Cave v. Sec'y For the Dep't of Corr.

• Decision Date: 12 April 2011
• Docket Number: No. 09–15602.,09–15602.
• Citation: 638 F.3d 739
• Parties: Alphonso CAVE, Petitioner–Appellant,v.SECRETARY FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Attorney General of the State of Florida, Respondents–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

638 F.3d 739

22 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 1981

Alphonso CAVE, Petitioner–Appellant,

v.SECRETARY FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Attorney General of the State of Florida, Respondents–Appellees.

No. 09–15602.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

April 12, 2011.

Mary Catherine Bonner (Court–Appointed), Bonner Law Offices, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, for Petitioner–Appellant.Lisa–Marie Lerner, West Palm Beach, FL, for Respondents–Appellees.Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.Before EDMONDSON, HULL and WILSON, Circuit Judges.WILSON, Circuit Judge:

Alphonso Cave, a Florida state prisoner under sentence of death, appeals the district court's denial of his application for habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He raises five issues for our review, including three claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, an allegation that the district court applied an erroneous standard of review, and an argument that his sentencing violated Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002). Having determined that the district court's well-reasoned opinion properly resolved all of these issues, we affirm.

I.

In 1982, Cave was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping for his role in an armed robbery and abduction that resulted in the death of a young convenience store clerk in Stuart, Florida. On direct appeal, the Florida Supreme Court summarized the crime as follows:

Cave and three accomplices left Ft. Pierce, Florida, on the evening of April 26, 1982, and drove to Stuart, Florida. They arrived in Stuart at approximately 11 p.m. that evening. The driver, and owner of the car in which all four rode, was John Earl Bush. The other two accomplices were J.B. (“Pig”) Parker and Terry Wayne Johnson (“Bo Gator”). At approximately 3 a.m. on the following morning, the four men drove to a convenience store in Stuart. Cave and two of the men entered the store where Cave held a hand gun on the youthful female clerk and demanded the store's cash. The clerk surrendered the cash, whereupon she was taken from the store and placed in the back seat of the car. The men drove her to a rural area approximately thirteen miles away where she was removed from the car by the four men. After leaving the car, [Bush] stabbed the victim and, when she fell, [Parker] fired a single lethal shot into the back of her head.

Cave v. State, 476 So.2d 180, 183 (Fla.1985) (per curiam).¹

Following a 7–5 death recommendation by the jury, the trial court sentenced Cave to death. Since that time, Cave's case has been the subject of extensive post-conviction litigation, resulting in two subsequent sentencing proceedings. ² The counsel whose allegedly ineffective assistance is now at issue represented Cave in both of these later proceedings.

In the most recent sentencing—in 1996—pursuant to a jury recommendation of 11–1, the trial court again sentenced Cave to death. It found four aggravating circumstances: (1) the murder was committed during the flight following a robbery and during a kidnapping; (2) the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel; (3) the murder was committed in a cold, calculated, and pre-meditated manner; and (4) the murder was committed to avoid an arrest. The trial court also found one statutory mitigating circumstance—that Cave had no significant prior criminal activity—and several non-statutory mitigating circumstances,³ but gave them all little weight. Over a dissent by Justice Anstead, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed Cave's sentence. See Cave v. State, 727 So.2d 227, 232 (Fla.1998) (5–2 decision).

Cave subsequently filed a motion for post-conviction relief in state court under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.851. After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court denied Cave's request for relief on the merits, and—in a substantial written opinion—the Florida Supreme Court affirmed. See generally Cave v. State, 899 So.2d 1042 (Fla.2005). In 2005, Cave filed a federal application for a writ of habeas corpus in the Southern District of Florida. The district court denied Cave relief, and this appeal followed.

II.

At the outset, we address Cave's arguments that the district court applied an erroneous standard of review.

Because Cave petitions for habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 on claims that the state courts previously adjudicated on the merits, we are restricted in our ability to grant federal relief. In order to grant his application, we must find not only that Cave's constitutional claims are meritorious, but also that the state court's resolution of those claims: (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.” See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)–(2). We review a district court's decision to grant or deny a habeas petition de novo, including its determination of whether the state court's decision was unreasonable. Hall v. Head, 310 F.3d 683, 690 (11th Cir.2002).

Cave argues that “the district court misinterpreted the degree of deference which had to be paid to the state court's findings of facts and conclusions of law,” questioning the court's formulation of § 2254(d)'s restriction on federal habeas relief and its relationship to § 2254(e)'s presumption of correctness for factual determinations made by the state court. We address these arguments in turn.

A.

Cave invokes the Supreme Court's seminal decision interpreting the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's amendments to § 2254's statutory language, Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000), to argue that the district court erroneously deferred to the state court's legal conclusions on his ineffective assistance claims, employing inappropriately “heightened deference.” His argument is based on the following quotations from Section II of Justice Stevens's opinion in that case:

“Section 2254(d) requires us to give state courts' opinions a respectful reading, and to listen carefully to their conclusions, but when the state court addresses a legal question, it is the law ‘as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States' that prevails.”

Williams, 529 U.S. at 387, 120 S.Ct. 1495 (Stevens, J., concurring) (quoting Lindh v. Murphy, 96 F.3d 856, 869 (7th Cir.1996) (en banc), rev'd on other grounds, 521 U.S. 320, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997)); and

AEDPA plainly sought to ensure a level of “deference to the determinations of state courts,” provided those determinations did not conflict with federal law or apply federal law in an unreasonable way. Congress wished to curb delays, to prevent “retrials” on federal habeas, and to give effect to state convictions to the extent possible under law. When federal courts are able to fulfill these goals within the bounds of the law, AEDPA instructs them to do so.

On the other hand, it is significant that the word “deference” does not appear in the text of the statute itself. Neither the legislative history nor the statutory text suggests any difference in the so-called “deference” depending on which of the two phrases is implicated. Whatever “deference” Congress had in mind with respect to both phrases, it surely is not a requirement that federal courts actually defer to a state-court application of the federal law that is, in the independent judgment of the federal court, in error.

Williams, 529 U.S. at 386–87, 120 S.Ct. 1495, (Stevens, J., concurring) (footnote omitted) (citations omitted).

While these quotes certainly support Cave's arguments, they do not represent the controlling interpretation of § 2254(d). Justice Stevens announced the judgment of the Court, but a majority of the justices did not join in his opinion's second section, interpreting the AEDPA amendments to the habeas statute. Instead, a majority of the Court endorsed Justice O'Connor's alternative interpretation, offered in Section II of her opinion. It is this latter interpretation of the statutory language that binds this Court and specifically disclaims a reading of § 2254(d) that, like Cave's, would allow a federal court to substitute its own judgment on the merits of a habeas claim for that of the state court without first finding that the state court's resolution was unreasonable. See id. at 410, 120 S.Ct. 1495 (O'Connor, J., writing for the majority) (“The term ‘unreasonable’ is no doubt difficult to define. That said, ... the most important point is that an unreasonable application of federal law is different from an incorrect application of federal law.”).

In several recent decisions, the Supreme Court has re-emphasized that AEDPA mandates highly deferential review of state court decisions. In Harrington v. Richter, ––– U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 770, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011), for example, the Supreme Court stated:

As amended by AEDPA, § 2254(d) stops short of imposing a complete bar on federal court relitigation of claims already rejected in state proceedings. It preserves authority to issue the writ in cases where there is no possibility fairminded jurists could disagree that the state court's decision conflicts with this Court's precedents. It goes no farther. Section 2254(d) reflects the view that habeas corpus is a guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems, not a substitute for ordinary error correction through appeal. As a condition for obtaining habeas corpus from a federal court, a state prisoner must show that the state court's ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.

Id. at 786–87 (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). See...