Bell v. Ozmint

• Decision Date: 12 June 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-21.,02-21.
• Citation: 332 F.3d 229
• Parties: William Henry BELL, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Jon E. OZMINT, Director, South Carolina Department of Corrections; Henry Dargan MCMASTER, Attorney General, State of South Carolina, Respondents-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

332 F.3d 229

William Henry BELL, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Jon E. OZMINT, Director, South Carolina Department of Corrections; Henry Dargan MCMASTER, Attorney General, State of South Carolina, Respondents-Appellees.

No. 02-21.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: May 7, 2003.

Decided: June 12, 2003.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

ARGUED: Mark Evan Olive, Law Offices Of Mark E. Olive, P.A., Tallahassee, Florida, for Appellant. Donald John Zelenka, Assistant Deputy Attorney General, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Diana L. Holt, Diana Holt, L.L.C., Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellant.

Before WILKINS, Chief Judge, and WILKINSON and MOTZ, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge DIANA GRIBBON MOTZ wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge WILKINS and Judge WILKINSON joined.

OPINION

DIANA GRIBBON MOTZ, Circuit Judge:

A South Carolina jury convicted William Henry Bell of the armed robbery and murder of Dennis Hepler. On the jury's recommendation, the state trial court sentenced Bell to death. After exhausting his state remedies, Bell filed a petition for federal habeas relief, challenging his convictions and death sentence on numerous grounds. The district court denied habeas relief, but granted a certificate of appealability on all claims. Finding no error, we affirm the denial of federal habeas relief.

I.

On direct appeal, the Supreme Court of South Carolina upheld Bell's conviction and sentence. See State v. Bell, 305 S.C. 11, 406 S.E.2d 165 (1991). In doing so, that court described the facts of this case as follows:

The victim in this case, Dennis Hepler, was the principal of West Franklin Street Elementary School in Anderson, South Carolina. His body was found outside the school around 1:00 o'clock a.m. on September 1, 1988. He had been shot twice with a .25 caliber pistol, once in the back and once in the back of the head. Appellant's fingerprints were found on the victim's red car which was parked on the street in front of the school. Two witnesses from a nearby apartment complex placed appellant in the area between 10:00 and 11:00 o'clock p.m. on August 31 with John Glen and Kevin Young.

Appellant was arrested on the night of September 1. That night, he gave police officers the first of four statements in which he denied ever having been at the West Franklin Street School. On September 3, appellant asked a guard at the detention center to contact the arresting officers. Appellant then gave a second statement. He stated he was walking near the school with John Glen and Kevin Young. Appellant stopped to talk with a girl. When he rejoined his friends, John Glen was inside a red car that was parked in front of the school and was trying to remove a cassette player. At Glen's request, appellant held the car door open. A man came out of the school and shouted at them. Kevin Young stepped from behind a wall in front of the school and shot the man in the back. While appellant and Glen ran from the scene, they heard a second gunshot. When Young caught up with them, the three obtained a ride with a fourth youth. Young still had the gun. The next day, Young threw the gun into some bushes in front of his house.

On September 4, appellant gave two more statements. First, he told police officers that he, Young, and Glen were walking on the school grounds on the night of August 31. Appellant and Glen attempted unsuccessfully to get the cassette player out of the car. They heard the sound of a door opening and joined Young behind a wall near the school building. Young said, "The man probably has a wallet." When a man came out of the school, Young moved behind him and told him to relinquish his wallet. The victim complied and Young shot him in the back. The gun jammed. The victim begged them not to shoot him again. Young shot again. The three fled the scene and obtained a ride with a fourth youth. They split $67.00 from the wallet, $20.00 for each of the three and $7.00 for the driver of the car, and threw the wallet out of the car.

Finally, appellant gave a fourth statement essentially identical to the third except that it states he took the gun from Young after it jammed, unjammed it, and shot the victim himself. All four statements were admitted into evidence after an extensive Jackson v. Denno hearing. Appellant did not testify at either phase of the trial.

Id. at 167-68 (footnote omitted).

After the Supreme Court of the United States denied Bell's petition for a writ of certiorari, Bell v. South Carolina, 502 U.S. 1038, 112 S.Ct. 888, 116 L.Ed.2d 791 (1992), Bell filed an application for state post-conviction relief. The state post-conviction (PCR) court permitted discovery and held an evidentiary hearing but denied relief in a lengthy written order. The Supreme Court of South Carolina denied review.

Bell then petitioned the district court for federal habeas relief, challenging his convictions and sentence on twenty-seven grounds. A magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation, finding all claims either procedurally barred or without merit. The district court, after conducting a de novo review and correcting certain legal errors, issued a comprehensive, eighty-seven-page opinion denying all federal habeas relief. Bell applied for a certificate of appealability on all claims presented in his petition, which the district court granted. See 28 U.S.C.A. § 2253(c) (West 1994 & Supp.2003).

On appeal, Bell raises numerous challenges to his convictions and sentence. He argues that the state court erred in denying him an evidentiary hearing on two different juror partiality claims. Bell also maintains that the State unlawfully based its decision to seek the death penalty on his race and the race of his victim. He similarly asserts that the prosecutor peremptorily struck a potential African-American juror because of her race. Additionally, Bell contends that he was denied effective assistance of trial counsel because of his lawyer's failure to request a certain jury instruction. Finally, Bell asserts that the district court applied an incorrect standard of review in evaluating his claims. We consider each of these arguments, beginning with the challenge to the standard of review.¹

II.

We conduct de novo review of a "district court's decision on a petition for writ of habeas corpus based on a state court record." Spicer v. Roxbury Corr. Inst., 194 F.3d 547, 555 (4th Cir.1999). Under 28 U.S.C.A. § 2254(d), as amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), a federal court may grant an application for habeas relief on a claim that has been previously adjudicated on the merits in state court only if that adjudication "(1) 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 (2) 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." The Supreme Court has directed that "[u]nder § 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 v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 411, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). Bell contends that the district court erred in choosing to apply § 2254(d)'s deferential standard of review, and that "this case must be remanded to the district court for a de novo review of the facts and law with respect to every claim for relief." Brief of Appellant at 38 (footnote omitted). Bell bases his claim on the fact that the state PCR court, after receiving post-hearing briefs, invited proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law from both parties; it received none from Bell and largely adopted the State's proposed memorandum and order. In response to Bell's post-judgment challenge to this procedure, the state PCR court noted that the "proposed Order was examined line by line and considered with the entire record" but acknowledged that "a substantial portion of [the State's] proposed Order was adopted by the Court," explaining that this was "due to [the States's] cogent reasoning and thorough treatment of the issues."

Although we do not applaud this practice, circuit precedent dictates that it does not provide any basis for applying de novo review. Indeed, we recently rejected precisely this claim by Kevin Young, one of Bell's co-perpetrators. See Young v. Catoe, 205 F.3d 750, 755 n. 2 (4th Cir.2000). Young "maintain[ed] that the standard of review mandated by the AEDPA amendments should not govern his ineffective assistance claim, inasmuch as the PCR Court's Order of Dismissal adopted almost verbatim the state's legal memorandum" which "evidences the lack of a considered `decision' within the meaning of Paragraphs (1) and (2) of § 2254(d)." Id. In rejecting Young's claim, we held that the "disposition of a petitioner's constitutional claims in such a manner is unquestionably an `adjudication' by the state court. If that court addresses the merits of the petitioner's claim, then § 2254(d) must be applied." Id. (citations omitted).

Recognizing Young's force here, Bell attempts to distinguish the case. He asserts that "Young primarily involved a challenge under 2254(d)(1), with Young claiming that the signing of a party's proposed order" was not an adjudication while in Bell's case "2254(d)(2) is implicated, not just (d)(1)" and § 2254(d)(2) "requires factfinding that is reliable and reasonable." Brief of Appellant at 43. The distinction fails. As the district court noted, in Young we stated that the petitioner was proceeding under both prongs of § 2254 and did not differentiate between those prongs in rejecting his argument. Young, 205...