Harris v. Lafler

Citation553 F.3d 1028
Decision Date30 January 2009
Docket NumberNo. 05-2159.,No. 05-2104.,05-2104.,05-2159.
PartiesKarl HARRIS, Petitioner-Appellee/Cross-Appellant, v. Blaine C. LAFLER, Respondent-Appellant/Cross-Appellee.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

ARGUED: Janet A. VanCleve, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant. John F. Royal, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: B. Eric Restuccia, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing,

Michigan, for Appellant. John F. Royal, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee.

Before: ROGERS, SUTTON and McKEAGUE, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted Karl Harris of violating several Michigan criminal laws, including second-degree murder, and the judge sentenced him to 52 to 77 years in prison. His state-court efforts to obtain relief came to naught, and he filed this federal habeas corpus petition, which the district court rejected in all respects, save one: It granted relief on his Brady claim that the prosecution failed to disclose three statements made by the police to the State's lead witness before he testified. We affirm.

I.

On the night of March 8, 1997, Harris and his friend Richard Ward were involved in a fight at a Detroit-area nightclub. What began as a tussle between Harris and another individual, Erwin Smith, escalated into a club-wide melee, which security guards eventually brought to an end with the aid of pepper spray. After the club emptied out, Smith and six of his friends piled into an SUV and drove away, heading east on I-96. Before long, Smith noticed that he was being followed, and, not long after that, someone inside the pursuing vehicle fired several rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle at the SUV. Two passengers in the SUV were killed, and several others were wounded. No one in the SUV could identify the gunman.

The police arrested Ward and Harris about a month after the shooting. Ward gave two statements to the police about the incident and testified at Harris's preliminary examination, stating that he drove the pursuing vehicle on the night of the shooting and that Harris fired the AK-47 at the SUV. (Although Ward is paralyzed from the waist down, he has the capacity to drive a car with hand-held controls.) At Harris's jury trial, Ward invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, after which the trial court allowed the State to introduce Ward's preliminary-examination testimony. Harris, for his part, did not testify, but he contradicted Ward's account of the evening through the testimony of his girlfriend, who said that she was with Harris immediately after the fight at the club and that the two of them spent the remainder of the night at Harris's mother's house. The jury convicted Harris on all eight counts: two counts of second-degree murder, five counts of assault with intent to murder and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

When Harris filed a motion for a new trial, the trial court granted him an evidentiary hearing, where three pieces of information came to light. First, Ward testified that, after the police officers arrested him, they told him that if he gave a statement about the shooting they would release Ward's girlfriend, who had been arrested along with Harris and Ward. Ward gave a statement, but the officers did not release his girlfriend because they "didn't like the statement." JA 818. Ward admitted that he had not told "the complete truth" in the first statement, then offered a second statement two days later, JA 99, after which the police released his girlfriend. The key difference between the two statements was that Ward first claimed that someone else was driving the vehicle on the night of the shooting and that he and Harris were passengers, but he later admitted that he was the driver and that Harris was the sole passenger. Ward pegged Harris as the shooter in both statements.

Second, Ward testified that, on the day of Harris's preliminary examination, a police officer told Ward that if he testified consistently with his second statement the police would release him. At the preliminary examination, Ward testified consistently with his second statement, and the police released him later that day.

Third, the same officer told Ward that if anyone asked him whether he had been promised anything in exchange for his testimony, he should deny that any promises were made. When Ward testified at the preliminary examination, Harris's counsel asked him several times whether the police had promised him anything in exchange for his testimony. Ward denied that any promises had been made.

Notwithstanding this evidence, the trial court denied Harris's motion for a new trial, including his claim that the State violated his due-process rights by failing to produce exculpatory evidence. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction, and the Michigan Supreme Court denied review.

When Harris filed a federal habeas corpus petition, the district court sized up his due-process claim differently. Relying on Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), and its heirs, the court concluded that the prosecutor's failure to disclose these three exchanges between Ward and the police violated Harris's due-process rights. The district court denied Harris's other claims. The warden appealed the district court's grant of the writ, and Harris, after receiving a certificate of appealability, cross-appealed the denial of three of his other claims.

II.

Before addressing the merits of the district court's decision, we must resolve a threshold question of process. A federal district court, generally speaking, may not grant the writ on a "mixed" petition, one containing claims that the petitioner has pressed before the state courts and claims that he has not. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A); Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 273-74, 125 S.Ct. 1528, 161 L.Ed.2d 440 (2005).

At the district court, the State contended that Harris had not exhausted three of his thirteen claims in the state courts and contended that the district court therefore had no authority to address the merits of any of Harris's claims, including his exhausted Brady claim. Harris, as it turns out, raised one of these claims in the state courts, namely his claim that the courts should have immunized Ward so that he could testify in person at Harris's trial. But the State was correct that Harris did not "fairly present" the other two claims to the state courts: that the trial judge took inadequate steps to protect the jury from being tainted by threatening comments made to two jurors during a trial recess, and that he improperly led the jury to believe that it could not have trial testimony read back to it during deliberations. See Baldwin v. Reese, 541 U.S. 27, 29, 124 S.Ct. 1347, 158 L.Ed.2d 64 (2004). For reasons never explained, the district court did not address the State's argument that the court lacked authority to address any of Harris's claims until they had all been exhausted or voluntarily dismissed. The court instead proceeded to address the merits of each of Harris's arguments and granted relief on one of them. That was error. See Rhines, 544 U.S. at 273-74, 125 S.Ct. 1528; 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A).

The question is what to do about it. When faced with this predicament in the past, we have vacated the order granting the writ and remanded the case to the district court so that it could do one of four things: (1) dismiss the mixed petition in its entirety, Rhines, 544 U.S. at 274, 125 S.Ct. 1528; (2) stay the petition and hold it in abeyance while the petitioner returns to state court to raise his unexhausted claims id. at 275, 125 S.Ct. 1528; (3) permit the petitioner to dismiss the unexhausted claims and proceed with the exhausted claims, id. at 278, 125 S.Ct. 1528; or (4) ignore the exhaustion requirement altogether and deny the petition on the merits if none of the petitioner's claims has any merit, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(2). See Rockwell v. Yukins, 217 F.3d 421, 425 (6th Cir.2000).

That path normally is the correct one to take, and we would take it here but for the fact that this case presents two additional wrinkles: Harris has agreed in his appellate briefs (and at oral argument) to dismiss with prejudice any unexhausted claims, and the State in response has not insisted that we remand the case to the district court before we address the merits of the exhausted claims. Nothing prevents Harris (through his counsel) from agreeing to dismiss some of his claims with prejudice, and nothing prevents us from holding him to his promise. Nor does anything prevent the State from agreeing to allow us to review the exhausted claims or for that matter the unexhausted claims at this point. The exhaustion requirement does not define the subject-matter jurisdiction of the federal courts. See, e.g., White v. Mitchell, 431 F.3d 517, 526 (6th Cir. 2005). The requirement is designed to give the States and the state courts a first look at a habeas petitioner's claims, Rhines, 544 U.S. at 273, 125 S.Ct. 1528, and a State is free to waive that right when it wishes, see 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(3); D'Ambrosio v. Bagley, 527 F.3d 489, 495 (6th Cir.2008).

In the unusual setting of this case— where the district court apparently overlooked unexhausted claims and the State on appeal has identified no interest supporting a remand for dismissal of those claims or for that matter urged us to remand the case for that purpose—there is good reason for permitting the parties to move immediately to the substance of the dispute at the expense of its traditional form. As the district court's decision suggests, Harris's Brady claim is a serious one. If Harris and the district court are correct about the merits of this claim, he is entitled to a new trial, one that may give him what he wants—a release from custody—a form of relief he no doubt wishes to secure sooner rather than later. The...

To continue reading

Request your trial
168 cases
  • Richardson v. Smith
    • United States
    • United States District Courts. 6th Circuit. United States District Court of Northern District of Ohio
    • 30 d2 Outubro d2 2012
    ......Executive Towers resident Kenneth Harris testified that he saw a person in the park, wearing a white T-shirt and dark pants and with what looked like a short ponytail, hitting the ground ... Torvik , 986 F.2d 1506, 1516 (6 th Cir. 1993) cert. denied, 509 U.S. 907 (1993)(quotation omitted). In Harris v . Lafler , the Sixth Circuit laid out the options that a district court may pursue in dealing with a petition that contains unexhausted claims: When faced ......
  • Hayes v. Gray, Case No. 5:17-CV-2035
    • United States
    • United States District Courts. 6th Circuit. United States District Court of Northern District of Ohio
    • 22 d2 Outubro d2 2019
    ...... Clinkscale v . Carter , 375 F.3d 430, 438 (6th Cir. 2004) (citing Harris v . Rees , 794 F.2d 1168, 1170 (6th Cir. 1986)). Exhaustion does not require a state court adjudication on the merits of the claim at issue. ...§ 2254(b)(2). Harris v . Lafler , 553 F.3d 1028, 1031-32 (6th Cir. 2009) (citing Rockwell v . Yukins , 217 F.3d 421, 425 (6th Cir. 2000)).         The AEDPA, as amended, ......
  • Eakes v. Sexton
    • United States
    • United States District Courts. 6th Circuit. United States District Court of Middle District of Tennessee
    • 30 d3 Março d3 2022
    ...... at 429 (citing Harris v. Lafler , 553 F.3d 1028, 1033–34 (6th Cir. 2009) ). The court found "[t]he failure of the State to produce the suppressed evidence" to be ......
  • McNeill v. Bagley
    • United States
    • United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)
    • 20 d5 Agosto d5 2021
    ......It is useful to compare the case before us to those in which our court, or the Supreme Court, has found evidence to be material. In Harris v. Lafler , we found suppressed evidence material because it would have impeached "the only piece of eyewitness evidence that directly linked ......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT