Grate v. Stinson

• Decision Date: 30 September 2002
• Docket Number: No. CIV.A. 97-2236-JS.,CIV.A. 97-2236-JS.
• Citation: 224 F.Supp.2d 496
• Parties: Daryl GRATE, Petitioner, v. James STINSON, Superintendent, Great Meadow Correctional Facility, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

224 F.Supp.2d 496

Daryl GRATE, Petitioner, v. James STINSON, Superintendent, Great Meadow Correctional Facility, Respondent.

No. CIV.A. 97-2236-JS.

United States District Court, E.D. New York.

September 30, 2002.

Darryl Grate, Auburn Correctional Facility, Auburn, NY, pro se.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

WILLIAM G. YOUNG, District Judge.¹

I. INTRODUCTION

Daryl Grate ("Grate") petitions this Court for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 ("section 2254"). He asks this Court to overturn his conviction for second degree murder and first degree robbery after a trial by jury in Nassau County Court in 1985. He advances four reasons why his conviction should be vacated: (1) The confession he gave to police on July 30, 1984 was involuntary, in violation of his rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, Pet. ¶ 12(A) [Docket No. 1]; (2) The admission at trial of a statement made by a codefendant violated his rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, id. ¶ 12(B); (3) His appellate counsel was ineffective for failing properly to frame the Confrontation Clause issue, which caused the Second Department of the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division (the "Second Department") perfunctorily to dismiss Grate's claim with respect to this issue on direct appeal, id. ¶ 12(C); and (4) His appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to argue before the Second Department that the prosecution exercised peremptory challenges against prospective jurors on the basis of race, in violation of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), see Memorandum & Order at 10 and n. 2, Grate v. Stinson, 97-CV-2236(JS) (E.D.N.Y. May 5, 2000) (Seybert, J.) ("Seybert Mem.") [Docket No. 30] (allowing Grate to amend petition to include Batson claim).

The government countered with a motion to dismiss on the ground that Grate's petition was not timely under the one-year limitations period established for section 2254 petitions, 2244(d)(1). See Docket Nos. 23, 24. The Court denied the motion on grounds that Grate had filed his initial petition within the one-year grace period after the enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA") established in this Circuit by Ross v. Artuz, 150 F.3d 97 (2d Cir.1998),² and that the time Grate's petition spent in federal court under consideration did not count for purposes of calculating whether his 2254 petition was timely under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2), see Seybert Mem. at 5, 7 (citing Walker v. Artuz, 208 F.3d 357 (2d Cir.2000), rev'd sub nom. Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 121 S.Ct. 2120, 150 L.Ed.2d 251 (2001)).³

The government responded with an Affidavit and Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Grate's Petition. Having received the government's opposition papers, the Court is now prepared to consider Grate's arguments on the merits.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Grate's Voluntariness Claim

Grate's first argument in support of his petition is that the confession he gave to police on July 30, 1984 was involuntary and the product of excessive police coercion, and thus taken by the police in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Pet. ¶ 12(A). In that statement, which was written down by the police, read to Grate after he appeared to have difficulty reading it himself, and signed by him, Resp't's Opp'n Ex. 3 (Government's brief on direct appeal to the Second Department) at 8, 12, Grate admitted to shooting the victim in the case, Arthur Licurse ("Licurse"), accidentally during the course of robbing General Oil Distributors in East Rockaway, New York, along with an accomplice, Charles Clink ("Clink"). See generally id. at 13-17 (reprinted version of Grate's statement); id. Ex. 1 (Brief of Grate's attorney on direct appeal to the Second Department), at Ex. B (original version of Grate's statement, handwritten by the police).

The government responds to this argument by stating that Grate never raised this argument at trial, and thus cannot be allowed to raise this claim on collateral review in federal court. In the government's view, the sentence in the decision of the Second Department rejecting Grate's voluntariness claim on direct appeal — "We have examined the defendant's remaining contentions, including those raised in this supplemental pro se brief, and find them to [be] either unpreserved for appellate review or without merit," People v. Grate, 155 A.D.2d 553, 554, 547 N.Y.S.2d 584 (2d Dep't 1989) — constitutes an independent and adequate state ground for the Second Department's rejection of Grate's Fifth Amendment claim, and thus bars a federal court from entertaining the claim.

It is generally true, as the government suggests, that when a defendant fails to raise a federal constitutional issue at trial, and is told by an appellate court that the issue will not be considered on appeal because the defendant failed to raise it below, the decision of the state appellate court constitutes an independent and adequate state law ground for rejecting the defendant's federal claim that bars a federal court from considering the issue on collateral review. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 729-32, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991). It is also generally true that, when an appellate court affirms without explanation an argument by the government that a defendant's claim is both unpreserved for appellate review and meritless, the appellate court's decision should be presumed to rest on state procedural grounds. E.g., Epps v. Comm'r of Corr. Servs., 13 F.3d 615, 618 (2d Cir. 1994).

These rules have no application here, however, because Grate did in fact raise the issue of the voluntariness of his confession several times — at a suppression hearing, Suppression Hr'g Tr. at 557-86, at a pre-trial hearing, Pre-Trial Hr'g Tr. at 42-44, at trial, Trial Tr. at 461-69, 479-90, and on direct appeal, Resp't's Opp'n Ex. 1 (Brief of Grate's attorney on direct appeal to the Second Department), at 37-40; id. Ex. 2 (Grate's pro se supplemental brief), at 16-21. The trial judge wrote an opinion deciding matters raised at the suppression hearing that addressed, among other things, "the validity of the statement[] taken from the defendant[]." Id. Ex. 3 (Government's brief on direct appeal to the Second Department), at Ex. 1, p. 1 (Findings of fact and conclusions of law by the trial court on Grate's motion to suppress). The trial court ultimately concluded that Grate's statement was admissible at trial. Id. at p. 6. This suffices, in this Court's view, to establish that Grate did make an issue of the voluntariness of his confession at trial, even if, as the government suggests, Grate did not object to the admission of Grate's statement at the trial itself, Resp't's Opp'n at 13.⁴ He has not defaulted on this claim, and the Court will proceed to consider it.

That this Court will proceed to the merits of Grate's Fifth Amendment voluntariness claim does not mean, however, that the Court will make its own independent determination of whether Grate voluntarily confessed to the police. Prior to the enactment of AEDPA, the Supreme Court held with respect to the voluntariness of a confession that a federal court investigating the issue on habeas was empowered to opine de novo on the ultimate legal question of the voluntariness of a confession, even though it had to apply a "presumption of correctness" to state court findings of predicate facts, such as whether the police engaged in intimidation tactics. Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 112, 106 S.Ct. 445, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985).

The landscape has changed since enactment of AEDPA, however. What remains the same is that a federal court conducting a collateral review must still presume state court findings of fact to be correct, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e), although it is probably harder now for a habeas petitioner to overcome this presumption, as the petitioner must now present clear and convincing evidence that the finding of fact was erroneous, id. But what has changed significantly in light of AEDPA is that a federal court exercising its habeas jurisdiction over a petitioner's federal claim that was adjudicated in state court "on the merits" may not disturb the state court judgment unless the decision "involved an unreasonable application of[] clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), or "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding," id. § 2254(d)(2).⁵ In both of the relevant provisions of section 2254(d), the key word is "unreasonable." The Supreme Court has held that the word unreasonable found in section 2254(b)(1) means something worse than merely "erroneous" or "incorrect." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 410-11, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). Indeed, it means that a state court must have applied extant Supreme Court case law or found facts based on the evidence presented to it in an objectively unreasonable manner before a federal court may overturn the state court's decision. Id. at 409, 120 S.Ct. 1495.⁶

Prior to AEDPA, then, a federal court exercising its power to grant writs of habeas corpus could decide questions of law or mixed questions of law and fact — such as the voluntariness of a confession — de novo, even if it was required to presume that state court findings of fact were correct. After AEDPA, however, so long as the issue has been raised and decided in state court on the merits, it appears that, even with respect to mixed questions of law and fact, the federal court may overturn the decision of the state court only if the decision was objectively unreasonable. Cf. Sellan v. Kuhlman, 261 F.3d 303, 314 (2d Cir.2001) (applying deferential "unreasonable application" standard of section 2254(d)(1) to a claim of...