Edwards v. Stephens
| Decision Date | 06 August 2014 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL ACTION No. 3:10-CV-6-M |
| Parties | TERRY DARNELL EDWARDS Petitioner, v. WILLIAM STEPHENS, Director Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Texas |
(Death Penalty Case)
Before the Court is the application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Terry Darnell Edwards (Edwards) pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Based on the relevant filings and applicable law, the application is DENIED.
Edwards was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in November 2003. His conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal on March 1, 2006. Edwards v. State, No. AP 74,844, 2006 WL 475783 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). He filed an application for a post-conviction writ of habeas corpus on November 3, 2005, that was denied by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ("CCA") on December 16, 2009. Ex parte Edwards, No. WR-73027-01, 2009 WL 4932198 (Tex. Crim. App. 2009). The CCA's opinion on direct appeal summarized Edwards' involvement in the murder of two people during a robbery at his former workplace as follows:
On the morning of July 8, 2002, [Edwards] and another man robbed and killed two clerks at a Dallas Subway sandwich shop. Both victims were shot in the head from only inches away. [Edwards] later gave a statement in which he admitted being inside the sandwich shop but claimed that the other man, "T-Bone," did the shooting. [Edwards] acknowledged having the money stolen from the store andthe gun used to kill the victims, but claimed that "T-Bone" gave him the gun when they left the store. [Edwards] had worked at that particular Subway some months earlier, but he had been fired when it appeared that he had been stealing money from the register. [Edwards] had previously been fired from another Subway shop for misappropriating store funds under his control.
Edwards v. State, 2006 WL 475783, at *1. Through appointed counsel, Edwards filed a federal petition for writ of habeas corpus ("Pet.", doc. 6) on December 15, 2010. The respondent filed an answer ("Ans.", doc. 18), and Edwards filed his reply (Reply, doc. 21).
Edwards presents the following six grounds for relief pertaining to jury selection issues:
3. The trial court's grant of the State's challenge for cause of prospective juror Byron Keith Tatum2 deprived Edwards of a fair and impartial jury (Pet. at 35-39).
4. The trial counsel's failure to challenge the Dallas County venire selection process as violating Edwards's right to a jury consisting of a fair cross section of the community constituted ineffective assistance of counsel (Pet. at 39-47).
5. The trial court's denial of Edward's challenges for cause of prospective jurors Bobby Jack Sims and Edward Hernandez deprived him of a fair and impartial jury
6. The failure of Edwards's counsel on direct appeal to raise any claims regarding the improper denial of Edwards's challenges for cause of Sims and Hernandez constituted ineffective assistance (Pet. at 50).
The respondent contends that Edwards' first claim is procedurally barred (Ans. at 14-15), that his fifth and sixth claims are unexhausted and now procedurally barred (Ans. at 8-11), and that all of his claims lack merit.
Federal habeas review of these claims is governed by 28 U.S.C. § 2254, as amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"). It sets forth a number of preliminary requirements that must be satisfied before reaching the merits of a claim.
Under AEDPA, a federal court may not grant habeas relief on any claim that the state prisoner has not first exhausted in the State corrective process available to protect his rights. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A); Harrington v. Richter, 131 S.Ct. 770, 787 (2011). However, the federal court may deny relief on the merits notwithstanding any failure to exhaust. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(2); Miller v. Dretke, 431 F.3d 241, 245 (5th Cir. 2005).
If the state court denies the claim on state procedural grounds, a federal court will not reach the merits of those claims if it determines that the state-law grounds are independent of the federal claim and adequate to bar federal review. See Sawyer v. Whitley, 505 U.S. 333, 338 (1992); Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 735 (1991). However, if the state procedural determination is based on state grounds that were inadequate to bar federal habeas review, or if the habeas petitioner shows that an exception to the bar applies, the federal court must resolve the claim without the deference AEDPA otherwise requires. See Miller v. Johnson, 200 F.3d 274, 281 n.4 (5th Cir. 2000) () (citing Nobles v. Johnson, 127 F.3d 409, 416 (5th Cir.1997)); Mercadel v. Cain, 179 F.3d 271, 274-275 (5th Cir.1999) ().
If the state court denies the claim on the merits, a federal court may not grant relief unless it first determines that the claim was unreasonably adjudicated, as defined in § 2254(d):
(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.
Id. In the context of the § 2254(d) analysis, "adjudicated on the merits" is a term of art referring to a state court's disposition of a case on substantive rather than procedural grounds. Green v. Johnson, 116 F.3d 1115, 1121 (5th Cir. 1997). This provision restricts a court's power to grant relief to state prisoners by barring claims in federal court that were not first unreasonably denied by the state courts. It limits, rather than expands, the availability of habeas relief. See Fry v. Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 119 (2007); Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412 (2000). "By its terms § 2254(d) bars relitigation of any claim 'adjudicated on the merits' in state court, subject only to the exceptions in §§ 2254(d)(1) and (d)(2)." Richter, 131 S.Ct. at 784. "This is a 'difficult to meet,' and 'highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings, which demands that state-court rulings be given the benefit of the doubt.'" Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S.Ct. 1388, 1398 (2011) (internal citations omitted) (quoting Richter, 131 S.Ct. at 786, and Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24 (2002) (per curiam)).
Under the "contrary to" clause, a federal court is not prohibited from granting federal habeas relief if the state court either arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by the United States Supreme Court on a question of law or decides a case differently from that court on a set of materially indistinguishable facts. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. at 412-13; Chambers v. Johnson, 218 F.3d 360, 363 (5th Cir. 2000). Under the "unreasonable application" clause, a federal court may also reach the merits of a claim on federal habeas review if the state court either unreasonably applies the correct legal rule to the facts of a particular case or unreasonably extends a legal principle from Supreme Court precedent to a new context where it should not apply or unreasonably refuses to extend that principle to a new context where it should apply. Williams, 529 U.S. at 407. The standard for determining whether a state court's application was unreasonable is an objective one and applies to all federal habeas corpus petitions filed after April 24, 1996, provided that the claims were adjudicated on the merits in state court. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 327 (1997).
Federal habeas relief is not available on a claim adjudicated on the merits by the state court unless the record before the state court first satisfies § 2254(d). Pinholster, 131 S.Ct. at 1400. The evidence required under § 2254(d)(2) must show that the state-court 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."
In the event the state court adjudication is deemed unreasonable, the federal court muststill determine whether habeas relief would otherwise be appropriate. Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 953-954 (2007). In those rare cases when a state prisoner makes the difficult showing required under § 2254(d), then the federal court must make its own independent determination of whether habeas relief is appropriate, and conduct whatever hearings and evidentiary development are necessary to properly make that determination. See, e.g., Smith v. Cain, 708...
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