Bryant v. Stephan

• Decision Date: 24 May 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20-4,20-4
• Citation: 998 F.3d 128
• Parties: James Nathaniel BRYANT, III, Petitioner - Appellee, v. Warden Michael STEPHAN, Broad River Correctional Institution ; Bryan P. Stirling, Commissioner, South Carolina Department of Corrections, Respondents - Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

998 F.3d 128

James Nathaniel BRYANT, III, Petitioner - Appellee,

v.Warden Michael STEPHAN, Broad River Correctional Institution ; Bryan P. Stirling, Commissioner, South Carolina Department of Corrections, Respondents - Appellants.

No. 20-4

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: January 25, 2021

Decided: May 24, 2021

ARGUED: Michael D. Ross, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellants. Lindsey Vann, JUSTICE 360, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Alan Wilson, Attorney General, Donald J. Zelenka, Deputy Attorney General, Melody J. Brown, Senior Assistant Deputy General, Caroline Scrantom, Assistant Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellants. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, ELIZABETH FRANKLIN-BEST, P.C., Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee.

Before NIEMEYER, WYNN, and THACKER, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded with instructions by published opinion. Judge Niemeyer wrote the opinion, in which Judge Wynn joined. Judge Thacker wrote a dissenting opinion.

NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge:

During a traffic stop in Horry County, South Carolina, James Bryant turned to the police officer, wrestled him to the ground, beat him unconscious with the officer's flashlight, and then, using the officer's pistol, shot the officer in the head. After a manhunt, Bryant was arrested the next day and charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery. The jury found him guilty on both counts, and he was sentenced to death for the murder and 20 years’ imprisonment for the robbery.

After exhausting his state remedies, Bryant applied to the district court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 for habeas relief, and the court vacated his death sentence. The court concluded that the state postconviction court (1) unreasonably determined that a juror who was hearing impaired was competent to sit on the jury and unreasonably applied clearly established federal law in so concluding; and (2) unreasonably concluded that Bryant's state trial counsel was not ineffective in allowing the hearing-impaired juror to sit on the jury. But the district court rejected a claim by Bryant that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to press a Batson challenge.

Because we conclude that the district court did not give effect to the proper standard in overruling the state postconviction court, we vacate the district court's rulings on the issues pertaining to the hearing-impaired juror. On Bryant's Batson -based claim of ineffective assistance, we affirm. We remand with instructions to deny with prejudice Bryant's federal application for habeas relief.

I

Bryant was first convicted and sentenced to death in a South Carolina state court in 2001, but the South Carolina Supreme Court reversed, based on a procedural error, and Bryant was retried. At his retrial in 2004, a jury again found Bryant guilty on both counts, and again he was sentenced to death for the murder and to 20 years’ imprisonment for the robbery. This time the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed. See State v. Bryant , 372 S.C. 305, 642 S.E.2d 582, 589 (2007).

Bryant thereafter sought postconviction relief in state court, alleging, among other things, that one of the jurors in his second trial — Juror 342 — suffered from a hearing impairment that caused her to miss portions of the testimony. He claimed (1) that the inclusion of this juror on the jury violated his due process right to an impartial and competent jury and (2) that his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective in failing to seek the juror's removal. Following an evidentiary hearing, the state postconviction court denied Bryant relief, holding (1) that Juror 342's hearing impairment was not so severe that she missed material testimony, and (2) that defense counsel, knowing of the juror's impairment, made a strategic decision to keep her on the jury. The Supreme Court of South Carolina denied Bryant's petition for a writ of certiorari.

Bryant then filed a federal application for a writ of habeas corpus in the district court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. In addition to his two claims involving Juror 342, he also made eight other claims, including, for the first time, that his trial counsel ineffectively argued that the state solicitor struck four Black jurors at trial on account of their race, in violation of Batson v. Kentucky , 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). Bryant's habeas application was referred to a magistrate judge, who issued a report and recommendation that the district court deny Bryant's application and grant the State's motion for summary judgment. After Bryant filed objections to the report and recommendation, the district court sustained some of them, finding that the state postconviction court had unreasonably found facts and unreasonably applied clearly established federal law with respect to Juror 342's participation on the jury. Bryant v. Stirling , No. CV 1:13-2665-BHH, 2019 WL 1253235 (D.S.C. Mar. 19, 2019). According to the district court, "Juror 342 was not competent and should have been excused" because of her "disability," id. at *18 ; her presence on the jury violated Bryant's "bedrock constitutional right to a competent jury," id . at *20 ; and "there was no valid strategy" in keeping her on the jury, id. at *24 (emphasis omitted). Accordingly, the court vacated Bryant's sentence of death, but found that the errors were harmless as to his guilty verdicts because "the State's proof of Petitioner's guilt was ironclad." Id. at *16, *22. As for the Batson -based ineffective assistance claim, the district court adopted the magistrate's report and recommendation and held that Bryant did not show cause to overcome his procedural default of that claim. Id. at *35–36.

The State appealed the district court's ruling on the two claims involving Juror 342, and Bryant argues in response that the relief the district court granted is also supported by his Batson -based ineffective assistance claim.

II

On Bryant's due process claim, the State contends that the district court "starkly departed from the state [postconviction] court," which should have been "afforded deference [on the issues] because the record supports the state [postconviction] court's denial of relief." It maintains, moreover, that there is no Supreme Court decision that controls the outcome of whether Juror 342's continued service on the jury violated Bryant's due process rights.

Section 2254 authorizes federal courts to "entertain" an application for a writ of habeas corpus from a person in state custody "in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). But § 2254 "is not to be used as a second criminal trial, and federal courts are not to run roughshod over the considered findings and judgments of the state courts that conducted the original trial and heard the initial appeals." Williams v. Taylor , 529 U.S. 362, 383, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). In this vein, § 2254 provides that a habeas writ may not be granted "with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings," unless one of three exceptions is shown: (1) that the state-court decision "was contrary to" federal law; (2) that the state-court decision "involved an unreasonable application" of federal law; or (3) that the state-court decision "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts" in light of the record before the state court. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) (emphasis added); Harrington v. Richter , 562 U.S. 86, 100, 131 S.Ct. 770, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011) ; Vandross v. Stirling , 986 F.3d 442, 449 (4th Cir. 2021).

To say that an application or a determination is "unreasonable" is not to say simply that it is wrong . See, e.g. , Williams v. Stirling , 914 F.3d at 302 (4th Cir. 2019) ; Harrington , 562 U.S. at 102, 131 S.Ct. 770 ("[E]ven a strong case for relief does not mean the state court's contrary conclusion was unreasonable"). An "unreasonable application of federal law" refers to applications that are "objectively unreasonable," Owens v. Stirling , 967 F.3d 396, 411 (4th Cir. 2020) (cleaned up), that is, applications that are "so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement," Harrington , 562 U.S. at 103, 131 S.Ct. 770 ; see also White v. Woodall , 572 U.S. 415, 419–20, 134 S.Ct. 1697, 188 L.Ed.2d 698 (2014). And "unreasonable determinations of the facts" are made when they are "sufficiently against the weight of the evidence that [they are] objectively unreasonable." Williams , 914 F.3d at 312 (quoting Winston v. Kelly , 592 F.3d 535, 554 (4th Cir. 2010) ). Moreover, "[s]tate court factual determinations are presumed correct and may be rebutted only by clear and convincing evidence." Id. (citing 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1) ).

As apparent from the text, these § 2254(d) standards are "meant to be" "difficult to meet," Harrington , 562 U.S. at 102, 131 S.Ct. 770 ; they are a "highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings, which demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt," Cullen v. Pinholster , 563 U.S. 170, 181, 131 S.Ct. 1388, 179 L.Ed.2d 557 (2011) (cleaned up). Thus, to conduct the analysis prescribed by § 2254, "federal habeas courts must make as the starting point of their analysis the state courts’ determinations of fact, including that aspect of a ‘mixed question’ that rests on a finding of fact." Williams , 529 U.S. at 386, 120 S.Ct. 1495.

Accordingly, we turn first to the state postconviction proceedings in this case. On the Juror 342 issue, the postconviction court found, following an evidentiary hearing, that:

[Juror 342] did have some hearing deficiencies. She had a problem with hearing in the right ear, however, she could hear. Both the State and the Defendant qualified her without objection

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