Court Opinion

ID: 9843223
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:31:02.66852+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:02.480769
License: Public Domain

DISSENT
BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I fully concur with the court’s conclusion that the bag was searched lawfully incident to arrest, and with the rejection of the district court’s basis for finding a violation of the Sixth Amendment. However, I consider as wholly inadequate the court’s alternative basis for finding ineffectiveness of counsel.
In affirming the writ in this case, the court does not respect the high bar that has been set for claims such as Northrop’s. In order for us to affirm the grant of the writ, we must not only find attorney Brav-erman to have acted incompetently based on the information he had at the time, we must find the opposing interpretation under Strickland, which accords wide deference and a presumption of competence to trial counsel, to be so far-fetched that no reasonable court could credit it. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 411, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). Even prior to AEDPA, the existence of a valid Fourth Amendment claim not raised at trial was insufficient for federal habeas relief. See Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365, 382, 106 S.Ct. 2574, 91 L.Ed.2d 305 (1986). “Only those habeas petitioners who can prove under Strickland that they *386have been denied a fair trial by the gross incompetence of their attorneys will be granted the writ....” Ibid. The provisions of AEDPA requiring unreasonableness of a state decision, cited by the court in its initial discussion, supra at 377, but applied only in a conclusory manner to the decision of the Michigan Court of Appeals, People v. Northrop, 213 Mich.App. 494, 541 N.W.2d 275, 277 (1995), place an even heavier burden on the petitioner than the one imposed by Morrison.
Taking the facts as they have been presented to us, Northrop cannot take the first step toward meeting his burden, because he does not even have a valid Fourth Amendment claim based on his initial encounter with the police. A Terry stop, as noted by the court, requires coercion that restrains the liberty of the citizen. Two instances of coercion are adduced to support the finding that Northrop was seized. Primarily, the court relies on Northrop’s being stopped as he “sought to leave the area.” Supra, at 380. Secondarily, it relies on the supposed compulsion placed on Northrop to empty his pockets and produce his identification. The record is at best ambiguous as to both of these “events,” however, and insufficient for us to alter the contrary .factual findings of the district court and the state courts.
Although Mr. Northrop, on appeal, claims to have been restrained from leaving during his initial stop by Officers Jackson and Collins, the district court made no such finding. The district court describes the initial encounter thus:
“Officer Oliver Collins testified at petitioner’s trial that Petitioner was carrying a brown bag on his arm when the officer approached him. After Officer Collins and his partner asked Petitioner to approach them for questioning, Petitioner slipped the bag off his arm and kicked it under the seat. The questioning occurred ten to thirty feet away from where the bag was located under the seat.”
(Dist. Ct. Op., at 381). The district court’s opinion (and the evidence presented at Northrop’s trial) provide no support for Northrop’s current claim that he was restrained from leaving the bus station when he stood up from his chair and answered the summons of the officers.1 Any reasonable interpretation of the district court’s *387opinion would view it as choosing between alternate accounts of the incident contained in the record and making not only an “apparent finding of fact” (as discussed in Moore and Wolfe, supra at 377), but an actual finding, that the officers called to Northrop and that he stood up and came over to see what they wanted. We review the district court’s factual findings on ha-beas only for clear error, DeLisle v. Rivers, 161 F.3d 370, 380 (6th Cir.1998) (en banc), and the majority has not found the district court’s account, which omits any mention of Northrop’s seeking to leave, to be clearly erroneous.
Although concluding that a Terry stop had occurred — a legal conclusion to which no deference is due — the district court also made no finding that the officers had compelled Northrop to empty his pockets, and no findings about the officers’ tone, manner, or show of force. We cannot assume compulsion per se. Florida v. Bostick held that no “seizure occurs when police ask questions of an individual, ask to examine the individual’s identification, and request consent to search his or her luggage — as long as the officers do not convey a message that compliance with their requests is required.” 501 U.S. 429, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In a case factually similar to the current one, we stated that “officers did not engage in any overbearing or coercive activity in making these requests and that a consensual encounter occurred. We find that there is nothing to indicate that the officers conveyed a message that compliance with their request to speak with defendant and examine his ticket was required, and no Terry stop occurred.” United States v. Peters, 194 F.3d 692, 698 (6th Cir.1999); see also United States v. Frazier, 936 F.2d 262, 265 (6th Cir.1991) (‘We hold that because the defendant voluntarily gave the ticket to the officer, and the officer did not refuse to return the ticket to the defendant, taking the ticket did not constitute a seizure.”).
The question then becomes what evidence exists or existed that the officers’ statements conveyed the message that Northrop’s compliance was required. There is and was none. Officer Jackson equivocated about whether he would have done anything had Northrop refused to comply. Compare Jackson’s statement that he would have done “probably nothing,” (Ginther Hr’g III, at 30, J.A. 425), with his statement quoted by the majority, supra at 381 n. 7, saying he would not have let Northrop walk away during his investigation. Of course, no one-even Officer Jackson — knows what he would have done, and it is an issue of only peripheral importance. What the record discloses the officers did do is to explain that they had received a tip, ask some questions, and request that Northrop, “if he would,” empty his pockets. Depending on the way the officers behaved, this might constitute a Terry stop, but it might not, and Northrop evidently led Braverman to believe that it did not.
Even were there sufficient record evidence to support finding a Terry violation, we are not asked to adjudicate whether, in a counterfactual universe, a successful suppression motion could have been made by Northrop in 1990. Northrop’s petition is based on the supposed utter failure of Braverman to litigate an obvious and decisive Fourth Amendment claim. But based on what Northrop told Braverman about his encounter, Braverman had no reason to believe that a Terry claim would be successful. For purposes of evaluating compliance with the Sixth Amendment, we are forbidden in the strongest terms from second-guessing counsel’s conduct based on what has been discovered by more than a decade of further proceedings. “A fair *388assessment of attorney performance requires that every effort be made to eliminate the distorting effects of hindsight, to reconstruct the circumstances of counsel’s challenged conduct, and to evaluate the conduct from counsel’s perspective at the time.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052.
In the ineffectiveness hearing afforded Northrop by Michigan, Braverman testified to what he was told about Northrop’s “attempt to leave.” Braverman believed Northrop had been asked to come over and speak to the officer, and that his movement was prompted by what “looks like a request and taken in connection with my conversation with Mr. [Northrop], it appeared like a request.” (Ginther Hr’g I, at 38, J.A. 256). Northrop never told Braverman that he had been trying. to leave and had been stopped by the police. The court cannot rely on Northrop’s being stopped when evaluating Braverman’s performance. It is not a fact we “know” today, and even less a fact that Braverman was privy to when deciding whether to make a suppression motion.2
Northrop told his attorney that he was asked to approach the officers, a conversation occurred between the officers, and that one of them asked Northrop to empty his pockets “if he would.” Northrop said “sure” and did so. (Ginther Hr’g I, at 62-66, J.A. 280-84). Braverman made clear his “perspective at the time,” the perspective from which we are to judge his conduct and choices. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052. “Taking all the information I got into consideration, including the way Mr. [Northrop] relayed the way this happened, I did not feel Mr. [Northrop] was doing anything involuntarily. That was the way I perceived it.” (Ginther Hr’g I, at 65, J.A. 283). A more aggressive, insightful, or devious attorney might not have been so quick to equate his client’s characterization of “voluntariness” with the legal definition. Nevertheless, it is within the minimum range of competence to perceive a claim as weak, when that claim is based on compulsion, and your own client indicates that he acted freely.
The court treats as patently obvious the presence of an involuntary detention prior to Northrop’s admission of marijuana possession, stating “[t]here is no question that Jackson and Collins detained Northrop.” Supra at 380. Even with the benefit of ten years’ hindsight, I do not think there is “no question” about this, as I have discussed. Certainly, Braverman did not perceive that there was “no question” about the matter, primarily because in 1990 Northrop did not believe he had been detained during his initial questioning. Braverman could not rely on Mr. Northrop as his expert on the Fourth Amendment, *389but he necessarily relied on him as to Northrop’s own state of mind and as to the coerciveness of the officers’ conduct. Because Braverman believed that a Terry stop had not occurred,3 and it is not unreasonable to find his belief within the range of professional competence, his failure to file a suppression motion cannot meet the standard of constitutional ineffectiveness required on federal habeas, and Northrop’s Sixth Amendment claim must fail.
It appears to me that, in granting the writ, the court has filtered the factual record through the lens of the current assertions of the petitioner, and contradicted Morrison’s and Strickland’s Sixth Amendment jurisprudence, as well as the more recent teaching of Williams v. Taylor as to limits on our review of state judicial decisions. Had either of my colleagues represented petitioner, he might well have succeeded in suppressing the evidence that led to his conviction. Unfortunately for petitioner, we are not called upon to decide solely if there was error in what was done by Officers Collins and Jackson, Attorney Braverman, or even the Michigan judicial system, much less whether we could have done better. Under AEDPA, the necessary inference of the court’s opinion is that all reasonable courts would find Braver-man “grossly incompetent” in believing his client’s claim that he felt no compulsion to accede to the officers’ requests. This is a client who also obligingly volunteered the information that he had “bud” hidden in his sock, in response to a pro forma request about whether he had any drugs. Whatever we may think about Mr. Braver-man’s overall legal acumen, he was certainly in the best position to assess Mr. Northrop’s credibility when he described his encounter with the police. I cannot find gross legal incompetence in these circumstances, and I certainly do not believe it was unreasonable that the Michigan courts failed to find it.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

. This should not be misconstrued as a claim that there is no support anywhere for petitioner. Officer Jackson's testimony at the Ginther hearing three years after the incident, although relied upon by the court, was contradicted not only by Braverman's recollection of what Northrop told him about the incident, but also by Officer Collins’s testimony at Northrop's trial, a few months after the arrest. Collins said repeatedly that his partner was initially talking to Northrop while Northrop was “sitting there,” (Trial Tr. at 19, J.A. 54), and that his partner “brought him over to me,” (Trial Tr. at 22, J.A. 57), after Collins's discussion with Northrop’s compatriot.
Q (By Mr. Braverman, continuing): "Okay. Now, Mr. Northrip [sic] didn't have this bag when he came over to you, right?
A "When Mr. Northrip [sic] got up with my partner, that's when I saw him ... kick it under the seat. (Trial Tr. at 24, J.A. 59) (emphasis added).
This is completely inconsistent with Northrop attempting to slip away prior to any interview. Officer Jackson was apparently confused three years later, as comparison of the conflicting testimony shows, over which of the partners had done what to which of the two suspects, and his testimony does not appear to have formed the basis of any previous adjudication. I see no reason for the court now to pick from the record this version of the facts, even if it had the power to do so-exactly what occurred at the Greyhound station is uncertain and perhaps unanswerable. Fortunately, .the answer does not matter, because the only relevant question is Braver-man’s knowledge in 1990, and even new information perhaps given by Officer Jackson in 1993 cannot affect this determination.

. As to the initial questioning, the state court, after the Ginther hearing, has spoken to these matters. The Michigan trial court emphatically stated "that Mr. Braverman understood ..., through his interview with Mr. [Northrop,] that Mr. [Northrop] voluntarily emptied his pockets, advised that he [had] bud in his sock and the like. That’s my finding.” (<Ginther Hr’g V, at 23, J.A. 523). AEDPA demands that "a determination of a factual issue made by a State court shall be presumed to be correct.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). The court apparently agrees that we must deem Northrop to have told Braverman that his responses to the police were voluntary, but it then imposes a unarguable, constitutional duty for counsel to disbelieve his client and pursue claims inconsistent with his client’s statements. Otherwise, apparently, he is “not acting as counsel” under Strickland. The court’s holding comes close to mandating that a Fourth Amendment challenge be part of every criminal proceeding where there evidence to be suppressed, something that goes well beyond what the Sixth Amendment requires, and which cannot serve the ends of the judicial system or provide the appropriate latitude to defense counsel.

. This makes it irrelevant whether Braverman should have recognized there was an insufficient basis for a Terry stop.