Smith v. Stegall

Decision Date30 September 2004
Docket NumberNo. 02-2441.,02-2441.
Citation385 F.3d 993
PartiesKenneth C. SMITH, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Jimmy STEGALL, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Robert H. Cleland, J.

Kenneth C. Smith, Macomb Regional Facility, New Haven, MI, Jeffrey M. Brandt (argued and briefed), Robinson & Brandt, Cincinnati, OH, for Petitioner-Appellant.

William C. Campbell (argued and briefed), Office of the Attorney General, Habeas Corpus Division, Lansing, MI, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before: CLAY and GILMAN, Circuit Judges; MATIA, Chief District Judge.**

GILMAN, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which MATIA, D.J., joined. CLAY, J. (pp. 1001-03), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

GILMAN, Circuit Judge.

Kenneth C. Smith fatally shot Gary DeLano Brown in June of 1989. After his first-degree murder conviction was reversed on procedural grounds, Smith elected to plead guilty in a Michigan state court to one count of second-degree murder rather than face a retrial for first-degree murder. The state promised in the plea agreement not to recommend a sentence of life imprisonment.

At sentencing, the prosecution literally complied with the plea agreement, but did request that Smith be imprisoned for a term of 70 to 100 years. In addition, when asked by the court if any of the victim's family members wished to speak, the prosecutor replied that they wanted Smith to receive a life sentence. Defense counsel made no objection to the prosecutor's statements. Smith was sentenced by the state trial court to a term of 35 to 55 years in prison plus an additional 2 years for the use of a firearm in connection with the crime.

After exhausting his remedies in the Michigan state courts, Smith filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the district court. He contended that the state had effectively recommended a life sentence, thereby breaching the plea agreement and violating Smith's right to the due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The district court denied the petition. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

I. BACKGROUND
A. Factual background

A jury convicted Smith of first-degree murder in August of 1990. The conviction was reversed on appeal because Smith was found to have been denied his Sixth Amendment right to a jury selected from a fair cross section of the community. Instead of going to trial a second time, Smith elected to plead guilty to one count each of second-degree murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and the commission of a second felony offense by a habitual offender. The plea agreement, as summarized by the state trial court, provided that "[t]he People [would be] free to make whatever recommendation they want at sentencing, except they do agree they will not recommend life imprisonment as the sentence in this case."

In its sentencing brief to the state trial court, the prosecution stated: "Justice demands that the Defendant be sentenced for as long as possible under the law. The people respectfully request a sentence of 70 to 100 years imprisonment as a second offender." At the subsequent sentencing hearing, the state repeated its request for a term of 70 to 100 years in prison. The trial court also asked the prosecutor whether any member of the victim's family wanted to address the court, to which the prosecutor replied: "No, Your Honor. For the record, I spoke to the victim's family.... They've informed me that they wish the Defendant to receive life imprisonment." Defense counsel did not object to any of the prosecutor's statements as being in violation of the plea agreement.

The state trial court initially sentenced Smith to a term of 35 years to life in prison on the second-degree murder count plus an additional 2 years for the firearm violation. Two days later, the court conducted a resentencing hearing at which it altered the sentence on the second-degree murder count to a term of 35 to 55 years in prison because Michigan law does not allow a sentence of 35 years to life. At the resentencing hearing, the prosecutor reiterated his request that Smith receive a sentence of 70 to 100 years in prison. Defense counsel once again did not object to this recommendation as being in violation of the plea agreement.

B. Procedural background

Smith appealed to the Michigan Court of Appeals, contending for the first time that the plea agreement was breached when the prosecutor recommended a sentence "for as long as possible under the law," urged a specific sentence of 70 to 100 years, and stated that the victim's family wanted Smith to receive a life sentence. The appellate court rejected this argument, reasoning as follows:

In the plea bargain, the prosecution merely agreed not to recommend the specific sentence of "life." The plea bargain placed no restrictions on "term of years" sentence recommendations, even though a long term of years sentence may be just as harsh, if not harsher, than a parolable "life" sentence. People v. Carson, ... 220 Mich.App. 662, 560 N.W.2d 657 (1996). Although one may question the value of having the prosecution promise not to recommend a "life" sentence while leaving the prosecution free to recommend an equally harsh or harsher long term of years sentence, the fact remains that the defendant received everything he bargained for.

Nor did the plea bargain restrict the prosecution's authority to advise the court of the wishes of the victim's family.... The prosecution did not indicate any concurrence with the family's request for a sentence of "life." To the contrary, the prosecution recommended a sentence of seventy to one hundred years' imprisonment.

People v. Smith, No. 207090, 1999 WL 33438154, at *1 (Mich.Ct.App. July 27, 1999) (per curiam) (unpublished) (citations omitted). The Michigan Supreme Court denied Smith's motion for leave to appeal in a one-sentence order with no analysis.

Smith then filed a motion for post-conviction relief with the state trial court. The motion was denied. Leave to appeal the trial court's decision was later denied by both the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court.

Smith's next legal step was to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the district court in August of 2001. In his petition, Smith raised four claims, including his argument that the prosecution breached the plea agreement. The magistrate judge assigned to the case recommended that the petition be denied. In November of 2002, the district court adopted the magistrate judge's Report and Recommendation and denied Smith's petition on all four claims. The district court subsequently granted Smith a Certificate of Appealability on the sole ground that the prosecutor had breached the plea agreement. This timely appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS
A. Standard of review

We review de novo the district court's legal conclusions, but will set aside its findings of fact only if the findings are clearly erroneous. Lott v. Coyle, 261 F.3d 594, 606 (6th Cir.2001). The standard of review for state-court determinations, on the other hand, is dictated by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), codified principally at 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). AEDPA applies in the present case because Smith filed his habeas petition in August of 2001, well after the Act's effective date of April 24, 1996. See Harpster v. Ohio, 128 F.3d 322, 326 (6th Cir.1997) (noting that AEDPA applies to habeas petitions filed after the Act's effective date). The Act provides in pertinent part as follows:

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).

A state-court decision is "contrary to" federal law "if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by [the Supreme] Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than [the Supreme] Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 413, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). In contrast, an "unreasonable application" of federal law occurs where a "state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from [the Supreme] Court's decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case." Id."[A] federal habeas court may not issue the writ simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Rather, that application must also be unreasonable." Id. at 411, 120 S.Ct. 1495; see also id. at 409, 120 S.Ct. 1495 ("[A] federal habeas court making the `unreasonable application' inquiry should ask whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable.") (emphasis added).

Under AEDPA, "clearly established federal law" means "the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme] Court's decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision." Id. at 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495. "As is dictated by the statute, we may not look to lower federal court decisions in deciding whether the state decision is contrary to, or an unreasonable...

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