Robinson v. Polk

• Decision Date: 14 February 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05-1.,05-1.
• Parties: Marcus Reymond ROBINSON, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Marvin L. POLK, Warden, Central Prison, Raleigh, North Carolina, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 350

438 F.3d 350

Marcus Reymond ROBINSON, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Marvin L. POLK, Warden, Central Prison, Raleigh, North Carolina, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 05-1.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued September 22, 2005.

Decided February 14, 2006.

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ARGUED: Kevin Patrick Bradley, Durham, North Carolina; Geoffrey Wuensch Hosford, Hosford & Hosford, P.C., Wilmington, North Carolina, for Appellant. Valerie Blanche Spalding, Special Deputy Attorney General, North Carolina Department of Justice, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Roy Cooper, Attorney General of North Carolina, William N. Farrell, Jr., Senior Deputy Attorney General, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before WILLIAMS, KING, and SHEDD, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge WILLIAMS wrote the majority opinion, in which Judge SHEDD joined. Judge KING wrote a separate opinion dissenting in part.

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge.

Marcus Reymond Robinson, a North Carolina death-row inmate, appeals the district court's denial of his habeas petition filed under 28 U.S.C.A. § 2254 (West 1994 & Supp.2005). We granted a certificate of appealability to consider two claims raised by Robinson: (1) that the trial court's jury instructions during the guilt phase of his trial violated the Eighth Amendment; and (2) that a juror's recitation of a Biblical passage during sentencing deliberations violated the Sixth Amendment. Applying the deferential standard of review required by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), we conclude that the North Carolina court's decision denying Robinson relief on these claims was not an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Accordingly, we deny Robinson's petition and his request for an evidentiary hearing on his Bible claim.

I.

The facts are set forth adequately in the order of the North Carolina Superior Court (MAR court) denying Robinson's motion for appropriate relief (MAR):

The State's evidence at trial tended to show that on the morning of 21 July 1991, seventeen year old Erik Tornblom did not return home from Chi Chi's restaurant, where he was employed. Erik was a rising senior at Douglas Byrd High School and worked at Chi Chi's from appropriately [sic] 6:00 pm until midnight. His body was discovered later that day, having been shot in the face with a shotgun. A witness testified at trial that he observed a black male drive Erik's car to the location where it was later recovered, get out of the vehicle and wipe off the steering wheel and door handle. The black male identified, [sic] as Roderick Williams, was thereafter arrested and named [Robinson] as the person involved with him in the murder of Erik Tornblom.

[Robinson] was thereafter taken into custody and properly advised of his Miranda rights, which he waived. After initially denying any involvement in the murder, [Robinson] admitted that he and Williams had watched Erik Tornblom enter a store. While Tornblom was in the store, [Robinson] pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, which had been concealed in his clothes, and gave it to Williams. As the victim left the store, [Robinson] and Williams asked for a ride. As soon as they entered the car, Williams put the gun to the back of Erik Tornblom's neck and forced him to drive to a location that [Robinson] and Williams ordered. In his confession, [Robinson] stated that "[t]he boy kept begging and pleading for us not to hurt him, because he didn't have any money." After ordering [Tornblom] out of the car, he was made to lie down. According to [Robinson], Williams then shot [Tornblom] in the face with the shotgun. [Robinson] then took [Tornblom]'s wallet and split the money with Williams. [Robinson] led police to where he had hidden the shotgun and also showed them where the spent shotgun shell was ejected. Both the gun and the spent shell were recovered by the police.

Other evidence tended to show, two days prior to the murder, that [Robinson] told Williams' aunt that "he was going to burn him a whitey". [sic] On the morning of the murder, [Robinson] obtained the shotgun from a friend, who heard [Robinson] tell Williams that he wanted to rob a Quik Stop or "do" a white boy. After the murder, [Robinson] told a friend that he had robbed a guy the night before and shot him in the head.

(J.A. at 386-388.) At the time of these events, Robinson had just turned eighteen years old and only eleven days earlier had been released from prison.

Robinson and Williams were indicted by a North Carolina jury on August 5, 1991, and charged with one count of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree kidnaping, one count of robbery with a dangerous weapon, once count of possession of a weapon of mass destruction, one count of felonious larceny, and one count of possession of a stolen vehicle. As Robinson admits,

[at voir dire,] the prosecutor ensured that every member of the venire thoroughly revealed his or her religious preferences regarding ... application of the death penalty. Moreover, each potential juror was required to unequivocally state that their religious beliefs would not interfere with their individual and collective duty to vote on the ... sentencing phase[].

(J.A. at 438.)

Robinson's trial began on July 13, 1994. On the second day of trial, Robinson pleaded guilty to all of the offenses except for the first-degree murder charge. That charge was tried to the jury on two different theories: felony murder and murder with malice, deliberation, and premeditation (premeditated murder). The jury convicted Robinson, by special verdict, of first-degree murder under each theory.¹

During the sentencing phase of the trial, the jury heard evidence relating to circumstances that both aggravated and mitigated the extent of Robinson's culpability in the crime. At the outset of its charge to the jury, the trial court emphasized to them that "[i]t is absolutely necessary that you understand and apply the law as I give it to you and not as you think it is or might like it to be." (J.A. at 213.) To guide the jury's consideration of the evidence presented, the trial court provided the jury with a form entitled "Issues and Recommendation as to Punishment," which consisted of a written list of two possible aggravating circumstances and twenty possible mitigating circumstances, and instructed the jury how to apply the law to each of these circumstances. (J.A. at 215-247.) The jury completed the form, finding both of the aggravating circumstances but only six of the mitigating circumstances.² The jury ultimately concluded that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating circumstances and unanimously recommended that Robinson be sentenced to death.³

Robinson's conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal by a unanimous North Carolina Supreme Court. State v. Robinson, 342 N.C. 74, 463 S.E.2d 218 (1995). The United States Supreme Court thereafter denied certiorari review. Robinson v. North Carolina, 517 U.S. 1197, 116 S.Ct. 1693, 134 L.Ed.2d 793 (1996).

On November 1, 1996, Robinson filed his MAR. Following an evidentiary hearing on some of his claims,⁴ the MAR court denied Robinson relief on all of his claims. The North Carolina Supreme Court denied discretionary review of the MAR court's ruling. State v. Robinson, 350 N.C. 847, 539 S.E.2d 646 (1999).

On February 28, 2000, Robinson filed the instant § 2254 petition in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina raising thirteen claims of constitutional error. The State moved for summary judgment on Robinson's petition, and on September 7, 2004, the district court denied Robinson's request for an evidentiary hearing and granted the State's motion for summary judgment. On February 28, 2005, the district court entered an order denying Robinson a certificate of appealability on all of his claims. We granted Robinson's timely petition for a certificate of appealability on two issues: whether the MAR court erred in failing to grant him relief on (1) his claim that his death sentence violated the Eighth Amendment and (2) his claim that the presence of a Bible during jury deliberations violated the Sixth Amendment.

II.

We review de novo the district court's decision to deny a § 2254 petition based on the record before the MAR court, applying the same standards as the district court. Whittlesey v. Conroy, 301 F.3d 213, 216 (4th Cir.2002). Pursuant to AEDPA, the scope of federal review is highly constrained. We may grant a petition with respect to any claim adjudicated on the merits in state court only if the state court decision was either contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court. 28 U.S.C.A. § 2254(d)(1).

A decision of a state court is contrary to clearly established 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." (Terry) Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 413, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). A state court adjudication is an unreasonable application of federal law when the state court "correctly identifies the governing legal rule [from the Supreme Court's cases] but applies it unreasonably to the facts of a particular ... case," id. at 407-08, 120 S.Ct. 1495, or "applies a precedent in a context different from the one in which the precedent was decided and one to which extension of the legal principle of the precedent is not reasonable [or] fails to apply the principle of a precedent in a context where such failure is unreasonable," Green v. French, 143 F.3d 865, 870 (4th Cir.1998), overruled on other grounds by (Terry) Williams, 529 U.S. 362, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389; see also Oken v. Corcoran, 220 F.3d 259, 263 n. 3 (4th Cir.200...