Hawkins v. Costello

• Decision Date: 09 August 2006
• Docket Number: Docket No. 05-2103-pr.
• Parties: Sidney HAWKINS, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Joseph COSTELLO, Superintendent, Mid State Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

460 F.3d 238

Sidney HAWKINS, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Joseph COSTELLO, Superintendent, Mid State Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellant.

Docket No. 05-2103-pr.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: November 28, 2005.

Decided: August 9, 2006.

Phyllis Mintz, Assistant District Attorney, for Charles J. Hynes, District Attorney Kings County, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Leonard Joblove, on the brief), for Respondent-Appellant.

Richard E. Kwasnik, Law Office of Richard E. Kwasnik, New York, NY, for Petitioner-Appellee.

Before McLAUGHLIN and SACK, Circuit Judges, and KOELTL, District Judge.^*

McLAUGHLIN, Circuit Judge.

Respondent Joseph Costello, Superintendent of the Mid State Correctional Facility, appeals from the grant of Sidney Hawkins's petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Johnson, J.). See Hawkins v. Costello, No. 00 CV 1343(SJ), 2005 WL 946412 (E.D.N.Y. Apr.15, 2005). Because the state court adjudication was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, we reverse.

BACKGROUND

In June 1994, two New York City police officers were on patrol in Brooklyn. They saw two men running on the sidewalk, looking over their shoulders as they ran. The officers recognized one of the men as a man they knew by the sobriquet "Eddie-Ed." The police officers also saw Sidney Hawkins standing behind the two men in front of a grocery store. Hawkins was holding a gun.

Hawkins ran into the grocery store. One of the officers pursued him and arrested him inside the store. The officers recovered the gun from behind a counter, and Hawkins was charged with criminal possession of a weapon.

In March 1995, the New York Supreme Court, Kings County, conducted a bench trial. Hawkins's defense was that Eddie-Ed had brandished a gun at him during a dispute over a debt Hawkins owed Eddie-Ed. According to Hawkins, he grabbed the gun from Eddie-Ed in order to protect himself.

Mark McCormack, one of the officers who arrested Hawkins, testified about the events surrounding Hawkins's arrest. He also testified that a few months after the arrest, he saw Eddie-Ed on a street corner. After the two exchanged pleasantries, Officer McCormack "mentioned" Hawkins's arrest.

On cross-examination, Hawkins's attorney attempted to explore the substance of Officer McCormack's conversation with Eddie-Ed in order to support Hawkins's innocent possession defense. The prosecution objected to the following question: "And during this conversation, isn't it a fact that [Eddie-Ed] had told you . . . that the weapon was his?" The court sustained the objection and struck the question from the record. Hawkins's attorney then asked Officer McCormack, "And in this conversation that you had with [Eddie-Ed], didn't he tell you that you were arresting the wrong person for ownership of the weapon?" The prosecution again objected. The court initially overruled the objection because it did not ask for "a direct quote." The prosecution, however, explained why it believed the question called for hearsay. The court then reversed itself and sustained the prosecution's objection to the question. Hawkins's attorney also asked Officer McCormack if he knew "who the owner of that weapon is?" The prosecution once again objected, and the court sustained the objection, ruling that "owner" "is a legal term. The trier of facts has to determine who the owner means." Notably, Hawkins's attorney never sought to make an offer of proof regarding why he thought Eddie-Ed's putative out-of-court statements were admissible through Officer McCormack's testimony.

At the close of trial, the court found Hawkins guilty of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. After finding that Hawkins was a persistent violent felony offender under New York law, the court sentenced him to eight years' to life imprisonment.

Hawkins appealed his conviction to the Appellate Division, Second Department. He argued, inter alia, that the trial court improperly restricted his cross-examination of Officer McCormack. In 1999, the Appellate Division affirmed the conviction. People v. Hawkins, 258 A.D.2d 472, 685 N.Y.S.2d 253 (2d Dep't 1999). The court did not directly address Hawkins's argument regarding Officer McCormack's cross-examination. Instead, after addressing other arguments, the court said that all of Hawkins's "remaining contentions . . . are either unpreserved for appellate review or without merit." Id. at 253-54.

The New York Court of Appeals denied Hawkins leave to appeal. People v. Hawkins, 93 N.Y.2d 925, 693 N.Y.S.2d 508, 715 N.E.2d 511 (1999) (Wesley, J.).

In 2000, Hawkins filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Among other things, the petition alleged that the trial court unconstitutionally restricted his cross-examination of Officer McCormack.

In January 2003, a magistrate judge (Chrein, M.J.), to whom the district court had referred Hawkins's petition, construed Hawkins's pro se claim as a contention that he was unconstitutionally prohibited from presenting exculpatory evidence. The magistrate found that if Eddie-Ed had told Officer McCormack that the gun belonged to him, Officer McCormack's testimony to that fact would have been admissible hearsay as a statement against penal interest and the trial court's refusal to allow such testimony would have been a denial of Hawkins's due process right to introduce exculpatory evidence. The magistrate ordered a hearing to determine what Eddie-Ed told Officer McCormack. At the same time, he recommended rejection of Hawkins's other claims, and he appointed counsel to represent Hawkins.

In April 2003, the State submitted an affidavit from Officer McCormack in which he stated that he did not remember his near-decade-old conversation with Eddie-Ed. Thus, Officer McCormack had no "recollection whatsoever of anything [Eddie-Ed] said to [him]." The State filed an additional affidavit in which it included Eddie-Ed's last known address.

In May 2003, the magistrate rescinded the hearing order and gave Hawkins time to develop evidence regarding the substance of Eddie-Ed's statements to Officer McCormack. When Hawkins failed to do so, the magistrate issued a report and recommendation in which he recommended that Hawkins's habeas petition be denied in full.

Hawkins objected to the report and recommendation, arguing that the "Magistrate Judge unconstitutionally placed the burden on petitioner to offer proof as to what [Officer McCormack] would have testified." In April 2005, the district court rejected the magistrate's recommendation and granted in part Hawkins's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The district court essentially assumed that if the trial court permitted Officer McCormack to answer Hawkins's counsel's questions, he would have testified that Eddie-Ed stated that the gun was his, and therefore Hawkins was prevented from presenting exculpatory evidence. The court based this assumption on its finding that the lack of evidence regarding what Eddie-Ed actually said to Officer McCormack is "entirely attributable" to the State because the trial court sustained the prosecution's objections to Hawkins's counsel's questions. The district court ordered the State to immediately release Hawkins.

The State moved for a stay of Hawkins's release pending appeal. The district court granted an interim stay pending its decision on the State's motion. Seven months later, the district court denied the State's motion for a stay pending appeal, lifted its interim stay, and ordered the State to release Hawkins within fifteen days. Hawkins v. Costello, No. 00 CV 1343, 2005 WL 3072019 (E.D.N.Y. Nov.1, 2005).

The State immediately moved this Court for a stay pending appeal, which we granted. Thus, Hawkins remains incarcerated during our consideration of this appeal.

DISCUSSION

The State argues that the district court erred in granting Hawkins's habeas petition. We agree.

We review de novo a district court's decision to grant or deny a habeas petition. Jenkins v. Artuz, 294 F.3d 284, 290 (2d Cir.2002). In so doing, we review a district court's factual findings for clear error. Id.

I. The Deference Afforded to the State Court Adjudication

When a state court adjudicates a habeas petitioner's claim on the merits, we must afford that decision the deferential standard of review established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA") in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Sellan v. Kuhlman, 261 F.3d 303, 310-11 (2d Cir.2001). In Jimenez v. Walker, we recently made clear that when a state court rejects a petitioner's claim as either unpreserved or without merit, the conclusive presumption is that the adjudication rested on the merits. 458 F.3d 130, 146 (2d Cir.2006). Here, the Appellate Division rejected Hawkins's claim regarding the exclusion of Officer McCormack's answers to his counsel's questions as "either unpreserved for appellate review or without merit." Hawkins, 685 N.Y.S.2d at 253-54. Thus, we owe that adjudication AEDPA deference.

Applying AEDPA deference, a federal court may grant a writ of habeas corpus if the state court's adjudication on the merits "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established, Federal law as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States."¹ 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). "Clearly established Federal law" "refers to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme] Court's decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000).

A state court adjudication is "contrary to" federal law if it "arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by [the Supreme] Court on a question of law" or if it "decides a case differently than [the Supreme] Court has on a set of...