Prejean v. Smith
| Decision Date | 28 November 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 89-4850,89-4850 |
| Parties | Dalton PREJEAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Larry D. SMITH, Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
John H. Hall, Debevoise & Plimpton, Mitchell A. Karlan, Gibson, Dunn & J. Nathan Stansbury, Lafayette, La. and William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Baton Rouge, La., for respondent-appellee.
Crutcher, New York City, Mayer, Brown & Platt, Chicago, Ill., and Samuel S. Dalton, Jefferson, La., for petitioner-appellant.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
Before CLARK, Chief Judge, and POLITZ and JOHNSON, Circuit Judges.
This successive habeas corpus petition by Dalton Prejean asserts four issues: (1) The jury selection procedures were improper; (2) he received ineffective assistance of counsel; (3) he is a brain-damaged, retarded juvenile whose execution would be unconstitutional; and (4) state control over aspects of the prosecution denied him a fair trial in connection with his motion for a certificate of probable cause and stay of execution. We deny both motions.
The following statement is taken verbatim from the opinion of the Supreme Court of Louisiana:
At about five o'clock in the morning of July 2, 1977, the defendant, his brother Joseph, Michael George and Michael Broussard left Roger's Nite Club in Lafayette Parish. The four had spent the night drinking in various lounges in the vicinity. They left Rogers' Nite Club in a 1966 Chevrolet driven by the defendant, with his brother in the front seat and the other two in the back. The car's taillights were not working, and within a few hundred feet of the lounge, State Trooper Donald Cleveland, who was on his way to work driving his police vehicle, signaled the Chevrolet to stop. The defendant and his brother attempted to switch places in the front seat because the defendant had been driving without a license. The officer noticed the switch and ordered the occupants out of the car. He told Michael George and Michael Broussard to get back in, however, and began to search Joseph Prejean. Dalton Prejean, back in the car, stated, "I don't like the way he's doing my brother." (This was a reaction to the trooper's pushing Joseph against the car, over Joseph's protest.) Defendant then took a .38 caliber revolver from under the car seat, got out of the car and approached the officer with the gun hidden against his leg. As he neared the trooper he fired without warning. Trooper Cleveland was struck by two bullets and was killed. The defendant and his companions fled the scene but were apprehended several hours later.
July 2, 1977: Louisiana State Trooper Donald Cleveland was in the process of conducting a traffic stop when Dalton Prejean pulled a concealed pistol and shot him to death.
May 11, 1978: A jury convicted Prejean of capital murder and fixed the death penalty for his crime.
November 29, 1979: The Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence. Id. at 249.
January 28, 1980: The Louisiana Supreme Court denied rehearing. Id. at 240.
October 6, 1980: The Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari. Prejean v. Louisiana, 449 U.S. 891, 101 S.Ct. 253, 66 L.Ed.2d 119 (1980).
December 1, 1980: The Supreme Court of the United States denied rehearing. Prejean v. Louisiana, 449 U.S. 1027, 101 S.Ct. 598, 66 L.Ed.2d 489 (1980).
March 31, 1981: Prejean filed an application for state post-conviction relief, raising 12 claims set out in the margin. 1
April 11, 1981: The Louisiana Supreme Court denied review. Prejean v. Blackburn, 397 So.2d 517 (La.1981).
April 13, 1981: Prejean petitioned the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana for habeas corpus relief.
September 2, 1981: The district court dismissed for lack of exhaustion.
September 25, 1981: Prejean sought post-conviction relief in the parish of his conviction, raising five claims set out in the margin. 2
October 5, 1981: The Louisiana Supreme Court denied review. State ex rel. Prejean v. Blackburn, 407 So.2d 1189 (La.1981).
February 23, 1982: Prejean filed a second petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, raising 11 claims set out in the margin. 3
August 5, 1983: The district court denied Prejean's petition. Prejean v. Blackburn, 570 F.Supp. 985, 999 (W.D.La.1983).
November 18, 1983: The Clerk delivered a letter to all counsel requesting them to study the record and to detail any grounds for relief not already presented, specifically including ineffectiveness of present or former counsel. 4
December 1, 1983: State district attorney responds to clerk's letter stating he is aware of no other grounds. 5
December 5, 1983: Counsel for Prejean responds to clerk's letter stating they are aware of no other claims.
December 6, 1983: At oral argument before this court, counsel are directed to supplement their responses based on future investigation.
January 3, 1984: Counsel for Prejean assert they have begun an investigation to identify any other claims and will promptly pursue them if any are found. 6
October 15, 1984: This court affirmed the district court. Prejean v. Blackburn, 743 F.2d 1091 (5th Cir.1984).
July 15, 1985: This court modified its prior opinion and denied rehearing and rehearing en banc. Prejean v. Maggio, 765 F.2d 482 (5th Cir.1985).
July 3, 1989: The Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari. Prejean v. Blackburn, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 3259, 106 L.Ed.2d 604 (1989).
October 4, 1989: Prejean moved the state court where he was convicted to stay his execution and moved the state trial judge to recuse himself from further consideration of the proceedings.
October 9, 1989: After a hearing, another judge in the parish of conviction denied all relief sought and ordered the case returned to Lafayette Parish where the murder had occurred.
October 16, 1989: The Supreme Court of Louisiana affirmed but ordered an evidentiary hearing on the jury selection October 17, 1989: After a hearing, the Lafayette Parish Court denied relief.
claim raised in plaintiff's most recent application for post-conviction relief.
October 19, 1989: The Louisiana Supreme Court denied review.
October 19, 1989: Prejean filed his third petition for federal habeas corpus relief, raising 14 claims set out in the margin. 7
October 27, 1989: The United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana denied the petition.
November 14, 1989: Prejean appealed that decision to this court and moved for a certificate of probable cause and stay.
Equal Protection: Prejean claims that the prosecutor deliberately used the state's peremptory challenges to exclude all blacks from the jury in violation of Prejean's equal protection rights under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). Prejean acknowledges that the United States Supreme Court has held Batson is not to be retroactively applied to collateral review of the jury's factual determination of guilt in capital cases, but he insists that the Court has never decided whether Batson applies retroactively to a jury's capital sentencing determination. While Prejean admits that we have held Batson inapplicable to collateral review of sentencing determinations, see, e.g., Edwards v. Scroggy, 849 F.2d 204, 206 (5th Cir.1988); Esquivel v. McCotter, 791 F.2d 350, 352 (5th Cir.1986), he contends that our precedents must be reconsidered in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Penry v. Lynaugh, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989), a case that applied the retroactivity rule from Teague v. Lane, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), to collateral review of capital sentencing determinations. Penry, --- U.S. at ----, 109 S.Ct. at 2944. We reject Prejean's contention.
Teague had not been decided when this Court concluded that Batson does not apply retroactively to the jury's sentencing determination in capital cases. See Edwards, 849 F.2d at 204. However, under Teague, the jury's sentencing determination in capital cases is treated no differently In Allen v. Hardy, 478 U.S. 255, 106 S.Ct. 2878, 92 L.Ed.2d 199 (1986), the Supreme Court recognized that "other mechanisms existed prior to [the] decision in Batson, creating a high probability that the individual jurors seated in a particular case were free from bias." Id. at 259, 106 S.Ct. at 2880. The Supreme Court concluded that the new procedures established in Batson thus did not have "such a fundamental impact on the integrity of [the jury's] factfinding as to compel retroactive application." Id. Because the same protective mechanisms were in place to ensure that the jurors seated in Prejean's case were free from bias, see, e.g., Prejean, 743 F.2d at 1102-04, we cannot say that Batson has such a fundamental impact on the integrity of the jury's sentencing determination as to compel its retroactive application. We conclude that Batson does not apply retroactively to the jury's sentencing determination in capital cases because it does not insist on "procedures without which the correctness of the jury's decision to punish by death rather than by life imprisonment is seriously diminished." Sawyer, 881 F.2d at 1292.
from the jury's factual determination of guilt. The standard is whether the rule announced in Batson "insists on procedures without which the correctness of the jury's decision to punish by death rather than by life imprisonment is seriously diminished." Sawyer v. Butler, 881 F.2d 1273, 1292 (5th Cir.1989). We conclude that it does not
The Sixth Amendment: Prejean claims that he is entitled to a hearing to determine whether his sixth amendment right to a fair trial was violated by the prosecutor's alleged use of racially motivated peremptory challenges....
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