Rodriguez v. Miller

• Decision Date: 29 August 2007
• Docket Number: Docket No. 04-6665-pr.
• Parties: Jose RODRIGUEZ, Petitioner-Appellant, v. David MILLER, Superintendent, Eastern Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

499 F.3d 136

Jose RODRIGUEZ, Petitioner-Appellant, v. David MILLER, Superintendent, Eastern Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellee.

Docket No. 04-6665-pr.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: November 2, 2005.

Last Submission: May 9, 2007.

Decided: August 29, 2007.

Katheryne M. Martone, Legal Aid Society, Criminal Appeals Bureau, New York, N.Y. (Mitchell J. Briskey, on the brief), for Petitioner-Appellant.

Victor Barall, Assistant District Attorney, for Charles J. Hynes, District Attorney, Kings County, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Leonard Joblove, on the brief), for Respondent-Appellee.

Before: CARDAMONE, McLAUGHLIN, and B.D. PARKER, Circuit Judges.

McLAUGHLIN, Circuit Judge:

The Supreme Court has vacated our decision in this habeas proceeding with the instruction to reconsider it in light of Carey v. Musladin, ___ U.S. ___, 127 S.Ct. 649, 166 L.Ed.2d 482 (2006).

Relying on our own well-settled precedent and what we conceived to be the teachings of the high court, we had held that the New York State Courts had unreasonably applied "clearly established" Sixth Amendment law in excluding Jose Rodriguez's family from his criminal trial. Accordingly, we remanded the case to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Block, J.) with instructions to grant Rodriguez's petition. See Rodriguez v. Miller, 439 F.3d 68, 76 (2d Cir.2006).

Our decision cannot stand after Musladin. Thus, we are now obliged to conclude that Rodriguez's petition must be denied and the district court affirmed.

BACKGROUND

A full recitation of the salient history of this suit may be found in our prior opinion. See Rodriguez, 439 F.3d at 70-73. We revisit only the facts controlling our decision today.

A. Rodriguez

In 1995, Rodriguez was tried in Kings County for selling cocaine to an undercover officer (the "Undercover") in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. The State moved to close the courtroom during the Undercover's testimony to protect his identity. The state court held a hearing pursuant to People v. Hinton, 31 N.Y.2d 71, 334 N.Y.S.2d 885, 286 N.E.2d 265 (1972), at which the Undercover testified that he: (1) had received numerous threats in the course of prior work in Bushwick; (2) planned to return to Bushwick to conduct additional investigations "in the near future"; (3) had never in his life testified in open court; and (4) feared Rodriguez's relatives would recognize him and spread the word that he was a police officer. He also admitted that he did not know any of Rodriguez's relatives and had not been threatened by them.

The state court found that this testimony was sufficient to close the courtroom. Rodriguez, himself, conceded that some closure was necessary but argued that the court could not exclude his family on these facts alone. The court eventually ruled that it would permit Rodriguez's mother and brother to attend the proceedings but only if they sat behind a screen to obscure the Undercover's appearance. Fearing prejudice to his defense, Rodriguez objected to the screen and instructed his family not to attend his trial.

Rodriguez was convicted. The Appellate Division affirmed his conviction despite his claim that the courtroom closure violated his right to a public trial. See People v. Rodriguez, 258 A.D.2d 483, 685 N.Y.S.2d 252 (2d Dep't 1999). The New York Court of Appeals denied leave to appeal. See People v. Rodriguez, 93 N.Y.2d 978, 695 N.Y.S.2d 64, 716 N.E.2d 1109 (1999).

In June 2000, Rodriguez petitioned the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, again arguing the lack of a public trial. The district court denied the petition, holding that the state court's decision was reasonable under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"). See Rodriguez v. Miller, No. 00-cv-3832, 2001 WL 1301732, at *5 (E.D.N.Y. Oct.22, 2001).

In November 2003, we vacated and remanded for reconsideration in light of our then-recent opinion in Yung v. Walker, 341 F.3d 104 (2d Cir.2003) (interpreting Supreme Court precedent to bar exclusion of family unless "exclusion of that particular relative is necessary to protect the overriding interest at stake" (emphasis added)). See Rodriguez v. Miller, 82 Fed. Appx. 715, 716 (2d Cir.2003). On remand, the district court again denied the petition, concluding that Rodriguez's mother and brother were properly excluded because they lived near the Undercover's territory. See Rodriguez v. Miller, No. 00-cv3832, 2004 WL 3567978, at *6 (E.D.N.Y. Nov.24, 2004) (mother lived in Bushwick, brother in nearby Ridgewood).

In February 2006, we again vacated the district court's judgment. While conceding that the state court may have made findings that justified "barring the attendance of the general public," we concluded that the state court had failed to make the "particularized inquiry" necessary to exclude Rodriguez's family members. Rodriguez v. Miller, 439 F.3d 68, 74 (2d Cir. 2006). In particular, we questioned the district court's reliance—without more—on the geographical proximity of the Undercover's territory and the residences of Rodriguez's family members to support the courtroom closure. See id. at 74-75. We relied on a host of decisions of our own Court to support our conclusion that "exclusion of family members requires stricter scrutiny than exclusion of the public." Id. at 76.

In January 2007, the Supreme Court granted certiorari and vacated our decision for further consideration in light of its recent decision in Carey v. Musladin, ___ U.S. ___, 127 S.Ct. 649, 166 L.Ed.2d 482 (2006).

B. Musladin

In Musladin, a habeas petitioner convicted of murder in California state court claimed that he had been denied his right to a fair trial because his victim's family had been permitted to wear buttons bearing a photograph of the victim in the courtroom gallery throughout the proceedings. The district court denied habeas relief but granted a certificate of appealability.

The Ninth Circuit reversed. See Musladin v. Lamarque, 427 F.3d 653 (9th Cir. 2005). The court concluded that the state court's test for the "inherent prejudice" caused by the inflammatory buttons "was contrary to clearly established federal law and constituted an unreasonable application of that law" under AEDPA. Id. at 659-60.

The Ninth Circuit first noted that the appropriate "inherent prejudice" test is derived from the Supreme Court's watershed decisions in Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501, 96 S.Ct. 1691, 48 L.Ed.2d 126 (1976), and Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U.S. 560, 106 S.Ct. 1340, 89 L.Ed.2d 525 (1986). Id. at 656-57. The court went on to observe, however, that its own decision in Norris v. Risley, 918 F.2d 828 (9th Cir.1990), "has persuasive value in an assessment of the meaning of the federal law that was clearly-established by Williams and Flynn." Musladin, 427 F.3d at 657.

Grafting its own Norris decision onto the Supreme Court's jurisprudence proved critical to the Ninth Circuit's analysis, as Norris dealt with prejudicial conduct by private courtroom spectators, as opposed to the state-sponsored conduct at issue in the Supreme Court's decisions. Compare Norris, 918 F.2d at 829-31 ("Women Against Rape" buttons on private spectators in gallery), with Williams, 425 U.S. at 502, 96 S.Ct. 1691 (court compelled defendant to wear prison clothes at trial), and Flynn, 475 U.S. at 562, 106 S.Ct. 1340 (state troopers sat behind defendant at trial). Given the "striking factual similarities" between the victim buttons in Musladin and the anti-rape buttons found inherently prejudicial in Norris, the Ninth Circuit had little trouble finding that the California courts had violated "clearly established federal law" by not ordering the spectators to remove the buttons. Musladin, 427 F.3d at 658, 661.

In December 2006, the Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit's decision. See Musladin, 127 S.Ct. at 654. The Supreme Court first reiterated the bedrock principle of habeas law in the AEDPA universe: "[C]learly established Federal law . . . refers to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of this Court's decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision." Id. at 653 (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000)). It then noted that, in contrast to warring decisions among the federal circuits, "the effect on a defendant's fair-trial rights" of "spectator conduct . . . is an open question in our jurisprudence." Id. at 653-54 (emphasis added) (comparing Billings v. Polk, 441 F.3d 238, 246-47 (4th Cir.2006) (no violation of right to a fair trial based on spectator's clothing), with Norris but noting no Supreme Court decision on the issue).

In so doing, the Court gave the narrowest possible reading to its holdings in Williams and Flynn—essentially concluding that the two cases provided a rule for assessing only the prejudice of "state— sponsored courtroom practices." Id. at 653.¹ Thus, the Court concluded that "[n]o holding of this Court required the California Court of Appeal to apply the test of Williams and Flynn to the spectators' conduct" at issue in Musladin and thus held that the state court's decision was not "contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law." Id. at 654.

Rodriguez's petition now returns to us for reconsideration in light of the teachings of Musladin.

DISCUSSION

As the parties agree, the sole issue confronting this Court on remand is whether the New York State Courts' decision to exclude Rodriguez's family from his trial involved an "unreasonable application of . . . clearly established Federal law." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).² We conclude that it did not.

A. Clearly established federal law

"Clearly established federal law" refers only to the holdings of the Supreme Court. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. at 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495. No principle of constitutional law grounded solely in the...