestman v. United States, 124 F.3d 361 (2d Cir.1997); Krimmel v. Hopkins, 56 *596F.3d 873 (8th Cir.1995). Neither case involved the full court at all; both involved a rehearing by a panel of its own decisions. Krimmel- was pre-AEDPA and involved a conventional appeal of a denial of a first habeas. Triestman specifically noted that § 2255 requires that “a second or successive habeas must be certified ... by a panel of the appropriate court of appeals.” Triestman, 124 F.3d at 365 (emphasis added) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2255).
This obviously is not the case here.
Next, the court’s purported “remand” is not “ancillary to the petition for a writ of habeas corpus,” because there is no petition until a panel of this court grants permission to file it — -when it would be filed in the district court. What the court’s order does is neatly avoid the conventional habe-as jurisdiction of the district court,, where such a petition, if and when permitted to be filed, would be directed to the judge who has dealt with the earlier habeas petition by Byrd, or would be dealt with otherwise according to local court rules. Instead, our court in effect grants Byrd’s undealt-with motion for a special master. If we can direct a particular federal judge to appoint a particular type of official to advise us, we could just as easily appoint a law school dean, the UN Commission on Human Rights, or Amnesty International to conduct such a proceeding.
Finally, under the statutes, we are simply not authorized to do anything with a motion to file a second or successive petition other than to grant it, or deny it. We cannot shirk that duty or turn it over to others to conduct “fact-finding” that we will apparently deal with in some capacity other than that assigned us by our jurisdictional statutes.
This activity has spun so far out of the authorized sequence that it may even be doubted whether the Supreme Court may be thought to have jurisdiction to stay it at this point; the answer to that question will have to await the event, should such a request be filed. What is certain is that we have embarked on a path that, if permitted, creates the ability for every appellate panel and full court to explode every limitation apparently thought, by both Congress and the Supreme Court, to be contained within AEDPA.
The court’s actions are lawless, and I therefore respectfully dissent.