Bell v. Mccauley

• Decision Date: 24 April 2023
• Docket Number: 21-10417
• Parties: LESTER BELL, Petitioner, v. MATT MCCAULEY, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan

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LESTER BELL, Petitioner, v. MATT MCCAULEY, Respondent.

No. 21-10417

United States District Court, E.D. Michigan, Southern Division

April 24, 2023

OPINION AND ORDER DENYING PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS

DAVID M. LAWSON, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Petitioner Lester Bell was released on parole from a prison sentence imposed by a Michigan state court for fleeing from the police and furnishing contraband to a prisoner. He was returned to prison as a parole violator. Bell challenged the parole revocation proceedings in the Michigan courts, contending that certain procedures used by the Michigan Department of Corrections violated his rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. After the state courts rejected his arguments, Bell filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in this Court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 without the assistance of a lawyer. Because the state courts reasonably applied governing federal law when they denied relief to Bell, this Court likewise will deny the habeas corpus petition.

I.

The proceedings in the state courts were summarized by the Michigan Court of Appeals in its opinion on direct review as follows:

Petitioner was serving sentences for third-degree fleeing and eluding, MCL 257.602a(3)(a), conspiring to furnish contraband to a prisoner, MCL 800.281(1), and conspiring to furnish a cell phone to a prisoner, MCL 800.283a, when released on parole in May 2017. The terms of petitioner's one-year parole included a prohibition against owning or possessing a firearm of any type and prohibited him from being in the company of anyone he knew to possess firearms, ammunition, or firearm components. On February 3 2018, petitioner performed at an event at the Coleman Center in Romulus, Michigan. Two Romulus police officers were called to the Coleman Center regarding altercations. The police officers observed petitioner and a female, Amanda Huff, walk toward a parked Hyundai Santa Fe but move away from it to stand at a distance in freezing temperatures without coats for an extended period. The police officers walked to the Santa Fe and observed what appeared to be a bag of marijuana in open view on the center console. Their suspicions aroused the police returned to their car which had been parked across the street out of sight and surveilled the Santa Fe until they observed petitioner and Huff walk to the vehicle. Petitioner unlocked the vehicle with a key fob. Huff sat in the front passenger seat while petitioner stood by the open door. When the police officers approached, petitioner tossed the keys to the ground. The police searched the vehicle and found what they believed to be marijuana and also three loaded firearms in the center console. Petitioner denied any connection to the firearms and repeatedly told Huff that she did not know anything and not to talk to the police. Investigation later determined that petitioner's friend, Danielle Gilliam, had rented the Santa Fe and also attended the event at the Coleman Center that night. The firearms recovered from the vehicle were registered to three different people and two had been reported stolen.

Petitioner was charged with three parole violations stemming from this event, but only the second charge, which alleged that petitioner violated the conditions of his parole by possessing firearms, is at issue in this appeal. Following a formal hearing, an administrative law examiner (ALE) found petitioner guilty of this charge under a constructive possession theory. The parole board revoked petitioner's parole and ordered that he serve a 60-month continuance. Petitioner appealed to the circuit court, and the circuit court affirmed the parole board's decision to revoke petitioner's parole, but remanded the matter to the parole board for reconsideration of the “penalty/mitigation phase” of the revocation process. On remand, the parole board again imposed a 60-month continuance. This appeal followed.

Bell v. Department of Corrections, No. 349194, 2020 WL 1897436, at *1 (Mich. Ct. App. Apr. 16, 2020).

The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld the Administrative Law Examiner's (ALE) findings of fact and conclusions of law and the Michigan Parole Board's decision to revoke Bell's parole. Ibid. The court also addressed and rejected Bell's arguments that his constitutional rights were violated by the ALE's consideration of certain evidence. Ibid. The Michigan Supreme Court denied Bell's application for leave to appeal. Bell v. Dep't of Corr., 506 Mich. 1026, 951 N.W.2d 669 (2020), reconsideration denied, 507 Mich. 903, 956 N.W.2d 184 (2021).

Bell then filed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, setting forth his arguments as follows:

I. The ALE violated Bell's Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment Rights when she used ex-parte/false evidence (not on the record) to discredit Bell, deeming him a liar, resulting in an inevitably biased and partial verdict based upon suspicious presumptions that derived from the ALE's constitutional errors.

II. The ALE violated Bell's Sixth Amendment right to confrontation, MCL 791.240(a)(5)(a) right to confrontation, MAPA's (MCL 24.282) right against exparte communications, and Fourteenth Amendment due process rights where she used false statements (not on the record) attributed to Bell by parole agents who Bell was not given a chance to confront, to find Bell guilty.

III. The ALE again violated Bell's Sixth Amendment right to confrontation, Fourteenth Amendment due process right against ex-parte communications, and Fifth Amendment right where she went off record to question Bell about a statement he allegedly made to Detective Farhat, using these errors as suspicious behavior to complete a guilty finding.

IV. The ALE violated Bell's Fifth amendment right to not self-incriminate when she used against him his usage of his right to remain silent, and his advisement to his friend to assert her Fifth Amendment, to conclude Bell was hiding knowledge of guns and build a character of untruthfulness against Bell.

V. There was insufficient evidence to establish constructive possession. The ALE violated Bell's Fourteenth Amendment due process rights when she failed to establish the required element of knowledge and intent when she found Bell guilty of constructive possession.

Pet. at 3, ECF No 1, PageID.3. The Warden file a response that mostly reargues the State's position asserted in the Michigan Court of Appeals, addressing issues that are not before this Court. He adds, though, that some of Bell's claims were not preserved properly in the state circuit court and none of them warrant the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.

II.

The Michigan Court of Appeals reviewed the Parole Board's decision under the State's Administrative Procedures Act, Mich. Comp. Laws §§ 24.201 et seq., and determined that substantial evidence supported the agency's decision. Bell, 2020 WL 1897436, at *2. That determination is not before this Court. The court of appeals separately addressed Bell's constitutional arguments, giving them fresh review, although it applied a plain error standard for one of them. Id. at *2-5. Bell challenges those determinations in his habeas petition.

Certain provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (Apr. 24, 1996), which govern this case, “circumscribe[d]” the standard of review federal courts must apply when considering a petition for a writ of habeas corpus raising constitutional claims. See Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 520 (2003). AEDPA provides a “highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings.” Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181 (2011) (quoting Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24 (2002) (per curiam)). That means federal courts give the state court “the benefit of the doubt,” ibid., applying that “statutorily prescribed deference,” Michael v. Butts, 59 F.4th 219, 225 (6th Cir. 2023) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d); English v. Berghuis, 900 F.3d 804, 811 (6th Cir. 2018)).

A federal court may grant relief only if the state court's adjudication “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” or if the adjudication “resulted in a decision that 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)(1)-(2). “Clearly established Federal law for purposes of § 2254(d)(1) includes only the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme] Court's decisions.” White v. Woodall, 572 U.S. 415, 419 (2014) (quotation marks and citations omitted). “As a condition for obtaining habeas corpus from a federal court, a state prisoner must show that the state court's ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 103 (2011). The distinction between mere error and an objectively unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent creates a substantially higher threshold for obtaining relief than de novo review. Mere error by the state court will not justify issuance of the writ; rather, the state court's application of federal law “must have been objectively unreasonable.” Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 52021 (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 409 (2000) (quotation marks omitted)).

All of Bell's claims address alleged procedural irregularities in the parole revocation process itself, which, he says, infringed his rights under the Due Process Clause.

“If state law entitles an inmate to release on parole, . . . that...