Guinard v. Shinn

• Decision Date: 30 September 2021
• Docket Number: CV-19-08155-PCT-DGC (MHB)
• Parties: Jimmy Wayne Guinard, Petitioner, v. David Shinn, Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections; and Attorney General of the State of Arizona, Respondents.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Arizona

Jimmy Wayne Guinard, Petitioner,
v.
David Shinn, Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections; and Attorney General of the State of Arizona, Respondents.

No. CV-19-08155-PCT-DGC (MHB)

United States District Court, D. Arizona

September 30, 2021

ORDER

David G, Campbell, Senior United States District Judge.

Petitioner Jimmy Guinard is confined in Arizona state prison. He commenced this federal action by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Docs. 1, 6. Magistrate Judge Michelle Burns has issued a thorough and thoughtful report recommending that the Court deny the petition and a certificate of appealability (“R&R”). Doc. 38. Guinard has filed an objection, which is fully briefed. Docs. 39, 40, 41. For reasons stated below, the Court will accept the R&R and deny the petition and a certificate of appealability.

I. Background.

Guinard challenges his convictions and sentences in two Yavapai County Superior Court cases: No. P1300CR2011-01146 (“2011 case”) and No. P1300CR2012-00975 (“2012 case”). In the 2011 case, a jury convicted Guinard of transporting dangerous drugs for sale and possessing drug paraphernalia. Doc. 12-4 at 44-46; see State v. Guinard, No. 1

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CA-CR 13-0490, 2014 WL 2548104, at *1 (Ariz.Ct.App. June 3, 2014). He was sentenced to an aggregate 20-year term of imprisonment. Id. The Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions and sentences, and the Arizona Supreme Court denied review. Docs. 1-1 at 24-68, 12-4 at 53-72. Guinard's petitions for post-conviction relief (“PCR”) under Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32 were denied. Docs. 1-3 at 2-5, 34-35; 1-4 at 2-14, 22-39; 12-4 at 75-80; 12-5 at 2-8.

In the 2012 case, a jury convicted Guinard of transporting dangerous drugs for sale and possessing methamphetamine paraphernalia. See State v. Guinard, No. 1 CA-CR 14-0810, 2015 WL 4747890, at *1 (Ariz.Ct.App. Aug. 11, 2015). The trial court sentenced Guinard to a five-year term on the transportation count and an eight-month term on the paraphernalia count. See id.; Doc. 12-8 at 25-26. The court ordered the sentences to run concurrently to each other and consecutive to the 20-year sentence imposed in the 2011 case. Id. The convictions and sentences were affirmed on appeal. See Guinard, 2015 WL 4747890, at *6. Guinard's PCR petitions were denied. Docs. 1-6 at 18-45, 1-7 at 2-3, 12-8 at 53-62.

II. Federal Habeas Standards.

A. Exhaustion and Procedural Default.

Federal habeas petitions are governed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), 28 U.S.C. § 2241 et seq. The AEDPA prohibits a federal court from granting habeas relief unless the petitioner has “exhausted the remedies available in the courts of the State[.]” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A); see O'Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 842 (1999); Kyzar v. Ryan, 780 F.3d 940, 946 (9th Cir. 2015). “[T]he exhaustion doctrine is designed to give the state courts a full and fair opportunity to resolve federal constitutional claims before those claims are presented to the federal courts[.]” O'Sullivan, 526 U.S. at 845. To “fairly present” a federal claim in state court, the petitioner must provide the factual and legal basis for the claim. Scott v. Schriro, 567 F.3d 573, 582 (9th Cir. 2009). He must “make the federal basis of the claim explicit either by specifying particular provisions of the federal Constitution or statutes, or by citing to

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federal case law.” Insyxiengmay v. Morgan, 403 F.3d 657, 668 (9th Cir. 2005); see Johnson v. Zenon, 88 F.3d 828, 830 (9th Cir. 1996) (“If a petitioner fails to alert the state court to the fact that he is raising a federal constitutional claim, his federal claim is unexhausted regardless of its similarity to the issues raised in state court.”).

An unexhausted claim is procedurally defaulted where state procedural rules make a return to state court futile. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 735 n.1 (1991) (claims are barred from habeas review when not first raised before state courts and those courts “would now find the claims procedurally barred”). A federal court may not consider the merits of a procedurally defaulted claim unless the petitioner establishes cause for the default and actual prejudice, or shows that a miscarriage of justice would result. See Coleman, 501 U.S. at 750-51; Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 321 (1995). Under the cause and prejudice test, the petitioner must show that some external cause prevented him from following the procedural rules of the state court and fairly presenting his claim. See Robinson v. Ignacio, 360 F.3d 1044, 1052 (9th Cir. 2004) (“A showing of cause must ordinarily turn on whether the prisoner can show that some objective factor external to the defense impeded [the prisoner's] efforts to comply with the State's procedural rule. Thus, cause is an external impediment such as government interference or reasonable unavailability of a claim's factual basis.”) (citations omitted). A fundamental miscarriage of justice exists when a constitutional violation has resulted in the conviction of one who is “actually innocent.” Schlup, 513 U.S. at 327. “Actual innocence, ” for purposes of Schlup, “means factual innocence, not mere legal insufficiency.” Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 623 (1998); see House v. Bell, 547 U.S. 518, 538 (2006) (emphasizing that “the Schlup standard is demanding and permits review only in the ‘extraordinary' case”).

Where the petitioner attempts to exhaust a federal claim in state court and the claim is deemed waived for “noncompliance with a state procedural rule, the federal claim is procedurally defaulted[.]” Smith v. Or. Bd. of Parole & Post-Prison Supervision, 736 F.3d 857, 862 (9th Cir. 2013) (citing Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 90-91 (1977)). This procedural default rule applies where “the state procedural rule . . . provide[s] an adequate

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and independent state law basis on which the state court can deny relief.” Hurles v. Ryan, 752 F.3d 768, 780 (9th Cir. 2014) (quoting Bennett v. Mueller, 322 F.3d 573, 580 (9th Cir. 2003)).^[1]

B. Merits.

“In conducting habeas review, a federal court is limited to deciding whether a conviction violated the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.” Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 68 (1991). A state prisoner, therefore, may not obtain federal habeas relief for errors of state law. See Id. at 67-68 (“[W]e reemphasize that it is not the province of a federal habeas court to reexamine state-court determinations on state-law questions.”); Swarthout v. Cooke, 562 U.S. 216, 219 (2011) (“We have stated many times that federal habeas corpus relief does not lie for errors of state law.”) (citations omitted); Little v. Crawford, 449 F.3d 1075, 1083 (9th Cir. 2006) (“A violation of state law standing alone is not cognizable in federal court on habeas.”) (citations omitted).

With respect to the merits of exhausted and cognizable federal claims, the AEDPA requires federal courts to defer to the last reasoned state court decision. See Murray v. Schriro, 882 F.3d 778, 801 (9th Cir. 2018). Habeas relief is not warranted unless the petitioner shows that the state court's decision was (1) contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court, or (2) based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in state court. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d); see Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412-13 (2000).

This highly deferential standard “demands that state court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt.” Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24 (2002). Indeed, the AEDPA “reflects the view that habeas corpus is a ‘guard against extreme malfunctions in the state

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criminal justice systems,' not a substitute for ordinary error correction through appeal.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 102 (2011) (quoting Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 332 n.5 (1979)). A federal court therefore must “avoid applying [the] AEDPA in a manner that displays ‘a lack of deference to the state court's determination and an improper intervention in state criminal processes.'” John-Charles v. California, 646 F.3d 1243, 1253 (9th Cir. 2011) (quoting Harrington, 562 U.S. at 104); see also Christian v. Frank, 595 F.3d 1076, 1081 (9th Cir. 2010) (“A federal court may second-guess a state court decision only if it determines that ‘the state court was not merely wrong, but actually unreasonable.'”) (quoting Taylor...