German-Yunga v. Racette, 14-CV-4537 (ERK)

• Decision Date: 22 January 2016
• Docket Number: 14-CV-4537 (ERK)
• Parties: LUIS GERMAN-YUNGA, Petitioner, v. SUPERINTENDENT S. RACETTE, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

LUIS GERMAN-YUNGA, Petitioner,
v.
SUPERINTENDENT S. RACETTE, Respondent.

14-CV-4537 (ERK)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

Amended: January 27, 2016
January 22, 2016

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

MEMORANDUM & ORDER

KORMAN, J.:

On May 29, 2008, at his home at 57-41 Penrod Street in Queens, NY, petitioner Luis German-Yunga (hereinafter "petitioner") asked Maria Yauri (hereinafter "Yauri" or "the victim"), his ex-girlfriend, to "come back to him." Trial Tr. 891:25, ECF No. 8. When she refused, he reached into a dresser, pulled out a knife, and slashed her face three times and her stomach once. Id. at 892:21, 893:15-22, 966:19-20. He then told Yauri to shower, which she did, and forced her to call her then-boyfriend, Victor Ojeda (hereinafter "Victor"), to tell him that she was back together with petitioner. Id. at 895:20, 897:12-22. After the victim called Victor, petitioner locked her in the bedroom and left his apartment, threatening her that, if she were to call the police, he would kill her two daughters. Id. at 901:10-12, 18-19. Approximately one hour later, petitioner returned with his brother Pedro, who, after seeing Yauri's wounds, convinced petitioner to leave once again. Id. at 902:7, 904:7-10. Soon after, Victor arrived and escorted Yauri by taxi to the hospital to seek medical attention for her injuries. Id. at 904:23-25.

Almost three months later, on the morning of August 12, 2008, petitioner appeared at the outer door of the building in which the victim lived at 104-41 41st Street and rang the exterior doorbell. Id. at 1037:24-25. The victim went out onto the balcony of her second-floor apartment

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to see who was at the front door and petitioner asked if he could see one of her daughters. Id. at 925:13-14, 927:2-4. After the victim told him that he could not see the girl, he entered the building—another tenant had opened the exterior door and petitioner held the door so that he could enter as well—and went up the stairs to her apartment. Id. at 927:8-25. Yauri did not have time to lock the second lock on her apartment door before petitioner reached it, and it could be opened from outside the apartment if only the first lock were in place. Id. at 928:1-3, 986:15-16. As a result, the victim attempted to keep the door to her apartment shut by kneeling down and pushing against it with her hands. Id. at 927:25, 928:12-19. Petitioner was able to push inside "by force," id. at 989:1, and repeated his demand to see the victim's daughter, id. at 930:8-10. When she again refused, he dragged her into the bedroom by her hair. Id. at 930:8-10. At that point, petitioner hit Yauri's head against the metal bed frame of her daughters' bunk bed, where her two young daughters had been sleeping moments before, threw her to the floor, stepped on her, and punched her in the face. Id. at 931:5-7. Immediately thereafter, he raped her. Id. at 933:5-13.

On December 10, 2010, a jury found petitioner guilty of first-degree rape, first-degree burglary, first-degree assault, two counts of second-degree assault, first-degree unlawful imprisonment, and two counts of endangerment of the welfare of a child. Id. at 1187:6-18. On April 29, 2011, he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of twenty-eight years—concurrent sentences totaling seven years for the convictions from the May 29 incident to run consecutively with concurrent sentences totaling twenty-one years for the convictions from the August 12 incident. The judgment of conviction was affirmed. People v. Yunga, 973 N.Y.S.2d 356 (App. Div. 2013), perm. app. denied, People v. Yunga, 22 N.Y.3d 1204 (2014). While his direct appeal was pending, petitioner moved to vacate his judgment of conviction in New York Supreme Court, Queens County, under N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law § 440.10. The motion was denied on January 25,

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2013, Order Mot. Vacate J., ECF. No. 8, perm. app. denied, Order, People v. Yunga, No. 2014-03702 (App. Div. July 15, 2014). Petitioner then filed this petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

DISCUSSION

Petitioner makes nine claims of error in his petition that were initially raised either in his briefs in the Appellate Division or in his § 440 motion. I address each of these below. The threshold issue with respect to each of these claims is whether the state court's decision on the merits was contrary to or involved an unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). "This standard is difficult to meet" because it "reflects the view that habeas corpus is a 'guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems,' not a substitute for ordinary error correction through appeal." Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 102-03 (2011) (quoting Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 332 n.5 (1979) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment)). To constitute an "unreasonable application" of federal law, the state court's decision "must be objectively unreasonable, not merely wrong; even clear error will not suffice." Woods v. Donald, 135 S. Ct. 1372, 1376 (2015) (per curiam) (quoting White v. Woodall, 134 S. Ct. 1697, 1702 (2014)). "To satisfy this high bar, a habeas petitioner is required to 'show that the state court's ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.'" Id. (quoting Harrington, 562 U.S. at 103).

A. Weight of the Evidence.

Petitioner claims that his rape, burglary, and assault convictions were against the weight of the evidence. The Appellate Division rejected this argument based on its own review of the record. Yunga, 973 N.Y.S.2d at 357. This claim is not subject to habeas review because the weight-of-the-evidence standard is grounded exclusively in state law. See N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law § 470.15(5); Correa v. Duncan, 172 F. Supp. 2d 378, 381 (E.D.N.Y. 2001). It is "well settled that a 'weight of

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the evidence' claim is distinct from a 'insufficiency of the evidence' claim and is a state claim . . . that is not reviewable in a federal habeas proceeding." Smith v. Lee, No. 11-CV-0530 (MKB), 2014 WL 1343066, at *10 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 31, 2014) (citing McKinnon v. Superintendent, 422 F. App'x 69, 75 (2d Cir. 2011)).

B. Sufficiency of the Evidence.

Petitioner contends that the evidence was legally insufficient to support his convictions for assault, burglary, and rape. Before addressing each of these arguments, it is worth recalling the overarching standard that evidence is legally sufficient if any rational trier of fact, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the state, could find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed all of the essential elements of the crime. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979). In other words, "the only question under Jackson is whether [the jury's] finding was so insupportable as to fall below the threshold of bare rationality." Coleman v. Johnson, 132 S. Ct. 2060, 2065 (2012) (per curiam). The Appellate Division determined that the evidence was sufficient to support the burglary and assault convictions. Because petitioner claimed that the evidence was "legally insufficient"—using that language—only with regard to his convictions for first-degree burglary and first-degree assault on direct appeal, Def.-Appellant's Br. i.-ii., ECF No. 8, the Appellate Division only addressed his legal sufficiency claims on appeal as to those two convictions, Yunga, 973 N.Y.S.2d at 357. Nevertheless, petitioner did claim, both on direct appeal and in his habeas petition, that the "guilty verdict for first-degree rape was . . . [also] not proven beyond a reasonable doubt." Def.-Appellant's Br. i.; Pet. Writ Habeas Corpus 4, ECF No. 1. I consider this a legal sufficiency claim with regard to the rape conviction as well.

Moreover, the Appellate Division found that the burglary, assault, and rape convictions were not against the weight of the evidence, Yunga, 973 N.Y.S.2d at 357, a conclusion that "necessarily resolves the issue whether the evidence was legally sufficient to sustain the

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conviction." Perkins v. Comm'r, No. 04-CV-2307 (ERK), 2005 WL 3591722, at *1 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 30, 2005). As the Court of Appeals has explained:

A guilty verdict based on a legally sufficient case is not the end of our inquiry but the beginning of our weight of the evidence review. . . . "[I]t is necessary to go further before we affirm a conviction and find that the evidence is of such weight and credibility as to convince us that the jury was justified in finding the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

People v. Cahill, 2 N.Y.3d 14, 58 (2003) (quoting People v. Crum, 272 N.Y. 348, 350 (1936)). "Obviously, it would be impossible to find that 'the evidence is of such weight and credibility as to convince us that the jury was justified in finding the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt' without first concluding that the evidence was legally sufficient to sustain the verdict." Perkins, 2005 WL 3591722, at *2.

On habeas review, a "federal court may not overturn a state court decision rejecting a sufficiency of the evidence challenge simply because the federal court disagrees with the state court. The federal court instead may do so only if the state court decision was 'objectively unreasonable.'" Cavazos v. Smith, 132 S. Ct. 2, 4 (2011) (per curiam) (quoting Renico v. Lett, 559 U.S. 766, 773 (2010)). Petitioner faces a high burden to succeed on this claim when "the deference to state court decisions required by § 2254(d) is applied to the state court's already deferential review." Id. at 6. Indeed, the Supreme Court has referred to this standard for habeas review of state-court legal sufficiency rulings as "twice-deferential." Parker v. Matthews, 132 S. Ct. 2148, 2152 (2012) (per curiam).

1. The Assault

Petitioner alleges that the evidence was insufficient to establish that he had...