Baldwin v. Johnson

• Decision Date: 01 September 1998
• Docket Number: No. 95-6776,95-6776
• Parties: 12 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 48 Brian Keith BALDWIN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Willie JOHNSON, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1304

152 F.3d 1304

12 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 48

Brian Keith BALDWIN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Willie JOHNSON, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 95-6776.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Sept. 1, 1998.

Michael Kennedy McIntyre, John R. Martin, Atlanta, GA, for Petitioner-Appellant.

J. B. Sessions, III, Atty. Gen., Beth Jackson Hughes, Asst. Atty. Gen., Montgomery, AL, for Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

Before HATCHETT, Chief Judge, and EDMONDSON and COX, Circuit Judges.

HATCHETT, Chief Judge:

Appellant Brian Baldwin challenges the district court's denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 and the court's failure to conduct an evidentiary hearing. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Direct Appeal

On August 9, 1977, a jury in the Circuit Court of Monroe County, Alabama, convicted Baldwin of the capital felony of robbery during which the victim was intentionally killed, in violation of section 13-11-2(a)(2) of the 1975 Alabama Code. ¹ After holding a separate hearing, the court sentenced Baldwin to death. On October 3, 1978, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Baldwin's conviction and sentence. See Baldwin v. State, 372 So.2d 26 (Ala.Crim.App.1978). On direct appeal, Baldwin contended that the State of Alabama did not have jurisdiction to try him where the charged offense, robbery, occurred in North Carolina, while only the aggravating circumstance of intentionally killing the victim occurred in Alabama. Pursuant to its "statutory duty to search the entire record for error[,]" the court also addressed, among other things, (1) whether Baldwin's confessions were knowingly and voluntarily made; and (2) whether the aggravating circumstances of the offense outweighed the mitigating circumstances to warrant the death penalty. 372 So.2d at 28. On June 1, 1979, the Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed the judgment of the court of criminal appeals, addressing only the jurisdiction issue. See Baldwin v. State (Ex parte Baldwin), 372 So.2d 32 (Ala.1979). On June 30, 1980, the United States Supreme Court granted Baldwin's petition for writ of certiorari, vacated the Supreme Court of Alabama's affirmance and remanded the case for further consideration in light of Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 65 L.Ed.2d 392 (1980). See Baldwin v. Alabama, 448 U.S. 903, 100 S.Ct. 3043, 65 L.Ed.2d 1133 (1980). ² The Supreme Court of Alabama, in turn, remanded the case to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals with directions to consider Beck. See Baldwin v. State (In re Baldwin), 405 So.2d 698 (Ala.1981). The court of criminal appeals reversed Baldwin's conviction without opinion. See Baldwin v. State, 405 So.2d 699 (1981).

After the Supreme Court's decision in Hopper v. Evans, 456 U.S. 605, 102 S.Ct. 2049, 72 L.Ed.2d 367 (1982), the court of criminal appeals granted the state's request for rehearing, vacated its previous reversal and affirmed Baldwin's conviction and sentence. See Baldwin v. State, 456 So.2d 117 (Ala.Crim.App.1983). ³ On rehearing, the court of criminal appeals concluded, among other things, that (1) the trial court properly considered Baldwin's conviction under North Carolina's youthful offender statute as an aggravating circumstance, but unmistakably erred in considering his delinquency adjudication as an aggravating circumstance; (2) the aggravating circumstances far outweighed the only mitigating factor, Baldwin's age at the time of the offense; (3) the sentencing judge did not impose the sentence under the influence of any passion or prejudice or for an arbitrary reason; and (4) death sentences had been imposed in Alabama in similar cases. 456 So.2d at 124-28. ⁴

On July 13, 1984, the Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed the judgment of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals on the rehearing issues. See Baldwin v. State (Ex parte Baldwin), 456 So.2d 129 (Ala.1984). In addition, the court rejected Baldwin's challenge to the sentencing provisions of Alabama's 1975 death penalty statute as unconstitutional. The court also "reviewed the entire record of the trial proceeding and [found] no error which 'ha[d] or probably ha[d] adversely affected the substantial rights of the petitioner.' " 456 So.2d at 137 (quoting Ala. R.App. P. 39(k)).

On December 10, 1984, the Supreme Court granted Baldwin's petition for writ of certiorari, and on June 17, 1985, affirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Alabama. See Baldwin v. Alabama, 469 U.S. 1085, 105 S.Ct. 589, 83 L.Ed.2d 699 (1984) (granting certiorari review); 472 U.S. 372, 105 S.Ct. 2727, 86 L.Ed.2d 300 (1985) (affirming Baldwin's conviction and sentence). In so holding, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Alabama's death penalty statute, which required jurors to "fix the punishment at death" once they found a defendant guilty of a capital offense. Ala.Code § 13-11-2(a) (1975); see also Baldwin, 472 U.S. at 389, 105 S.Ct. 2727. Additionally, the Court noted that although Baldwin asserted in his statement of facts that the sentencing judge limited his consideration of mitigating circumstances to those specified in section 13-11-7 of the Alabama Code, in violation of Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), "[t]hat issue was not addressed by the Supreme Court of Alabama in the decision under review, and was not raised in the petition for certiorari." 472 U.S. at 381 n. 7, 105 S.Ct. 2727. Thus, the Court had "no reason to consider the issue...." 472 U.S. at 381 n. 7, 105 S.Ct. 2727.

B. State Collateral Review

On October 23, 1985, Baldwin filed a petition for writ of error coram nobis and/or motion for relief from judgment in the Circuit Court of Monroe County, Alabama. On October 2, 1987, the circuit court denied Baldwin's petition, finding that Baldwin was procedurally barred from presenting the following claims because he failed to raise them at trial or on direct appeal: (1) Alabama's death penalty statute was unconstitutional because the death penalty was "mandatory"; (2) the death penalty was applied in a discriminatory manner against defendants on the grounds of race, gender and poverty, in general and in Baldwin's case; (3) Alabama's death penalty statute and practices provided no standards for determining the burden of proof and persuasion in capital cases; (4) the state's appellate review of death sentences was inadequate because it did not provide for a comparative review, and was arbitrary and without governing standards; (5) electrocution was an unnecessary and cruel means of execution; (6) the death penalty was excessive; (7) Baldwin's jury did not constitute a representative cross-section of the community under the Sixth Amendment because potential jurors with religious principles against capital punishment were systematically excluded; (8) Baldwin's jury did not reflect a representative cross-section of the community in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses; (9) Baldwin's jury was "unrepresentative and biased in favor of the prosecution on the issue of [his] guilt"; (10) his constitutional rights were violated because an improperly impaneled grand jury of all white persons indicted him; and (11) the prosecutor violated his constitutional rights when he used his peremptory strikes to remove all black potential jurors from Baldwin's petit jury. The court found that Baldwin could not raise the following claims in his petition for writ of error coram nobis because the Alabama appellate courts decided them on direct appeal: (1) the jury's inability to consider lesser included offenses denied Baldwin due process of law and violated Beck; (2) under the facts of this case, the death penalty was disproportionately severe; and (3) the death penalty statute had been generally, and in this case, arbitrarily and capriciously applied. In addition, after conducting an evidentiary hearing, the court denied Baldwin's ineffective assistance of counsel claim on the merits. ⁵

On October 28, 1988, the court of criminal appeals affirmed the denial of Baldwin's coram nobis petition. See Baldwin v. State, 539 So.2d 1103 (Ala.Crim.App.1988). The court summarily affirmed the lower court's findings that some of Baldwin's claims were procedurally barred. 539 So.2d at 1104-05. The court then quoted the lower court's opinion on the ineffective assistance of counsel claim and adopted that opinion as its own. 539 So.2d at 1105-09. The Supreme Court of Alabama denied Baldwin a writ of certiorari on March 3, 1989, and the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari review on October 2, 1989, bringing Baldwin's state collateral attack of his conviction and sentence to a close. See Baldwin v. State, 539 So.2d 1103 (Ala.1989); Baldwin v. Alabama, 493 U.S. 874, 110 S.Ct. 206, 107 L.Ed.2d 159 (1989).

C. Federal Habeas Corpus Review

On May 20, 1991, Baldwin filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. On October 29, 1991, he filed a second superseding petition; that petition, as supplemented, serves as the focus of this case. The district court declined to conduct an evidentiary hearing because it found that Baldwin's allegations concerning cause and prejudice for his defaulted claims were conclusory and that the record did not support them, and the underlying facts of his ineffective assistance claim were fully developed in the state court. The district court thereafter denied Baldwin's petition in a 177-page order, concluding that many of Baldwin's 43 claims were procedurally barred, and that the remaining claims did not warrant relief on the merits.

II. DISCUSSION

Baldwin's issues on appeal include an ineffective assistance of counsel claim and substantive challenges to alleged trial errors. Because we conclude that Baldwin is not entitled to relief on the merits...