Bates v. Lee

• Decision Date: 23 October 2002
• Docket Number: No. 02-4.,02-4.
• Citation: 308 F.3d 411
• Parties: Joseph Earl BATES, Petitioner-Appellant, v. R.C. LEE, Warden, Central Prison, Raleigh, North Carolina, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

308 F.3d 411

Joseph Earl BATES, Petitioner-Appellant, v. R.C. LEE, Warden, Central Prison, Raleigh, North Carolina, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 02-4.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued September 26, 2002.

Decided October 23, 2002.

Appeal from the United District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, James A. Beaty, Jr., J.

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ARGUED: Robert Hood Hale, Jr., Raleigh, North Carolina; Rosemary Godwin, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant.

Barry Steven McNeill, Special Deputy Attorney General, North Carolina Department of Justice, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Roy Cooper, Attorney General of North Carolina, North Carolina Department of Justice, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before WILKINSON, Chief Judge, WIDENER, Circuit Judge, and HAMILTON, Senior Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by published opinion. Chief Judge WILKINSON wrote the opinion, in which Judge WIDENER and Senior Judge HAMILTON joined.

OPINION

WILKINSON, Chief Judge.

Appellant Joseph Earl Bates was sentenced to death for the murder of Charles Edwin Jenkins. Bates does not contest the fact that he committed the murder. After exhausting state challenges to the sentence imposed by the state courts, Bates petitioned the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court found no merit in his claims and dismissed the petition. We now affirm.

I.

On August 25, 1990, two fishermen discovered Charles Jenkins' body floating in the Yadkin River, in Yadkin County, North Carolina. The victim's ankles and wrists were bound by rope, his legs and arms were hog-tied, and a rope was tied around his neck. While investigating the murder, two police officers went to Bates' house to speak with him. At that time, the officers obtained a piece of paper and some molding from Bates' home having what appeared to be bloodstains on it. The following day, Bates gave a thirteen-page confession, in which he admitted to beating, hog-tying, kidnapping, and then shooting the victim in the neck. Bates was indicted for kidnapping and murder.

The facts surrounding the crime are undisputed. Some time in late July or early August 1990, someone broke into and fired gunshots into Bates' home, causing Bates to set up a temporary campsite on his employer Hal Eddleman's property. Around this same time Bates told his friend, Gary Shaver, that he could kill someone.

On August 10, Bates called Eddleman and told Eddleman to meet him at the bridge later that evening because something was "going down." Eddleman went to the bridge as instructed, but Bates never came to meet him. The next evening Bates and Shaver went to a night club. At approximately 1:45 a.m., Bates instructed a waitress to ask Billy Grimes, another friend, to telephone Eddleman. Bates told her that Grimes and Eddleman would know what was going on.

At approximately 2:00 a.m., Jenkins asked Bates and Shaver for a ride home. During the ride, Bates asked Jenkins if he knew Bates' ex-wife and her new boyfriend, and Jenkins replied that he did. Bates stopped twice during the ride. During the second stop, Bates struck Jenkins three times on the back of the head with a shovel, appearing to knock him unconscious. When Jenkins began to moan, Bates struck him again, hog-tied him, and then placed him in the vehicle.

On the way back to his campsite, Bates stopped at Eddleman's house and told Eddleman that he "got one of the MF's." He then told Grimes, "I've got one of the guys that's been messing with me. Do you want to watch or help?" Grimes declined to help, as did Shaver and Eddleman. Bates drove Jenkins back to his campsite around 4:00 a.m.

At the campsite, Bates loosened the ropes on Jenkins and began asking Jenkins who had shot into his home. Jenkins mentioned two people who were involved, but did not say anything else. Unsatisfied with Jenkins' response, Bates then tied Jenkins to a tree and went to his tent to retrieve a gun that he had borrowed from Eddleman. Bates put the gun up to Jenkins throat, but Jenkins repeated that he did not know for sure who had shot into Bates' home. Bates then untied Jenkins, took him to the back of the truck, and shot him in the neck. Jenkins was lying face-up near the back of the truck when Bates shot him. In his confession, Bates said he "shot him ... because he acted like he knew who had shot into my house, he spit on me and told me to go to hell, and this made me mad and I shot him."

After rummaging through Jenkins' pockets, Bates retied Jenkins' hands and feet and loaded him into the jeep. Bates drove back to Eddleman's house, returned Eddleman's gun, and asked, "[w]hat do you think I should do with the body." Bates then left and threw the body into the Yadkin River.

Later that day Bates discussed the murder with both Eddleman and Grimes. Bates told Eddleman, "[w]ell, it don't bother me all that bad." Bates told Grimes that he killed the victim because he would get no more time for murder than for kidnapping.

Bates was indicted for kidnapping and murder. The State sought the death penalty. A jury found Bates guilty of one count of first degree murder and one count of first degree kidnapping. He was sentenced to death for the first degree murder conviction. On appeal, the North Carolina Supreme Court awarded Bates a new trial based on an improper denial of Bates' motion for an ex parte hearing regarding his request for funds to employ a forensic psychologist. State v. Bates, 333 N.C. 523, 428 S.E.2d 693 (1993). Bates was retried, and a second jury found Bates guilty of one count of first degree kidnapping and one count of first degree murder on the basis of both the felony murder rule and premeditation and deliberation.

During the closing argument of the penalty phase of the second trial, the prosecutor pointed out that Jenkins' mother, Bates' mother, and Bates' sister each cried while on the stand. The prosecutor then asked whether the jurors saw Bates cry during the trial, or whether Bates had presented any evidence of remorse. The prosecutor also commented that Bates had been given the benefit of a lengthy trial and two good lawyers who would stand up and ask the jurors not to return the death penalty, because it was a lawyer's job to do so.

The jury recommended the death sentence on the basis of the kidnapping and the especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel nature of the crime. On November 9, 1994, Judge Julius Rousseau sentenced Bates to death for the first degree murder conviction and to an additional forty years in prison for the kidnapping conviction. The Supreme Court of North Carolina affirmed the conviction and sentence, State v. Bates, 343 N.C. 564, 473 S.E.2d 269 (1996), and the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari, Bates v. North Carolina, 519 U.S. 1131, 117 S.Ct. 992, 136 L.Ed.2d 873 (1997).

Bates then filed a motion for appropriate relief. The North Carolina Superior Court entered an order denying Bates' claims, and the Supreme Court of North Carolina affirmed. State v. Bates, 350 N.C. 837, 539 S.E.2d 297 (1999).

Next, Bates filed a petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. On February 14, 2002, the district court adopted the magistrate's recommendation to dismiss Bates' petition. Bates v. Lee, No. 1:99CV00742 (M.D.N.C. Feb. 14, 2002). Finding no substantial issue presented, the district court also declined to issue a certificate of appealability. Id. Bates now appeals.

II.

Federal courts entertaining collateral attacks on state convictions have only limited powers of judicial review. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). Under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) (2002), federal courts may not grant a writ of habeas corpus when a state court has already resolved the merits of a claim unless the state court's 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 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) (2002).

A state court decision is contrary to clearly established federal law if the state court "applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [the Court's] cases" or "confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of the Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from [its] precedent." Williams, 529 U.S. at 405-06, 120 S.Ct. 1495.

A state court decision involves an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent if the state court "correctly identifies the governing legal rule but applies it unreasonably to the facts of a particular prisoner's case," id. at 407-08, 120 S.Ct. 1495, or "was unreasonable in refusing to extend the governing legal principle to a context in which the principle should have controlled." Ramdass v. Angelone, 530 U.S. 156, 166, 120 S.Ct. 2113, 147 L.Ed.2d 125 (2000) (opinion of Kennedy, J.). The Supreme Court has stressed the importance of the word "unreasonable" in the standard of review. "Under § 2254(d)(1)'s `unreasonable application' clause ... a federal habeas court may not issue the writ simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Rather, that application must also be unreasonable." Williams, 529 U.S. at 411, 120 S.Ct. 1495.

In this case, Bates argues that the North Carolina Supreme Court's decision was an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law because (1) the trial court erroneously failed to instruct the jury on second degree murder; (2) the prosecutor's closing comments during the penalty phase violated the defendant's Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and his due process rights; and (3) the jury instructions on...