Cornwell v. Bradshaw

• Decision Date: 11 March 2009
• Docket Number: No. 06-4322.,06-4322.
• Citation: 559 F.3d 398
• Parties: Sidney CORNWELL, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Margaret BRADSHAW, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

559 F.3d 398

Sidney CORNWELL, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Margaret BRADSHAW, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 06-4322.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: June 3, 2008.

Decided and Filed: March 11, 2009.

ARGUED:

Linda Eleanor Prucha, Ohio Public Defender's Office, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Sarah A. Hadacek, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.

ON BRIEF:

Linda Eleanor Prucha, Robert K. Lowe, Ohio Public Defender's Office, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Sarah A. Hadacek, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.

Before: MOORE, GIBBONS, and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.

GIBBONS, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which ROGERS, J., joined. MOORE, J. (pp. 417-20), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner-appellant Sidney Cornwell was convicted by an Ohio jury of (1) aggravated murder committed by prior calculation and design; (2) three counts of attempted aggravated murder, with a firearm specification attached to each count and; (3) attached to the aggravated murder count, a death penalty specification that the murder was committed as part of a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing of or attempt to kill two or more people. On direct appeal, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld Cornwell's conviction and sentence, and the United States Supreme Court denied his petition for a writ of certiorari. After unsuccessfully pursuing post-conviction relief in Ohio state court, Cornwell sought a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. The district court denied Cornwell's petition but issued a certificate of appealability on three claims. We granted a certificate of appealability on a fourth claim. For the following reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court denying Cornwell's habeas petition.

I.

The facts, as recounted by the Supreme Court of Ohio, are as follows. Sidney Cornwell shot three-year-old Jessica Ballew in her chest and face at about 2:00 a.m. on June 11, 1996. The shooting was part of a war between the "Crips" and the "Bloods."

The Crips and the Bloods were rival gangs in Youngstown, Ohio. On the afternoon of June 10, 1996, members of the two gangs had been involved in a shootout on Elm Street in Youngstown. During the exchange of fire, Crips member Edward McGaha saw fellow Crips member Sidney Cornwell using a black gun. Also during this exchange, a bullet grazed McGaha's head. Later that afternoon, McGaha was released from the hospital and went to his mother's residence on Elm Street. McGaha, Cornwell, and several other people were standing outside the residence when a carload of Bloods exited a vehicle and opened fire. McGaha saw Cornwell return fire with the same black semiautomatic weapon he had used earlier in the day. Shortly thereafter, McGaha, Cornwell, and other persons gathered at a residence on New York Avenue and began discussing retaliation for the shooting of McGaha. They decided to kill Richard "Boom" Miles, a Blood who had been present at the first shooting.

That night, the Crips set out in three cars, two of which were stolen, to find and kill Boom. McGaha and Edward Bunkley were in a stolen Buick. Antwan Jones and Gary Drayton were in a Chevrolet Chevette. The third vehicle was a stolen light blue Pontiac Bonneville, which carried four Crips. In the driver's seat of the Bonneville was Denicholas Stoutmire. Beside him in the front passenger seat was Damian Williams. Behind Williams, in the right rear passenger seat, was Leslie Johnson. And in the remaining rear passenger seat, behind Stoutmire and to Johnson's left, sat nineteen-year-old Sidney Cornwell who was carrying a semiautomatic 9 mm black gun.

The three cars drove around Youngstown for about an hour looking for Boom and then went to an apartment building on Oak Park Lane, where Stoutmire thought he might be. Susan Hamlett was outside on the porch of her apartment talking to her friend Donald Meadows. At about 2:00 a.m., Hamlett's three-year-old niece, Jessica Ballew, came to the doorway of the porch to ask for a drink of water. Two of the cars drove past her apartment, but the third, the light blue Bonneville, stopped. Cornwell's voice called out from the Bonneville, asking for Boom.¹ Hamlett and Meadows both said that he was not there. Cornwell asked where Boom was. Hamlett said that he did not live there. Cornwell said, "Well, tell Boom this," and fired six to nine shots. Meadows and two people in the apartment—Marilyn Conrad, another resident of the apartment, and a friend of hers visiting the apartment, Samuel Lagese—were wounded. Jessica Ballew was killed. She was hit in both the chest and face, but it was the shot to the face that was fatal.

After receiving a call about the matter, a Youngstown police officer pursued the three vehicles, two of which fit a description he received. He saw that the Bonneville was parked in the driveway of a vacant house. He turned off his headlights, pulled up behind the Bonneville, then turned his lights back on. The occupants of the Bonneville jumped out and ran. The officer ran after the occupant whom the officer believed had jumped out of the driver's door and, after a brief chase, caught him. The individual caught by the officer was Cornwell.

At trial, Meadows and Williams identified Cornwell as the gunman. Evidence was introduced that several 9 mm Luger shell casings were found at the scenes of the first Elm Street shooting and the Oak Park Lane shooting. Evidence was also introduced that two 9 mm shell casings were found in the Bonneville. A forensic scientist testified that all the 9 mm Luger shell casings recovered from the Oak Park Lane shooting and the first Elm Street shooting came from the same handgun. The murder weapon was never recovered.

A jury found Cornwell guilty of aggravated murder committed by prior calculation and design. It also found him guilty of three counts of attempted aggravated murder, with a firearm specification attached to each count and, attached to the aggravated murder count, a death penalty specification that the murder was committed as part of a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing of or attempt to kill two or more people. Cornwell was sentenced to death on the conviction for aggravated murder and to prison for the other convictions. The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed. State v. Cornwell, 86 Ohio St.3d 560, 715 N.E.2d 1144, 1149, 1157 (1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1172, 120 S.Ct. 1200, 145 L.Ed.2d 1103 (2000).

Cornwell unsuccessfully sought relief via a Murnahan² motion, see State v. Cornwell, 88 Ohio St.3d 1413, 723 N.E.2d 119 (2000), and state post-conviction proceedings, see State v. Cornwell, No. 96 CR 525 (Mahoning C.P. Oct. 6, 2000) (unpublished) (granting the State summary judgment), aff'd, No. 00-CA-217, 2002 WL 31160861 (Ohio Ct.App. Sept. 24, 2002) (unpublished), juris. denied, 98 Ohio St.3d 1413, 781 N.E.2d 1020 (2003).

In 2003, Cornwell filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court. As amended in 2005, it raised sixteen claims. The district court denied Cornwell's requests for experts and an evidentiary hearing and also denied the federal habeas petition. The district court granted a certificate of appealability ("COA") on Cornwell's claims that racial bias tainted his prosecution, that the trial court erred in admitting the testimony of eyewitness Donald Meadows, and that appellate counsel was ineffective in failing to challenge the admission of Meadows's testimony.

This court expanded the COA to include a claim of ineffective assistance in the penalty phase to the extent it raises the following issue: whether there is a reasonable probability the result of the penalty phase would have been different had trial counsel discovered and corrected the misunderstanding of Dr. James Eisenberg regarding Cornwell's childhood mastectomy in time for him to determine whether this information affected his evaluation of Cornwell. This court also certified the issue of whether the district court erred in denying Cornwell's request for an expert on genetic disorders and the evidentiary hearing issue to the extent relevant to the certified portion of the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel in the penalty phase.

II.

A.

Cornwell filed his federal habeas petition after the effective date of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"); its standards therefore govern. Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 326-27, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997). This court may not grant habeas relief on any claim adjudicated on the merits in state court unless the 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.

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). In analyzing whether a state court decision is contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent, a federal court may look only to the holdings of the Supreme Court's decisions, not their dicta. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). A state court decision on the merits is contrary to clearly established Supreme Court precedent only if the reasoning or the result of the decision contradicts that precedent. Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8, 123 S.Ct. 362, 154 L.Ed.2d 263 (2002). A federal court may grant habeas relief under the unreasonable application clause if the state court decision (a) identifies the correct governing legal principle from the Supreme Court's decisions but unreasonably applies it to the facts, or (b) either unreasonably extends or unreasonably refuses to extend a legal principle from Supreme Court precedent to a new context. Willi...