Bell v. Cone

• Decision Date: 24 January 2005
• Docket Number: No. 04-394.,04-394.
• Citation: 543 U.S. 447
• Parties: BELL v. CONE
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

543 U.S. 447

BELL v. CONE

No. 04-394.

Supreme Court of United States.

Decided January 24, 2005.

The Tennessee jury found that four aggravating circumstances, including that the murders committed by respondent were "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel," outweighed the mitigating evidence, and sentenced respondent to death. His direct appeal and state collateral attacks proved unsuccessful, and the Federal District Court denied habeas relief. Ultimately, the Sixth Circuit reversed on the ground that the "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" aggravator was unconstitutionally vague under the Eighth Amendment, and that the State Supreme Court had not applied a narrowing construction adopted in its earlier Dicks case to cure the aggravation.

Held: The Sixth Circuit had no power to issue a writ of habeas corpus. Assuming that it correctly concluded that the State's statutory aggravating circumstance was facially vague, it erred in presuming that the State Supreme Court did not cure that vagueness because the state court neither mentioned nor cited Dicks. Under 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)'s "`highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings,'" Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U. S. 19, 24 (per curiam), federal courts are not free to presume that a state court did not comply with constitutional dictates based on nothing more than a lack of citation. In addition, absent an affirmative indication to the contrary, this Court must presume that the Tennessee Supreme Court followed its established precedent, as it had done numerous other times. Even absent that presumption, this Court would still conclude that the state court applied the narrower construction, since its reasoning here closely resembled its rationale in cases where it had expressly done so. And that construction, the exact one approved by this Court in Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242, 255, is not itself unconstitutionally vague.

Certiorari granted; 359 F. 3d 785, reversed and remanded.

ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT.

PER CURIAM.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit granted a writ of habeas corpus to respondent Gary Bradford Cone after concluding that the "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" aggravating circumstance found by the jury at the sentencing phase of his trial was unconstitutionally vague, and that the Tennessee Supreme Court failed to cure any constitutional deficiencies on appeal. 359 F. 3d 785, 799 (2004). Because this result fails to accord to the state court the deference required by 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d), we grant the petition for certiorari and respondent's motion to proceed in forma pauperis and reverse.

I

Respondent killed Shipley Todd, 93, and his wife Cleopatra, 79, on August 10, 1980, in their home at the conclusion of a 2-day crime spree. The killings were accomplished in a brutal and callous fashion: The elderly victims were "repeatedly beaten about the head until they died," State v. Cone, 665 S. W. 2d 87, 90-91 (Tenn. 1984), and their bodies were subsequently discovered "horribly mutilated and cruelly beaten," id., at 90. A Tennessee jury convicted respondent of, inter alia, two counts of murder in the first degree and two counts of murder in the first degree in the perpetration of a burglary. At the conclusion of the penalty phase of respondent's trial, the jury unanimously found four aggravating circumstances¹ and concluded that they outweighed the mitigating evidence. Respondent was sentenced to death.

The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed respondent's convictions and sentence. Id., at 96. As relevant here, the court held that three of the aggravating circumstances found by the jury "were clearly shown by the evidence." Id., at 94.² With respect to the jury's finding that the murder was "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel," the court said:

"The jury also found that the murders in question were especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel in that they involved torture or depravity of mind as provided in [Tenn. Code Ann.] § 39-2-203(i)(5). The evidence abundantly established that both of the elderly victims had been brutally beaten to death by multiple crushing blows to the skulls. Blood was spattered throughout the house, and both victims apparently had attempted to resist, because numerous defensive wounds were found on their persons. The only excuse offered in the entire record for this unspeakably brutal conduct by the accused was that these elderly victims had at some point ceased to `cooperate' with him in his ransacking of their home and in his effort to flee from arrest. As previously stated, it was stipulated by counsel for [respondent] that there was no issue of self-defense even remotely suggested. The deaths of the victims were not instantaneous, and obviously one had to be killed before the other. The terror, fright and horror that these elderly helpless citizens must have endured was certainly something that the jury could have taken into account in finding this aggravating circumstance." Id., at 94-95.

Respondent twice sought relief from his conviction and sentence in collateral proceedings in state court, to no avail. In his second amended petition for postconviction relief, respondent raised 52 independent claims of constitutional error, including a contention that the "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" aggravating circumstance was unconstitutionally vague under the Eighth Amendment. The state trial court held each of respondent's claims barred by Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-30-111 (1990), which limited the grounds that may be raised on collateral review to those not waived or previously determined in previous proceedings. The trial court explained that respondent's constitutional challenge to the "heinous, atrocious, or cruel" aggravating circumstance, along with many other claims, was "clearly [a] re-statemen[t] of previous grounds heretofore determined and denied by the Tennessee Supreme Court upon Direct Appeal or the Court of Criminal Appeals upon the First Petition." Cone v. State, No. P-06874 (Tenn. Crim. Ct., Dec. 16, 1993), p. 6. The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the denial of relief on all grounds. Cone v. State, 927 S. W. 2d 579, 582 (1995). The State Supreme Court denied respondent permission to appeal.

II

In 1997, respondent sought a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, again asserting a multitude of claims. The District Court denied relief; it held respondent's vagueness challenge to the "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" aggravating circumstance to be procedurally barred by respondent's failure to raise it on direct appeal in state court. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit subsequently held that respondent was entitled to relief on another ground and did not consider respondent's challenges to the aggravating circumstances found by the jury. Cone v. Bell, 243 F. 3d 961, 975 (2001). We reversed that judgment. Bell v. Cone, 535 U. S. 685, 702 (2002).

On remand, the same panel of the Sixth Circuit again granted respondent a writ of habeas corpus, this time with one judge dissenting, on the ground that the "especially heinous atrocious, or cruel" aggravator was unconstitutionally vague under the Eighth Amendment. The court first rejected petitioner's argument that respondent procedurally defaulted the claim in state court. Based on its understanding of state law, the court concluded that the State Supreme Court's statutorily mandated review of each death sentence, see Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-2-205(c)(1) (1982), necessarily included the consideration of constitutional deficiencies in the aggravating circumstances found by the jury and therefore that the issue was "fairly presented" to the state court, even if respondent did not raise it himself.³ 359 F. 3d, at 791-793. Judge Norris dissented on this point. Id., at 806.

Turning to the merits, the Sixth Circuit held that the state court's affirmance of respondent's sentence in light of the "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" aggravating circumstance was "contrary to" the clearly established principles set forth in our decision in Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420 (1980). The Court of Appeals allowed that "[n]o Supreme Court case has addressed the precise language at issue," 359 F. 3d, at 795, and that no "Supreme Court decisio[n] is `on all fours' with the instruction in Cone's case,"⁴ id., at 796, but nevertheless concluded, in light of Godfrey and the series of cases that followed it, Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U. S. 356 (1988), Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639 (1990), and Shell v. Mississippi, 498 U. S. 1 (1990) (per curiam), that federal law dictated the conclusion that the State's "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" aggravator was unconstitutionally vague.⁵ 359 F. 3d, at 797. Lastly, the court rejected petitioner's argument that the Tennessee Supreme Court cured any deficiency in the aggravating circumstance on direct appeal by reviewing the jury's finding under the narrowed construction of the aggravator that it adopted in State v. Dicks, 615 S. W. 2d 126 (1981). 359 F. 3d, at 797.

III

A federal court may grant a writ of habeas corpus based on a claim adjudicated by a state court if the state-court 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). A state court's decision is "contrary to . . . clearly established Federal law" "if the state court applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in our cases," or "if the state court confronts facts that are materially indistinguishable from a relevant Supreme Court precedent and arrives at a result opposite to ours." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 405 (2000).

The law governing vagueness challenges to statutory...