Daniels v. Knight

• Decision Date: 05 February 2007
• Docket Number: No. 05-2620.,05-2620.
• Citation: 476 F.3d 426
• Parties: Michael DANIELS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Stanley KNIGHT, Superintendent, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

476 F.3d 426

Michael DANIELS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Stanley KNIGHT, Superintendent, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 05-2620.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued November 2, 2006.

Decided February 5, 2007.

Karin L. Bohmholdt (argued), Greenberg Traurig, Santa Monica, CA, for Petitioner-Appellant.

James B. Martin (argued), Office of the Attorney General, Indianapolis, IN, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before BAUER, RIPPLE, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

MANION, Circuit Judge.

Michael Daniels was convicted of robbery and murder in Indiana state court following a 1978 crime spree in an Indianapolis residential neighborhood. After exhausting his state court remedies, Daniels filed a petition for habeas relief in federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, claiming he received ineffective assistance of trial counsel. The district court denied Daniels' petition. Daniels appeals, and we affirm.

I.

During Michael Daniels' trial for murder, the State of Indiana presented evidence that on the evening of January 16, 1978, Daniels and two other men committed a series hold-up robberies and shootings in an Indianapolis residential neighborhood. Daniels and his associates approached people at four separate residences while the residents were either shoveling snow or getting out of their cars. During the course of the robberies, Daniels beat one of his victims and shot two others, one fatally. Each of Daniels' six surviving victims and one of Daniels' cohorts testified against him at his jury trial in Indiana state court. Daniels was convicted of four counts of robbery, one count of attempted robbery, and one count of felony murder. He was sentenced to four consecutive twenty-year terms of imprisonment and one fifty-year term. Daniels also was sentenced to death for his felony murder conviction.

Over the last twenty-seven years, Daniels has filed a series of appeals and post-conviction petitions in the Indiana and federal courts. First, the Supreme Court of Indiana affirmed Daniels' conviction and sentence on direct appeal. Daniels v. State (Daniels I), 453 N.E.2d 160 (1983). Daniels then sought collateral review via a petition for post-conviction relief, which the Supreme Court of Indiana ultimately denied. Daniels v. State (Daniels II), 528 N.E.2d 775 (1988). In his first petition for post-conviction relief, Daniels claimed, among other things, that he received ineffective assistance of trial counsel. The United States Supreme Court granted Daniels' petition for a writ of certiorari, vacated the Supreme Court of Indiana's judgment in Daniels II, and remanded the case to the Supreme Court of Indiana for further consideration in light of the Court's then recent decision in South Carolina v. Gathers, 490 U.S. 805, 109 S.Ct. 2207, 104 L.Ed.2d 876 (1989). Daniels v. Indiana, 491 U.S. 902, 109 S.Ct. 3182, 105 L.Ed.2d 691 (1989). On remand, the Supreme Court of Indiana held that neither Gathers nor Booth v. Maryland, 482 U.S. 496, 107 S.Ct. 2529, 96 L.Ed.2d 440 (1987), were retroactive. Daniels v. State, 561 N.E.2d 487, 489-91 (Ind.1990). On November 22, 1993, Daniels filed a second petition for post-conviction relief, which the Supreme Court of Indiana ultimately denied. Daniels v. State (Daniels III), 741 N.E.2d 1177, 1191 (Ind.2001). The Supreme Court of Indiana held that Daniels had waived all of his ineffective assistance of counsel claims, with the exception of the claim Daniels raised in his first petition for post-conviction relief; in his first petition for post-conviction relief, Daniels claimed that his trial counsel was ineffective because he failed to confront one of the government's eyewitnesses, Timothy Streett, with evidence that Streett had been hypnotized during one of his identification sessions with police. Id. at 1181-88. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court of Indiana reviewed on their merits each of Daniels' ineffective assistance claims prior to denying his second petition. Id.

Following the Supreme Court of Indiana's denial of his second petition for post-conviction relief, Daniels filed a petition for habeas relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in federal court. Daniels v. McBride, No. IP 01-550-C-Y/K (S.D.Ind. Apr. 7, 2005). Daniels' § 2254 petition raised multiple claims, including ineffective assistance of trial counsel, the state withholding or destroying evidence, and ineffective assistance of appellate counsel. On January 7, 2005, while Daniels' § 2254 petition was pending before the district court, then-Indiana Governor Joseph E. Kernan commuted Daniels' sentence of death to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Three months later, the district court denied Daniels' § 2254 petition. In denying Daniels' petition, the district court did not address the Supreme Court of Indiana's finding that Daniels had waived all but one of his ineffective assistance of counsel claims, but instead denied each of Daniels' claims on the merits. The district court subsequently granted Daniels' motion for a certificate of appealability. Daniels appeals only the district court's denial of his claims based on alleged ineffective assistance of counsel during the guilt phase of his trial.

II.

On appeal, Daniels reiterates a laundry list of grounds for his claims of ineffective assistance of counsel during the guilt phase of his trial. His allegations break down into two categories: (1) his counsel's failure to introduce evidence that someone other than Daniels (specifically, Paul Rowley) committed the robberies; and (2) his counsel's failure to confront Streett regarding his identification after being hypnotized. The Supreme Court of Indiana held that Daniels waived all of his ineffective assistance claims, except for his claim that his counsel failed to confront Streett, because Daniels failed to raise those claims in his first post-conviction appeal. The district court did not address the waiver issue, but, as a threshold matter, we must determine whether Daniels procedurally defaulted any of the claims he raises in this appeal.

"Out of respect for finality, comity, and the orderly administration of justice, a federal court will not entertain a procedurally defaulted constitutional claim in a petition for habeas corpus absent a showing of cause and prejudice to excuse the default¹ ." Dretke v. Haley, 541 U.S. 386, 388, 124 S.Ct. 1847, 158 L.Ed.2d 659 (2004). Quoting the United States Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Indiana reiterated this point, stating:

The States possess primary authority for defining and enforcing the criminal law. In criminal trials they also hold the initial responsibility of vindicating constitutional rights. Federal intrusions into state criminal trials frustrate both the States' sovereign power to punish offenders and their good-faith attempts to honor constitutional rights.

Woods v. State, 701 N.E.2d 1208, 1217 (Ind.1998) (quoting Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 128, 102 S.Ct. 1558, 71 L.Ed.2d 783 (1982) (citation omitted)). The Supreme Court of Indiana further explained:

Hence as a matter of procedural fairness a finding of waiver by an Indiana court must be predicated on a meaningful opportunity to litigate the claim. Alternatively, if an ineffectiveness claim found to be waived in our courts is nonetheless addressed on the merits in federal court, this State will have foregone the opportunity to correct the possible error before federal review of our judicial process. One goal of our postconviction rules is to minimize the level of federal constitutional error before federal review of the conviction: "[O]ne of the functions of our post conviction remedy rules is to preserve what sanctity remains to this [S]tate's disposition of a criminal charge by allowing a convicted criminal defendant ample opportunity to present claims for relief in the courts of this state before resort must be had to the federal courts." Langley v. State, 256 Ind. 199, 267 N.E.2d 538, 541 (1971).

Id. at 1217-18.

In Daniels III, the Supreme Court of Indiana addressed how the waiver doctrine impacted Daniels' ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims. In addition to his unsuccessful direct appeals of his sentence, Daniels had filed two sets of post-conviction petitions. Regarding the ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims Daniels presented in a second post-conviction petition, the Supreme Court of Indiana held:

[A]ll of these matters were known or knowable both at trial and at the time of Daniels' first post-conviction proceeding. Therefore, the post-conviction court correctly held that Daniels' new claims of trial counsel ineffectiveness were barred by res judicata and waiver. As this Court observed in our last opinion in this case, "the Indiana Rules of Procedure for Post-Conviction Remedies require that all grounds for relief available to a petitioner under the post-conviction rules must be raised in the original petition." State v. Daniels, 680 N.E.2d 829, 835 n. 10 (Ind.1997) (citing Ind. Post-Conviction R. 1(8)).

[T]he issue of the effectiveness of Daniels' trial and appellate counsel was extensively litigated and appealed in his post-conviction proceeding nine years ago. Daniels v. State [Daniels II], 528 N.E.2d 775 (1988). The issues raised by Daniels in this appeal were on the face of the record from the time of his trial. Accordingly, consideration of additional issues bearing on trial or appellate counsel's ineffectiveness that were available at that time is precluded. Id. [citations omitted]

We must mean what we say in our rules, that a defendant is entitled to one post-conviction hearing and one post-conviction opportunity to raise the issue of ineffectiveness of trial counsel in the absence of newly discovered evidence. . . .

Although the evidence related to Rowley might have helped Daniels' defense, none of these lines of inquiry except for Timothy Streett's identification were addressed either at trial or as examples of ineffective trial assistance at the...