Perruquet v. Briley

• Decision Date: 17 November 2004
• Docket Number: No. 02-2981.,02-2981.
• Parties: James PERRUQUET, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Kenneth R. BRILEY, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

390 F.3d 505

James PERRUQUET, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Kenneth R. BRILEY, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 02-2981.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued January 9, 2004.

Decided November 17, 2004.

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Jamie E. Wrage (argued), Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, Los Angeles, CA, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Gary S. Feinerman (argued), Karen Kaplan, Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, Linda Woloshin, Office of the Attorney General, Criminal Appeals Div., for Respondent-Appellee.

Before POSNER, RIPPLE, and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner James Perruquet stabbed Christopher Hudson to death during a struggle in 1995, and an Illinois jury later found Perruquet guilty of first-degree murder. Perruquet now seeks a writ of habeas corpus, asserting in relevant part that the state trial court deprived him of due process when it refused to admit evidence and instruct the jury on self-defense. The district court concluded that Perruquet had not adequately made out a due process claim and that, even if he had, the claim was without merit. We conclude that Perruquet procedurally defaulted the due process claim by not fairly presenting it to the Illinois courts.

I.

Perruquet and Hudson both lived in a trailer park near Goodfield, Illinois, a small town in the central part of the state. Hudson had become friends with Perruquet's wife, Tammy Perruquet ("Tammy"), and this was the source of some tension between the Perruquets. On the evening of April 14, 1995, after Tammy returned home from a walk, she and Perruquet began to argue. Perruquet, thinking that Tammy had been out with Hudson, accused her of having an affair with him. The argument continued on and off over the course of the evening, escalating in volume. Hudson, evidently aware of the fighting and concerned that Perruquet might be hurting Tammy, called their trailer repeatedly, leaving voice messages when they did not pick up the phone. When he called for the third time, Perruquet answered and argued with him. Subsequently, Perruquet left the trailer and went to sit in his car. While he was gone, Hudson called again and Tammy spoke with him. During their conversation, Tammy heard something "bang" against the trailer. She hung up the phone and went to investigate the noise. She opened the trailer to find Perruquet standing there. He had heard Tammy speaking to Hudson and was enraged; Perruquet said that he had heard Tammy tell Hudson she loved him. The two began to argue again, violently. Perruquet grabbed Tammy and pushed her down on a couch. Tammy was screaming, and Perruquet was attempting to stifle her screams by placing his hand over her mouth.

Hudson's apparent effort to intervene at this point cost him his life. While Tammy and Perruquet were arguing, Hudson knocked on the door of their trailer. Perruquet opened the door slightly and told Hudson that the matter was none of his business. Perruquet attempted to close the door, but Hudson persisted in attempting to gain entry. Ultimately, Perruquet lunged out the door at Hudson and the two men fell to the ground. Witnesses saw Perruquet, who landed on top of Hudson, making motions with his arm; in fact, Perruquet was stabbing Hudson. Hudson died as a result of internal bleeding from several wounds to his chest area. Perruquet subsequently returned to his trailer and, according to a number of witnesses, said to Tammy, "Look what you made me do" or words to that effect.

Before police arrived, Perruquet left the scene and spent the night in a motel. He was apprehended the following day. A medical examination of Perruquet conducted on the evening of his apprehension revealed two small puncture wounds on Perruquet's abdomen which required no treatment other than cleansing.

At trial, Perruquet sought to show that he had killed Hudson in self-defense. He testified that Hudson had yelled at him earlier that day that he would "tear [Perruquet's] head off," "kick [his] ass," and (ultimately) "kill [him]". Perruquet also wanted to elicit testimony from two other witnesses who had heard Hudson say that he would kill Perruquet and also to establish that Hudson had a criminal record that included a conviction for domestic battery. The trial court sustained the State's objection and barred this line of testimony; it also declined to instruct the jury on self-defense. The court reasoned that in order for Perruquet to assert self-defense, he would have to admit that he had stabbed Hudson; but Perruquet had not done this. Although Perruquet had acknowledged the physical altercation with Hudson in his trial testimony, he had not admitted that he stabbed Hudson. Perruquet had testified that when he attempted to shut the trailer door on Hudson, a tug of war had ensued. Perruquet said that he felt a "sting" in his side. Thinking that Hudson had stabbed him, he went "flying" out the door at Hudson. They landed hard on the concrete outside the trailer, and Perruquet feared that he might have broken Hudson's neck. Perruquet denied having picked up a knife before fighting with Hudson. He could offer no explanation for how Hudson received the fatal stab wounds. Indeed, he testified that he did not even realize that Hudson had been stabbed until the owner of the trailer park so informed him later.

The jury convicted Perruquet of first-degree murder, and the trial court ordered him imprisoned for his natural life. Perruquet appealed to the Illinois Appellate Court, which affirmed his conviction. That court sustained the trial court's refusal to admit evidence and instruct Perruquet's jury on self-defense:

Defendant denied having a knife and stated he did not know how Hudson got stabbed. The only injury he believed Hudson may have suffered was a broken neck. He testified that he first learned of the stabbing during a telephone call he made after he left the scene. Since defendant did not admit stabbing Hudson, he was not entitled to claim that his use of force was justified by Hudson's own acts. Thus, the trial court did not err in refusing to admit evidence of prior threats from Hudson or evidence of Hudson's criminal history, nor did it err in refusing to instruct the jury on self-defense.

People v. Perruquet, No. 4-96-0255, 288 Ill.App.3d 1122, 238 Ill.Dec. 445, 711 N.E.2d 832, Order at 20 (Ill.App.Ct. Jul. 22, 1997) (unpublished). Notably, the court's decision on this issue was based solely on state law; the court did not consider whether the decision to preclude Perruquet from pursuing a theory of self-defense deprived him of due process. See id. at 19-20. Perruquet petitioned for leave to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, arguing inter alia that the trial court had improperly precluded him from asserting self-defense. That court denied his petition. Perruquet later sought post-conviction relief from the trial court on a variety of claims, most of which the court summarily dismissed without a hearing. The court did conduct an evidentiary hearing on Perruquet's claim that his trial counsel had not provided him with effective assistance of counsel in helping him to decide how the jury would be instructed on the charges, but the court ultimately ruled against Perruquet on this claim. People v. Perruquet, No. 95 CF 44, Order (Cir. Ct. 11th Judicial Cir. Jan. 18, 2000). That was the sole issue that Perruquet appealed to the Illinois Appellate Court (R. 13 Ex. F), which affirmed the denial of post-conviction relief. People v. Perruquet, No. 4-00-0159, 316 Ill.App.3d 1308, 268 Ill.Dec. 916, 779 N.E.2d 530, Order (Ill.App.Ct. Nov. 8, 2000) (unpublished). The Illinois Supreme Court denied him leave to appeal on that same issue.

Perruquet subsequently filed his pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Central District of Illinois. Among other claims, Perruquet asserted that the state trial court had deprived him of his Fourteen Amendment due process right to a fair trial when the court excluded the evidence through which he sought to establish that he had killed Hudson in self-defense and refused to instruct the jury on self-defense. R. 7 at 6a-6d.

The district court concluded that Perruquet's due process claim was either non-cognizable on habeas review or without merit. As the court recognized, a state trial court's decision not to admit evidence and its refusal to give a particular jury instruction generally do not implicate federal constitutional rights. R. 16 at 8 (citing Dressler v. McCaughtry, 238 F.3d 908, 914 (7th Cir.2001)); see Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 71-72, 112 S.Ct. 475, 482, 116 L.Ed.2d 385 (1991) (citing Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U.S. 422, 438 n. 6, 103 S.Ct. 843, 853 n. 6, 74 L.Ed.2d 646 (1983)). Due process does entitle a defendant to a fair trial; but only if the state court committed an error so serious as to render it likely that an innocent person was convicted can the error be described as a deprivation of due process. Anderson v. Sternes, 243 F.3d 1049, 1053 (7th Cir.2001); Howard v. O'Sullivan, 185 F.3d 721, 723-24 (7th Cir.1999). Perruquet did broadly assert that the trial court's errors in precluding his claim of self-defense were sufficiently grave as to constitute a due process violation. See R. 7 at 6d. But, in the court's view, Perruquet had done little more than "repackage[]" his state law claims as a federal due process claim, R. 16 at 8-9 (citing Carson v. Director of Iowa Dep't of Correctional Servs., 150 F.3d 973, 975 (8th Cir.1998)), "parrot[ing]" the pertinent criteria without actually undertaking to show how the adverse rulings had resulted in a trial that was so fundamentally unfair as to create the likelihood that he was convicted in error, R. 16 at 9; see Anderson, 243 F.3d at 1053; Howard, 185 F.3d at 723-24. "Given the substantial evidence of his guilt, the Court cannot find that this even comes close to meeting his burden of proving that the exclusion of the...