Medlock v. Ward

• Decision Date: 10 January 2000
• Docket Number: No. 99-6089,99-6089
• Citation: 200 F.3d 1314
• Parties: (10th Cir. 2000) FLOYD ALLEN MEDLOCK, Petitioner - Appellant, v. RON WARD; DREW EDMONDSON, Attorney General of the State of Oklahoma, Respondents - Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 1314

200 F.3d 1314 (10th Cir. 2000)

FLOYD ALLEN MEDLOCK, Petitioner - Appellant, v. RON WARD; DREW EDMONDSON, Attorney General of the State of Oklahoma, Respondents - Appellees.

No. 99-6089

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS TENTH CIRCUIT

January 10, 2000

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF OKLAHOMA. D.C. No. 96-CV-2035-C

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Scott W. Braden, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Jennifer B. Miller, Assistant Attorney General (W.A. Drew Edmondson, Attorney General of Oklahoma with her on the brief), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Respondents-Appellees.

Before KELLY, BRISCOE and LUCERO, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

Floyd Allen Medlock, a prisoner challenging a death sentence in Oklahoma, sought habeas review in federal district court of his state conviction and sentence, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254. Medlock brings numerous claims before us after the denial of his petition and the issuance of a certificate of appealability by the district court. His claims are duplicative, and we reduce them to three: the district court erred in concluding the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA") applies to Medlock's habeas petition; the district court should have granted habeas relief based on the state trial court's unconstitutional use of aggravating and mitigating circumstances; and the district court should have found Medlock was denied effective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment. We exercise appellate jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1291 & 2253 and conclude that, because AEDPA applies and Medlock fails to meet its threshold for granting a writ of habeas corpus, and because his ineffective assistance of counsel claim is procedurally barred, the district court was correct in its denial of his petition. See 28 U.S.C. 2254(d).

I

The district court adopted, as do we, the following undisputed facts from the decision of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, Medlock v. State, 887 P.2d 1333, 1337-38 (Okla. Crim. App. 1994). On the afternoon of February 19, 1990, Medlock was in his apartment watching cartoons on television when he heard someone attempting to open his door. See id. at 1337. On opening the door, he found Katherine Ann Busch, a small girl with a bicycle, who walked into his apartment and told him she once lived there. See id. When Medlock admonished her against barging into his home, Kathy said simply that she was hungry and wanted something to eat. See id. Medlock gave her potato chips and began to prepare macaroni and cheese. See id. While cooking, he told the police, "this real weird feeling" came over him. Id. at 1338.

Precisely what Medlock did next is unclear, see id., but the following is undisputed. Medlock grabbed Kathy by the arm, she jerked away, he grabbed her again, and she jerked away again. See id. He wrestled with her and covered her mouth when she began to scream, choking her until she passed out. See id. According to his confession, she regained consciousness, and he dragged her to the bathroom and forced her head into the toilet bowl for approximately ten minutes, during which time she was gasping for breath. See id. Then, while she was still alive, he stabbed her in the back of the neck with a steak knife and later with a hunting knife until she died, holding her head in the toilet bowl again so that she would not bleed on the floor. See id. After the bleeding ceased, he placed her in the bathtub, removed her clothes, and attempted to sexually molest her lifeless body.¹ See id. Finally, he wrapped her body in a blanket, placed it in a box, and deposited the box and her bicycle into a dumpster behind a nearby shopping center. See id.

The police found Kathy's body in the dumpster early the next morning. See id. at 1337. Later that day, Medlock called the police to confess to the murder before he was a suspect. See id. He explained that he feared harming others in the future. See id. at 1349. He told the police that the incident seemed dream-like and that he had trouble remembering it. See id. at 1338. When asked what caused him to do what he did, he answered that he had been hearing voices in his head since the age of twelve. See id.

In February 1990, Medlock was charged with the first-degree malice murder of Kathy Busch in Oklahoma state district court, to which he entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Accompanying the indictment, the State filed a Special Bill of Particulars alleging two aggravating circumstances: the murder was "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel," and there was a probability that Medlock would commit criminal acts of violence such that he would remain a "continuing threat to society." Okla. Stat. tit. 21, 701.12.

The case was set for jury trial, but before the jury was empaneled, Medlock entered a "blind" plea of guilty, not having reached an agreement with the State on the punishment it would recommend. Following a hearing, the court accepted the plea. See Medlock v. State, 887 P.2d at 1338-39.

At the subsequent sentencing hearing, Medlock presented mitigation evidence, including that of expert witnesses--a licensed clinical social worker, a professor of psychology at Oklahoma City University, and a retired clinical psychologist specializing in multiple personality disorder ("MPD"). See id. at 1340. Those experts testified that Medlock suffered from MPD with atypical features, explaining that his second personality was a violent twelve-year-old named "Charley" who had been in control of Medlock at the time of the murder. See id. at 1340-41. Appellant's experts added that MPD is treatable and Medlock's prognosis was good if he received therapy. See id. In rebuttal the State called its own expert witness, a clinical psychologist, who raised the possibility that Medlock was malingering and questioned his credibility. See id. The State's psychologist also opined that Medlock demonstrated a pattern of increasingly anti-social behavior. See id.

After the close of the sentencing hearing, but before the court entered its sentence, Medlock filed a motion to withdraw his plea. The court denied the motion and, upon finding that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating circumstances, imposed the death penalty. See id. at 1341-45. On direct appeal the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Medlock's conviction and sentence. See Medlock v. State, 887 P.2d 1333, reh'g denied, 889 P.2d 344 (Okla. Crim. App. 1995), cert. denied sub nom. Medlock v. Oklahoma, 516 U.S. 918 (1995). In September of 1996 Medlock filed an application for state post-conviction relief, which the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied as well. See Medlock v. State, 927 P.2d 1069 (Okla. Crim. App. 1996), overruled on other grounds by Walker v. State, 933 P.2d 327, 334 n.6 (Okla. Crim. App. 1997).

The following June, Medlock filed a timely petition for a writ of habeas corpus in United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, the denial of which, as noted, is the subject of this appeal.

II

As a threshold matter, our Circuit has already settled the question of AEDPA's applicability to this case. We have stated that "AEDPA applies to [a petitioner's] case because he filed his 2254 petition after April 24, 1996, the effective date of the Act." Braun v. Ward, 190 F.3d 1181, 1184 (10th Cir. 1999) (citing Hooks v. Ward, 184 F.3d 1206, 1213 (10th Cir. 1999)). AEDPA thus applies to Medlock's June 1997 petition.

Because the Oklahoma state courts have addressed on its merits Medlock's claim of unconstitutional use of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, we review the state courts' rulings under the AEDPA standard enunciated in 28 U.S.C. 2254. Under that section, a federal court is precluded from granting habeas relief on any claim adjudicated on the merits by the state court, unless the state proceeding "resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court," 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1), or "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)(2). All factual findings of the state court are presumed correct unless the petitioner can rebut this presumption by clear and convincing evidence. 28 U.S.C. 2254(e)(1).

III

We examine first Medlock's various challenges to the use of aggravating and mitigating circumstances by the Oklahoma trial court and Court of Criminal Appeals and afterwards his claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel.

A

With regard to the facial constitutionality of the aggravators used by the trial court, Medlock's challenges to Oklahoma's "heinous, atrocious, or cruel" and "continuing threat" aggravators are meritless. To be acceptable under the Eighth Amendment, the aggravating circumstance must furnish a sentencer with a principled means of guiding its discretion. See Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 361-64 (1988). Our Circuit has repeatedly upheld the facial constitutionality of these aggravators as "narrowed" by the State of Oklahoma, and we are bound by that body of precedent. See, e.g., Nguyen v. Reynolds, 131 F.3d 1340, 1352-54 (10th Cir. 1997); Hatch v. State, 58 F.3d 1447, 1468-69 (10th Cir. 1995).

B

With respect to the evidence used to prove the aggravators, Medlock contends that the Oklahoma court unconstitutionally relied on duplicative and cumulative sentencing factors. We disagree. "[D]ouble counting of aggravating factors, especially under a weighing scheme, has a tendency to skew the weighing process and creates the risk that the death sentence will be imposed arbitrarily and thus, unconstitutionally." United States v. McCullah, 76 F.3d 1087, 1111 (10th Cir. 1996).²

Contrary to Medlock's contention, these aggravating...