Abdullah v. Groose

Decision Date11 January 1995
Docket NumberNo. 94-1783,94-1783
PartiesHillum Safat Qital ABDULLAH, also known as Tommie Lee West, Appellee, v. Michael GROOSE, Appellant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

John W. Simon, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, MO (argued) for appellant.

R. Gregory Bailey, St. Louis, MO (argued), for appellee.

Before McMILLIAN, Circuit Judge, JOHN R. GIBSON, Senior Circuit Judge, and MAGILL, Circuit Judge.

JOHN R. GIBSON, Senior Circuit Judge.

Michael Groose, Superintendent of the State of Missouri's Jefferson City Correctional Center, appeals from the district court's 1 order granting Hillum Safat Qital Abdullah a writ of habeas corpus ordering Abdullah be released unless the State takes steps within ninety days of disposition of this appeal to provide Abdullah a new trial. Abdullah is currently serving a five year sentence for his conviction of unlawful use of a weapon. Mo.Rev.Stat. Sec. 571.030.1(1) (1986). At his state court trial, Abdullah elected to represent himself. Because of an earlier escape attempt the trial court ordered that Abdullah be shackled at trial. He filed his habeas petition claiming that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated because the state trial court had forced him to wear leg irons while representing himself. On appeal, Superintendent Groose argues that the district court's holding constituted a new rule which should not be applied retroactively; that Abdullah's claim was barred by the procedural default rule; and that the state trial court's error was harmless. We affirm the judgment of the district court.

Abdullah was indicted and tried under the name Tommie L. West in the Circuit Court for the City of St. Louis for unlawful use of a weapon. He now goes by the name of Hillum Safat Qital Abdullah. 2 He was originally represented by a public defender, but before trial he moved the court to permit him to represent himself at trial. Upon inquiry by the trial court, Abdullah stated that he was thirty-one years old, had a ninth grade education and had attended Watterson College, that he was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and that he did not suffer from any mental disease. The trial court informed Abdullah that he would be "held to the same rules that any other attorney is in [the] Court." The prosecutor stated on the record that Abdullah had some familiarity with courtroom procedure, having been convicted several times of carrying concealed weapons. After this colloquy, the court allowed Abdullah to proceed pro se. Later in the same hearing, the prosecutor moved to have Abdullah tried in shackles:

Prosecutor: I think we need some ground rules for his conduct and movement during the course of the trial. As the Court's well aware, we attended a sentencing hearing with Mr. West last year, and he did in fact try to escape from the courtroom, and that's why he's wearing leg irons.

And I consider him to be a very dangerous security risk. He's already got a ten-year sentence, and I'm a little concerned about him wandering around the courtroom giving a closing argument, making a voir dire, approaching a witness to cross-examine the witness considering his propensity for escape. Are you going to keep his legs bound during the course of the trial, or are you going to let him move freely?

The Court: Well, based upon the information that this Court has received, he will have to proceed with this trial with the leg irons as they now are.

Neither Abdullah nor his erstwhile counsel objected to the shackling ruling. Immediately afterward, the court released Abdullah's counsel from further responsibility. Abdullah was convicted.

In his direct appeal in the state court Abdullah asserted that he had been denied a fair trial because he was shackled during the trial. Since Abdullah had not objected to the shackles at trial, the Missouri Court of Appeals reviewed the claim under Mo.R.Crim.P. 29.12(b) for plain error resulting in manifest injustice. Finding no such error, the court affirmed. State v. West, 743 S.W.2d 592, 594 (Mo.Ct.App.1988).

Abdullah then petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254 (1988). The district court referred the case to a United States Magistrate Judge, 3 who recommended that Abdullah's claim should not be procedurally barred. The Magistrate Judge recommended granting relief, reasoning that the trial court had not warned Abdullah of the "scope and dangers of self-representation in light of the decision to order him to wear leg irons while he presented his case to the jury.... The combination of shackles and self-representation is particularly prejudicial, and without specific warnings once the decision to shackle petitioner was made, it cannot be said that petitioner made the choice of self-representation knowingly and intelligently." The district court agreed that there was no procedural bar and permitted briefing on the merits. After additional briefing, the Magistrate Judge recommended that her proposed decision did not constitute a new rule and therefore should not be barred as retroactive under Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989). The district court granted the writ in accordance with the Magistrate Judge's recommendations.

I.

On appeal Groose argues that the district court's holding requires a second warning, and thus amounts to a new rule that cannot be applied retroactively under Teague v. Lane. Under Teague, a federal habeas court may not apply a new rule to invalidate a state conviction unless the rule falls within one of two narrow exceptions to the non-retroactivity principle. 489 U.S. at 311, 109 S.Ct. at 1075-76. "[A] case announces a new rule if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant's conviction became final." Id. at 301, 109 S.Ct. at 1070; Caspari v. Bohlen, --- U.S. ----, ----, 114 S.Ct. 948, 953, 127 L.Ed.2d 236 (1994). Abdullah's conviction became final in 1988.

The finding of a Sixth Amendment violation in this case rests on the authority of Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 95 S.Ct. 2525, 45 L.Ed.2d 562 (1975), and the line of cases on which it is based. See Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464-65, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 1023, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938); Von Moltke v. Gillies, 332 U.S. 708, 722, 68 S.Ct. 316, 322, 92 L.Ed. 309 (1948) (plurality opinion of Black, J.). These, of course, antedate Abdullah's conviction. Faretta held that a defendant who wishes to represent himself has a right to do so, but that the defendant "should be made aware of the dangers and disadvantages of self-representation so that the record will establish that 'he knows what he is doing and his choice is made with his eyes open.' " 422 U.S. at 835, 95 S.Ct. at 2541 (quoting Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U.S. 269, 279, 63 S.Ct. 236, 241, 87 L.Ed. 268 (1942)). Fifty years before Abdullah's case, the Supreme Court placed on the trial court the duty of ascertaining whether a defendant has made an intelligent and competent waiver of counsel. Johnson, 304 U.S. at 464-65, 58 S.Ct. at 1023. At the time of Abdullah's conviction, Faretta had been interpreted to require the court to "ensure that the waiver is not the result of coercion or mistreatment of the defendant, and ... that the accused understands the nature of the charges, the consequences of the proceedings, and the practical meaning of the right he is waiving." McQueen v. Blackburn, 755 F.2d 1174, 1177 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 852, 106 S.Ct. 152, 88 L.Ed.2d 125 (1985) (internal citations omitted).

It was also well established at the time of Abdullah's conviction that forcing a defendant to undergo trial in chains is "inherently prejudicial," Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U.S. 560, 568-69, 106 S.Ct. 1340, 1345-46, 89 L.Ed.2d 525 (1986); see Illinois v. Allen, 397 U.S. 337, 344, 90 S.Ct. 1057, 1061, 25 L.Ed.2d 353 (1970), and should only be tolerated in cases of dire necessity. Id. "[S]hackling and prison clothes are unmistakable indications of the need to separate a defendant from the community at large," Holbrook, 475 U.S. at 569, 106 S.Ct. at 1346, and therefore pose a threat to the presumption of innocence and the integrity of the fact-finding process. See id. at 567-68, 106 S.Ct. at 1345. These problems are aggravated when a defendant is representing himself because the defendant has the Hobson's choice of trying to move about as necessary in the course of his self-representation, thus drawing the jury's attention to the shackles, or conducting his defense while seated behind the counsel table.

Considering first the court's duty to ascertain whether the defendant appreciates the significance of waiving counsel, and second, the long-recognized gravity of forcing a defendant to trial in chains, we conclude that the trial court did not live up to its obligation in this case. Abdullah did not know he would be tried in chains at the time he moved to waive counsel. Once the court decided to shackle him, the court made no effort to ascertain whether Abdullah understood the effect shackling would have on his ability to represent himself.

Superintendent Groose argues that there are no pre-1988 cases saying that the court must discuss shackling in its waiver colloquy. However, it has long been established that "[t]he determination of whether there has been an intelligent waiver of the right to counsel must depend, in each case, upon the particular facts and circumstances surrounding that case." Johnson, 304 U.S. at 464, 58 S.Ct. at 1023. Every case will have its specific facts, but it is the courts' task to apply the established general rule of Faretta to the infinite array of facts that present themselves. The essence of the district court's holding was to require that the general rule of Faretta be applied to the particular facts in this case, including the difficulties that...

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