Schneider v. McDaniel

• Decision Date: 04 April 2012
• Docket Number: No. 09–16945.,09–16945.
• Citation: 12 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 3762,674 F.3d 1144,2012 Daily Journal D.A.R. 4343
• Parties: Ralph SCHNEIDER, Petitioner–Appellant, v. E.K. McDANIEL; Attorney General of the State of Nevada, Respondents–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

12 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 3762
2012 Daily Journal D.A.R. 4343
674 F.3d 1144

Ralph SCHNEIDER, Petitioner–Appellant,
v.
E.K. McDANIEL; Attorney General of the State of Nevada, Respondents–Appellees.

No. 09–16945.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Jan. 9, 2012.Filed April 4, 2012.

[674 F.3d 1147]

Franny A. Forsman, Federal Public Defender, and Paul G. Turner, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Las Vegas, NV, for the petitioner-appellant.

Daniel M. Roche, Deputy Attorney General, Carson City, NV, for the respondents-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Nevada, Kent J. Dawson, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. 3:06–cv–00449–KJD–RAM.

Before: J. CLIFFORD WALLACE, JOHN T. NOONAN, and MILAN D. SMITH, JR., Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge WALLACE; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge NOONAN.

OPINION WALLACE, Senior Circuit Judge:

Petitioner–Appellant Ralph Schneider seeks review pursuant to a certificate of appealability of the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Schneider petitioned for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. His First Amended Petition stated eight grounds for relief. The district court denied the petition entirely, but granted a certificate of appealability on the following issues: (1) the rejection of Ground 1 on the merits; (2) the holding that Grounds 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the amended petition do not relate back to the original petition; and (3) the holding that petitioner's mental condition did not excuse his procedural default on Grounds 2 and 7. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 2253. Schneider also asks us to consider whether the district court erred in refusing to hold an evidentiary hearing on Ground 1. We decline to expand the certificate of appealability and we affirm.

I.

On December 12, 1996, a jury in Nevada state court found Schneider guilty of robbery with a deadly weapon, false imprisonment, battery with a deadly weapon, and battery causing substantial bodily harm. Schneider and his girlfriend, Lisa Dehmer, had attacked and robbed Randy Krotz in Krotz's apartment on August 12, 1996. According to Krotz, Schneider and Dehmer came to Krotz's apartment that day to see if he wanted to buy drugs. Krotz paid Schneider fifteen dollars for methamphetamine and injected the drug. Dehmer then grabbed Krotz's fanny pack to look for more money, bit him on the nose, and hit him. Schneider ordered Krotz to the floor and, with Dehmer's help, tied Krotz's hands and feet and gagged him. Schneider held a knife against Krotz's body as Dehmer went through the apartment, presumably looking for money. Krotz testified that over a period of approximately two hours Schneider and Dehmer stabbed him, cut him, hit him with the butt end of the knife, kicked him, cut his hair, poured pickle juice in his wounds, and broke a jar over his head. Eventually, Schneider and Dehmer left the apartment with the money they had found and some of Krotz's personal property, leaving him bound and gagged. Krotz managed to free his feet and got help from a neighbor.

The state tried Schneider and Dehmer together. Immediately prior to trial, both Dehmer and Schneider moved to sever their trials. In his motion, Schneider argued that he would suffer prejudice by being tried with Dehmer because she planned to offer a coercion defense that would involve evidence that Schneider beat Dehmer and that he was part of the Aryan Brotherhood. The trial judge denied the motions.

At trial, Dehmer introduced evidence that Schneider had beaten her and, on two

[674 F.3d 1148]

occasions, mentioned Schneider's affiliation with the Aryan Warriors or Aryan Brotherhood. On the first occasion, Dehmer testified that she could not escape from Schneider because she would have been labeled a snitch, and that Aryan Warriors kill snitches. Schneider did not object to this testimony. Later, while cross-examining Dehmer, Schneider's attorney suggested that Dehmer's belief that Schneider had his friends watching her was the result of a heroin-induced psychosis. Dehmer responded, “It's a little circle of Aryan Brotherhood.” Schneider requested that the comment be stricken. The trial judge agreed that the comment was non-responsive, struck it from the record, and admonished the jury to disregard it.

Schneider did not testify. However, he did offer evidence that Dehmer was abusive toward him and that he was afraid of her. Schneider was ultimately convicted on four counts and Dehmer was convicted on three.

Schneider appealed his conviction without success. The Nevada Supreme Court dismissed his appeal on June 6, 1997. The time to petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court expired on September 4, 1997.

Schneider did not pursue further relief until November 20, 2005, when he mailed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus to the Nevada state court. This petition was denied on February 7, 2006. His appeal of the state trial court's denial was denied on July 10, 2006.

After receiving no relief in the state courts, Schneider mailed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus to the United States District Court for the District of Nevada on August 14, 2006. The district court appointed counsel for Schneider, and Schneider filed a First Amended Petition on November 2, 2007.

On October 23, 2008, the district court granted in part and denied in part a motion to dismiss the First Amended Petition. In its order, the district court held that Schneider's original petition was timely because Schneider was entitled to equitable tolling of the Anti–Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's (AEDPA) one-year statute of limitations for the time period of September 4, 1997, through November 20, 2005. The district court concluded that Schneider's “mental health conditions constituted extraordinary circumstances standing in the way of his filing a timely federal petition, such that he likely would have been unable to file a timely federal petition due to those circumstances.” Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Order at 4 (Oct. 23, 2008). Nevertheless, the district court held that Grounds 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the amended petition were untimely because they did not relate back to the original petition, and were, therefore, filed outside the limitations period. The district court also held that, while timely, Grounds 2 and 7 of the amended petition were barred by Schneider's procedural default. That is, while Schneider's mental health condition could excuse his failure to file a federal petition within AEDPA's one-year limitations period, it did not constitute cause to excuse his failure to comply with state procedures. On July 9, 2009, the district court denied Ground 1 of Schneider's amended petition on the merits.

II.

We review the denial of a petition for writ of habeas corpus brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 de novo. Collier v. Bayer, 408 F.3d 1279, 1281 (9th Cir.2005). But “[t]o the extent it is necessary to review findings of fact made in the district court, the clearly erroneous standard applies.” Silva v. Woodford, 279 F.3d 825, 835 (9th Cir.2002). We also review de novo the district court's application of the relation-back doctrine under

[674 F.3d 1149]

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c). Williams v. Boeing Co., 517 F.3d 1120, 1132 (9th Cir.2008).

A.

Schneider first argues that the district court erred in denying Ground 1 of his First Amended Petition. In Ground 1, Schneider asserted that, “[t]he trial court's denial of the motion for mistrial based on Lisa Dehmer's Aryan Brotherhood testimony denied Schneider his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to freedom of association and to due process of law and fair trial.” First Am. Pet. at 7 (Nov. 2, 2007). He argues that the state court's adjudication of the claim resulted in an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court in Dawson v. Delaware, 503 U.S. 159, 112 S.Ct. 1093, 117 L.Ed.2d 309 (1992).

The Supreme Court of Nevada rejected Schneider's direct appeal on the following grounds:

We conclude that no error requiring a mistrial occurred here. First, the state did not elicit the disputed evidence or employ it in any way. Second, the evidence consisted only of two short remarks by the codefendant, referring to the Aryan Warriors and the Aryan Brotherhood. The first was not even objected to and the district court immediately admonished the jury to disregard the second. We conclude that these remarks did not prejudice appellant. Therefore, no grounds for a mistrial existed, and the court did not err in denying the motion.

Schneider v. State, No. 30037, Slip Op. at 2–3, 113 Nev. 1648, 970 P.2d 1129 (Nev. June 6, 1997). Our task is to determine whether this decision involves an unreasonable application of Dawson.

The state court's first rationale for rejecting Schneider's Dawson argument was that “the state did not elicit the disputed evidence or employ it in any way.” Id. Slip Op. at 2. We interpret this rationale as distinguishing Dawson on the ground that the evidence was offered by a co-defendant as part of that co-defendant's defense rather than offered by the prosecution.

Schneider disagrees, arguing that “[w]hether it was the state or co-defendant who elicited the testimony does not negate the fact that the jury was told that Schneider belonged to a violent group ‘holding racist or other antisocial beliefs,’ ” Pet. Br. at 23 (quoting Flanagan v. State, 109 Nev. 50, 846 P.2d 1053, 1056 (1993)). But Schneider cites no authority for his proposition that the Nevada Supreme Court's distinction of Dawson is invalid.

We recognize that, from the jury's perspective, evidence of a defendant's reprehensible abstract beliefs may be just as prejudicial whether it is offered by a co-defendant or by the prosecutor. Nevertheless, the United States Supreme Court dealt with a...