Bolden v. Warden

• Citation: 194 F.3d 579
• Decision Date: 27 October 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-30789,98-30789
• Parties: (5th Cir. 1999) IVRIN BOLDEN, JR., Petitioner-Appellant, v. WARDEN, WEST TENNESSEE HIGH SECURITY FACILITY, Respondent-Appellee
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)

Page 579

194 F.3d 579 (5th Cir. 1999)

IVRIN BOLDEN, JR., Petitioner-Appellant, v. WARDEN, WEST TENNESSEE HIGH SECURITY FACILITY, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 98-30789

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

October 27, 1999

Certiorari Denied May 15, 2000

Appeal from the United States District Court For the Western District of Louisiana.

Before POLITZ, JOLLY, and DUHE, Circuit Judges.

POLITZ, Circuit Judge:

Ivrin Bolden, Jr., currently a prisoner at West Tennessee High Security Facility, appeals the district court's denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition which relates to a Louisiana state conviction. For the reasons assigned, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

Bolden was tried in Louisiana state court in 1988 for the murder of Brenda Spicer. He testified at trial and denied killing or having had physical contact with her. The jury acquitted. Bolden later confessed to killing Spicer and was charged with perjury for his testimony at the murder trial.

Because a detailed factual background of this high-profile case is provided in the opinions of the Louisiana Supreme Court¹ and the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals,² we need only summarize the facts relevant to this appeal. On March 6, 1987 the body of Brenda Spicer, a former basketball player at Northeast Louisiana University, was found in a trash dumpster on campus in Monroe, Louisiana. The coroner stated that the victim had been killed by strangulation at approximately 7:00 p.m. the previous evening. The coroner found sperm in the victim's rectum and vagina, and saliva on the victim's breasts

Bolden was tried for Spicer's murder. The State sought to demonstrate that Bolden murdered Spicer because he was jealous of her close relationship with his girlfriend, Joel Tillis. The State's case was largely circumstantial; no eyewitnesses testified that Bolden had physical contact with or murdered Spicer. The State's theory of the case was that Bolden took Spicer to a storage locker unit on March 5, 1987, murdered her, and then went to a campus basketball game. At half-time Bolden allegedly went back to the storage locker and moved Spicer's body to the dumpster. To bolster this theory, the State presented evidence that Spicer met Bolden at approximately 5:45 p.m., that Bolden attended the basketball game and was taking pictures on the floor to establish an alibi, and that Bolden was seen running away from the basketball arena at half-time. Physical tests performed on the seminal fluid and saliva indicated a type A secretor, a category in which Bolden and 80% of the population belong.

At trial, Bolden testified on his own behalf as follows:

Did you meet Brenda Spicer at that storage locker on March 5th?

A. No, I did not at any time that day.

Q. The only time you saw Brenda Spicer is when she gave you that camera and the $ 5.00?

A. I saw her earlier in the dorm and the last time I saw her was at the intersection when she had given me the camera.

Q. Did you have any kind of physical struggle or contact with Brenda Spicer that day?

A. No, I didn't, didn't have any contact with her at all physically.

Q. Did you have any kind of sexual intercourse with Brenda Spicer?

A. Never did.

Q. You never have?

A. No, I haven't.

Q. Did you kill Brenda Spicer on March 5th?

A. No, I did not.

The jury acquitted Bolden of Spicer's murder.

Bolden and Tillis later moved to Tennessee. In 1989, Tillis disappeared and her body was found in Arkansas. Bolden, although a suspect in her murder, was never arrested and eventually moved to New Jersey and began to live with Jennifer Spurlock. In 1991, Bolden filed a complaint against Spurlock with local police in New Jersey. During the investigation of this complaint, Bolden admitted to killing Joel Tillis and Brenda Spicer.³ Bolden pled guilty in Tennessee to involuntary manslaughter in the death of Tillis and received a ten-year sentence.

Bolden was charged in Louisiana with perjury in connection with his testimony in Spicer's murder trial. Prior to the perjury trial, Bolden moved to dismiss the charges as violating the collateral estoppel component of the double jeopardy clause of the fifth amendment, a motion which the state trial court denied. The Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's ruling and remanded the case for further proceedings. The court found that the perjury prosecution was not barred by the murder trial because the jury could have found that reasonable doubt was present in the first trial. Specifically, the court noted that this was not a situation in which the jury was presented with two conflicting versions of the facts and was forced to determine the veracity of one over the other, as would have been the case if there had been eyewitness testimony contradicting defendant's statements.⁴

Additionally, assuming arguendo that the jury necessarily determined Bolden's credibility in the murder trial, the Louisiana Supreme Court enunciated a rule of law, relying primarily on the dicta of other courts, and held that when the State produces new evidence that the defendant lied under oath at the first trial, collateral estoppel does not bar a subsequent perjury prosecution. The court found that this rule would bolster the policy considerations behind collateral estoppel, noting that on the one hand, there is a concern that allowing an acquittal to insulate the defendant from perjury will give a defendant "an uncontrollable license to testify falsely," with a resulting detriment to the reliability of evidence. On the other hand, there is an apprehension that allowing a prosecution for perjury will give the state a "second shot" at defendant for the same wrong, or allow an overzealous prosecutor to use the perjury trial to retry issues already determined in defendant's favor. The concern that the state should not be given a second chance based on the same evidence was central to the Court's holding in Ashe.⁵

At the perjury trial, the jury listened to a tape recording of Bolden's confession, as well as to witnesses who testified about the confession,⁶ and heard from three additional witnesses: (1) Dr. George McCormick, the coroner who performed the autopsy on Spicer, testified that she died of manual strangulation; (2) Rudeen Crawford, the owner of a gas station across from the storage warehouse where the murder was allegedly committed, testified that he saw a black man and white woman talking outside of the storage unit shortly before 6:00 p.m. on March 5, 1987; (3) Jim Gregory, a sergeant with the Monroe Police Department, testified that Spicer's body was found in a trash dumpster on the Northeast Louisiana University campus, and stated that he obtained blood and hair samples from the storage unit floor. These three witnesses had testified at the Spicer murder trial.

The jury found Bolden guilty of perjury and he received the maximum sentence, ten years imprisonment at hard labor, to run consecutively with the Tennessee sentence. The Louisiana appellate court affirmed his conviction ⁷ and the state Supreme Court denied review. ⁸

On November 20, 1997, Bolden filed a 2254 habeas corpus petition in federal district court asserting six grounds for relief, including a claim that the perjury trial violated the collateral estoppel component of the double jeopardy clause. The magistrate judge recommended, and the district court agreed, that the petition should be denied. Specifically, the district court found, without mentioning the standard of review under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), that Bolden's double jeopardy rights were not violated because the jury could have found that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bolden murdered Spicer without deciding whether his testimony was credible and without deciding whether Bolden in fact killed Spicer.

The district court granted a certificate of appealability on the only issue currently before the court, the double jeopardy claim.

ANALYSIS

Because Bolden's 2254 petition was filed on November 20, 1997, the AEDPA applies to this action.⁹ As amended by the AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. 2254(d) pertinently provides that:

(d) An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim-

(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or

(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.

28 U.S.C. 2254(d).

Pure questions of law are reviewed under the "contrary to" standard, while pure questions of fact are reviewed under the "unreasonable determination of the facts" standard.¹⁰ Bolden, however, raises mixed questions of law and fact which are reviewed under the "unreasonable application" standard.¹¹ An

application of law to facts is unreasonable only when it can be said that reasonable jurists considering the question would be of one view that the state court ruling was incorrect. In other words, we can grant habeas relief only if a state court decision is so clearly incorrect that it would not be debatable among reasonable jurists.¹²

This standard of review is akin to the "clearly erroneous" standard.¹³ Prior to the enactment of the AEDPA, however, pure questions of law and mixed questions of law and fact were reviewed de novo.¹⁴

I

Central to the instant case, in Ashe v. Swenson the Supreme Court opined that the double jeopardy clause of the fifth amendment incorporates the collateral estoppel doctrine, which provides that "when an issue of ultimate fact has once been determined by a valid and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated between the same parties in any...