Court Opinion

ID: 9385516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-07 00:00:35.786982+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:02.412161
License: Public Domain

Case: 21-30753         Document: 00516704267             Page: 1      Date Filed: 04/06/2023

              United States Court of Appeals
                   for the Fifth Circuit                                          United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                           Fifth Circuit
                                      ____________                                       FILED
                                                                                      April 6, 2023
                                        No. 21-30753
                                                                                      Lyle W. Cayce
                                      ____________
                                                                                           Clerk

   Jessie J. Grace, III,

                                                                     Petitioner—Appellee,

                                             versus

   Tim Hooper, Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary,

                                               Respondent—Appellant.
                      ______________________________

                      Appeal from the United States District Court
                         for the Eastern District of Louisiana
                               USDC No. 2:02-CV-3818
                      ______________________________

   Before Wiener, Higginson, and Wilson, Circuit Judges.
   Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge: *
          In 1994, Jessie Grace was convicted of second-degree murder in
   Louisiana and sentenced to life in prison. In 2015, he brought a third habeas
   petition in state court, alleging Brady violations based on newly available
   grand-jury testimony. The State conceded that favorable evidence had been
   withheld but argued the evidence was not material. The Louisiana district
   court granted relief; the Louisiana court of appeals reversed, holding that the

          _____________________
          *
              This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 21-30753      Document: 00516704267          Page: 2   Date Filed: 04/06/2023

                                    No. 21-30753

   district court abused its discretion; and the Louisiana Supreme Court denied
   certiorari, stating, “Denied. Relator fails to show that the state withheld
   material exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland.”
          Grace then brought a petition in federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254.
   The district court granted relief under § 2254(d)(1), finding that the withheld
   evidence was material under Brady and that under clearly established
   Supreme Court precedent, no reasonable jurist could have concluded
   otherwise.
          The State timely appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291
   and Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 22(b)(3). See Smith v. Davis, 927
   F.3d 313, 320 (5th Cir. 2019). The State argues that the district court
   misunderstood and misapplied § 2254(d)(1), that reasonable jurists could
   have come to the same conclusion as the Louisiana higher courts, and that
   there was no Brady violation at all. Because the district court’s opinion did
   not sufficiently analyze the objective reasonableness of the Louisiana higher
   courts’ decisions, we VACATE and REMAND for the district court to
   provide an analysis consistent with the requirements of § 2254(d)(1).
                                         I.
          We do not repeat the underlying facts of this case, which have been
   exhaustively described elsewhere. See State v. Grace, 94-KA-295 (La. App. 5
   Cir. 9/27/94); 643 So. 2d 1306; State v. Grace, 17-451 (La. App. 5 Cir.
   11/14/17).
          “In a habeas corpus appeal, we review the district court’s findings of
   fact for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo, applying the same
   standards to the state court’s decision as did the district court.” Reeder v.
   Vannoy, 978 F.3d 272, 276 (5th Cir. 2020) (per curiam) (quoting Jenkins v.
   Hall, 910 F.3d 828, 832 (5th Cir. 2018)).

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          The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)
   “imposes important limitations on the power of federal courts to overturn
   the judgments of state courts in criminal cases.” Shoop v. Hill, 139 S. Ct. 504,
   506 (2019) (per curiam). Under 18 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), “habeas relief may
   be granted only if the state court’s adjudication ‘resulted in a decision that
   was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of,’ Supreme Court
   precedent that was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the adjudication.” Id.
   (quoting White v. Woodall, 572 U.S. 415, 419–20 (2014)). “This means that a
   state court’s ruling must be ‘so lacking in justification that there was an error
   well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for
   fairminded disagreement.’” Id. (quoting Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86,
   103 (2011)). Put otherwise, “[a] state court’s determination that a claim lacks
   merit precludes federal habeas relief so long as fairminded jurists could
   disagree on the correctness of the state court’s decision.” Woods v. Etherton,
   578 U.S. 113, 116–17 (2016) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks and
   citation omitted).
          The determination at issue in this case is the Louisiana higher courts’
   holding that the State did not violate its Brady obligation to disclose material
   exculpatory evidence to the defense. Under Brady v. Maryland, “the
   suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon
   request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or
   to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.”
   373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963). The rule in Brady applies to evidence undermining
   witness credibility. Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 153–54 (1972). Here,
   the State concedes all elements of a Brady violation except materiality.
          “Evidence qualifies as material when there is any reasonable
   likelihood it could have affected the judgment of the jury.” Wearry v. Cain,
   577 U.S. 385, 392 (2016) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks and citation
   omitted). The defendant “need not show that he ‘more likely than not’

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   would have been acquitted had the new evidence been admitted.” Id. The
   defendant “must show only that the new evidence is sufficient to undermine
   confidence in the verdict.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citation
   omitted). In other words, the question is whether “the withheld evidence in
   the context of the entire record” is such that, “had the evidence been
   disclosed, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Turner v.
   United States, 137 S. Ct. 1885, 1893 (2017) (internal quotation marks and
   citations omitted).
                                          II.
          The Supreme Court has provided directions to federal courts in the
   § 2254(d)(1) context, but the district court’s opinion in this case did not
   wholly follow them. First, in Shinn v. Kayer, the Court considered a Ninth
   Circuit opinion granting relief under § 2254(d)(1) and stated that it was
   “fundamentally inconsistent” with AEDPA:
          The panel essentially evaluated the merits de novo, only tacking
          on a perfunctory statement at the end of its analysis asserting
          that the state court’s decision was unreasonable. In other
          words, it appears to have treated the unreasonableness
          question as a test of its confidence in the result it would reach
          under de novo review.
   141 S. Ct. 517, 523 (2020) (per curiam) (cleaned up).
          The district court’s opinion in this case is susceptible to a similar
   concern. The opinion contains less than six pages of analysis, only some of
   which discusses Brady materiality, and only one paragraph of which
   concludes that the state courts’ conclusions were objectively unreasonable.
   The opinion appears to provide a de novo analysis followed by a brief
   statement that the state courts were objectively unreasonable to come to a
   different conclusion. We disagree with Grace’s suggestion that the facts of
   this case are so extreme that this depth of analysis is sufficient.

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           Second, when we evaluate a state court’s decision under § 2254(d)(1),
   “we may not use this circuit’s precedent to ‘refine or sharpen a general
   principle of Supreme Court jurisprudence into a specific legal rule that [the
   Supreme] Court has not announced.’” Reeder, 978 F.3d at 276 (alteration in
   original) (quoting Marshall v. Rodgers, 569 U.S. 58, 64 (2013) (per curiam)).
   In fact, the Supreme Court has stated that a federal habeas court “may not
   ‘consul[t] its own precedents, rather than those of [the Supreme] Court,’”
   when making such evaluations. White, 572 U.S. at 420 n.2 (first alteration in
   original) (quoting Parker v. Matthews, 567 U.S. 37, 48 (2012) (per curiam)). 1
           The district court opinion’s analysis of Brady materiality relies heavily
   on Fifth Circuit precedent and minimally on Supreme Court precedent. We
   note, in particular, the absence of discussion and application of Wearry, 577
   U.S. 385, Smith v. Cain, 565 U.S. 73 (2012), and Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S.
   419 (1995). Grace argues that the district court’s citations to Fifth Circuit
   precedent could be replaced with citations to equally specific Supreme Court
   precedent, especially Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308 (1974). Whether that is
   so is a matter we leave to the district court to elaborate and explain on
   remand.
           Third, “[d]eciding whether a state court’s decision involved an
   unreasonable application of federal law or was based on an unreasonable
   determination of fact requires the federal habeas court to train its attention
   on the particular reasons—both legal and factual—why state courts rejected
   a state prisoner’s federal claims.” Wilson v. Sellers, 138 S. Ct. 1188, 1191–92
   (2018) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). “[W]hen the last

           _____________________
           1
             This is, of course, compatible with the fact “we may ‘look to circuit precedent to
   ascertain whether [we have] already held that the particular point in issue is clearly
   established by Supreme Court precedent.’” Reeder, 978 F.3d at 276–77 (alteration in
   original) (quoting Marshall, 569 U.S. at 64).

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   state court to decide a prisoner’s federal claim explains its decision on the
   merits in a reasoned opinion . . . , a federal habeas court simply reviews the
   specific reasons given by the state court and defers to those reasons if they
   are reasonable.” Id. at 1192. But the issue “is more difficult . . . when the
   relevant state-court decision on the merits, say, a state supreme court
   decision, does not come accompanied with those reasons.” Id.
          It has been a point of dispute in this case whether Wilson requires the
   court to “look through” the minimally reasoned opinion of the Louisiana
   Supreme Court and to focus on the reasoning of the Louisiana court of
   appeals. The alternative to Wilson would require the district court to consider
   hypothetical lines of reasoning that would support the Louisiana Supreme
   Court’s opinion. See Richter, 562 U.S. at 103. These hypothetical lines would
   presumably include the reasoning of the Louisiana court of appeals.
          Regardless of whether Wilson’s “look through” method applies, the
   district court opinion did not sufficiently train its attention on state court
   reasoning—actual or hypothetical—and analyze it with the deference that
   § 2254(d)(1) requires. Because we are a court of review, and because we
   recognize the district court’s depth of knowledge about this long-running
   case, we return this case to the district court to produce an analysis that
   conforms to Supreme Court direction and the requirements of § 2254(d)(1).
   We give no view as to the conclusion the district court should reach on
   remand.
                                        III.
          We VACATE the portion of the district court’s December 2, 2021,
   opinion granting relief under § 2254(d)(1) and the final judgment and
   REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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