Anderson v. Vannoy

• Decision Date: 26 April 2019
• Docket Number: CIVIL ACTION NO. 18-7977 SECTION: "I"(5)
• Parties: CARTER VINCENT ANDERSON v. DARREL VANNOY, WARDEN
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana

CARTER VINCENT ANDERSON v. DARREL VANNOY, WARDEN

CIVIL ACTION NO. 18-7977 SECTION: "I"(5)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA

April 26, 2019

REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION

This matter was referred to the undersigned United States Magistrate Judge to conduct a hearing, including an evidentiary hearing, if necessary, and to submit proposed findings and recommendations for disposition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) and (C), and as applicable, Rule 8(b) of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts. Upon review of the entire record, the Court has determined that this matter can be disposed of without an evidentiary hearing. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2). For the following reasons, IT IS RECOMMENDED that the petition for habeas corpus relief be DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE.

Procedural History

Petitioner, Carter Anderson, is a convicted inmate currently incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. On March 21, 2011, Anderson was charged by bill of information with armed robbery and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.¹ On November 15, 2012, a jury found him guilty as charged.² His motions for post-verdict judgment of acquittal and new trial were denied. On February 4, 2013, the trial court sentenced him to 60 years at hard labor with the first 20 years to be served without benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence, and 10 years at hard labor without benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence, respectively.³ His motion to reconsider the sentence was denied. The State filed a multiple bill of information.⁴ On April 16, 2013, his original sentences were vacated, and the trial court sentenced him as a third-felony offender to life imprisonment on each count, to run concurrently.

Anderson appealed and asserted one claim of error. He argued that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress his confession. On February 18, 2014, the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed the convictions and sentences.⁵ He filed an application for writ of certiorari with the Louisiana Supreme Court. On October 24, 2014, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied his writ application.⁶

On December 28, 2015, Anderson submitted an application for post-conviction relief to the state district court.⁷ In that application, he asserted the following claims: (1) the prosecution purposefully excluded all African-American prospective jurors, rendering his trial fundamentally unfair; (2) prosecutorial misconduct rendered his trial fundamentally unfair; and (3) he was denied the right to effective assistance of appellate counsel for failing to raise a Batson claim on direct appeal. On July 20, 2016, the district court denied relief.⁸ On October 17, 2016, his related writ application with the Louisiana First Circuit was denied.⁹ On August 3, 2018, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied his application for supervisory writs.¹⁰ The Louisiana Supreme Court concluded that Anderson failed to show that he received ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland and that he failed to satisfy his burden of proof as to the remaining claims.

During the time he was seeking supervisory relief from the post-conviction ruling with the appellate courts, Anderson also submitted to the state district court a motion to vacate an illegal habitual-offender sentence.¹¹ In that motion, he argued that hisadjudication and enhanced sentence as a third-felony offender was the result of an impermissible double enhancement, because the underlying offense the State used to charge him as a convicted felon in possession of a firearm was also used to have him adjudicated as a third-felony offender. On June 7, 2017, the trial court denied the motion to vacate because it was untimely, successive and the sentence had been reviewed on appeal.¹² On August 21, 2017, his timely filed supervisory writ application was denied by the Louisiana First Circuit without stated reasons.¹³ On August 3, 2018, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued a one-word denial of his related supervisory writ application.¹⁴

On August 20, 2018, Anderson filed a federal application for relief in this Court. In that application, he raises the following combined five grounds for relief asserted on direct appeal and collateral review: (1) the trial court erroneously denied the motion to suppress his confession; (2) the trial court erred in overruling his Batson challenge to the prosecutor's use of peremptory challenges to remove the only three prospective African-American jurors; (3) ineffective assistance of appellate counsel in failing to assert the Batson claim on direct appeal; (4) the prosecutor engaged in misconduct by presenting a case based on speculationand hearsay unsupported by any tangible evidence; and (5) the enhanced sentence is the result of an impermissible double enhancement.¹⁵ In its response to the federal application, the State does not allege untimeliness, failure to exhaust, or procedural default.¹⁶ Anderson submitted a Reply to the State's Response.¹⁷

Facts

On direct appeal, the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal summarized the facts adduced at trial as follows:

On December 30, 2010, between midnight and 1:00 a.m., Larry Bennett (the victim) was in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Slidell, Louisiana, when an African-American male approached his 1993 Cadillac Seville. The victim, a retired truck driver from Toledo, Ohio, who came to Slidell to purchase a part for his antique airplane, was set to spend the night in his vehicle when the perpetrator suddenly smashed his rear window. When the victim turned towards the back, the perpetrator pointed a gun at the victim's face and told him to get out of the car. When the victim attempted to take the keys out of the ignition, the perpetrator told him to leave the keys in the ignition and get out of the car, and he began striking the victim in the back of his head. Before fleeing the scene in the victim's vehicle, the perpetrator forced the victim to place a blanket that was in his vehicle over his head, as blood from his head injury began to cover his neck. John Binder, a bystander who was in the Wal-Mart parking lot at the time, witnessed the robbery and contacted the police. Binder described the perpetrator as a short, African-American male with dreadlocks. The victim was taken to Ochsner Hospital where he received stitches in the back of his head.

After being released from the hospital, the victim provided the Slidell Police Department (SPD) with the telephone number for the cell phone that he left inthe vehicle and with the clothing that he was wearing at the time of the incident. The police accessed the cell phone records and determined that the cell phone was used to call Laura Bolden. Bolden was defendant's girlfriend, with whom he was living at the time in a duplex apartment building at the corner of 11th Street and Cousin Street in Slidell. The victim's vehicle was recovered from an apartment complex within walking distance of the residence. SPD Detectives Daniel Suzeneaux¹⁸ and Brian Brown observed surveillance footage¹⁹ from the apartment complex showing that, shortly after the robbery, the vehicle was dropped off by an individual who fit the description provided by Binder. The victim's cell phone was found at the residence on Cousin Street, and defendant and the others who were present at the residence were asked to come to the police station for questioning. Defendant, before being questioned, initially denied any knowledge or involvement. Defendant was advised of his Miranda rights at the scene and again at the police station where a waiver of rights form was executed. Defendant made incriminating statements during an audio-recorded interview at the police station. SPD executed a search warrant for Bolden's vehicle that was at the residence on Cousin Street and found a bag containing a handgun and a traffic ticket in defendant's name. The victim's DNA was found during the testing of swabs processed from the recovered handgun. Defendant fit the basic description depicted on the surveillance footage and given by Binder; however, at the time of his arrest he had a short haircut with remaining twists, as opposed to full dreadlocks. During the audio-recorded interview, defendant admitted that his girlfriend recently styled his hair in dreadlocks, but due to the "good" texture of his hair he could not maintain the locks. During the trial, the victim identified defendant as the perpetrator, noting that he was able to focus on the perpetrator's eyes and nose as the gun was being held between the perpetrator's face and the victim's face.²⁰

Standards of Review on the Merits

Title 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) and (2), as amended by The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), provides the applicable standards of review for pure questions of fact, pure questions of law, and mixed questions of both. A state court's purely factual determinations are presumed to be correct and a federal court will give deference to the state court's decision unless it "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2); see also 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1) ("In a proceeding instituted by an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court, a determination of a factual issue made by a State court shall be presumed to be correct. The applicant shall have the burden of rebutting the presumption of correctness by clear and convincing evidence."). With respect to a state court's determination of pure questions of law or mixed questions of law and fact, a federal court must defer to the decision on the merits of such a claim unless that decision "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." 28...