Hicklin v. Blair

• Decision Date: 11 March 2022
• Docket Number: 4:21-cv-00343-RK
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Missouri
• Parties: JESSICA HICKLIN Petitioner, v. PAUL BLAIR Respondent.

JESSICA HICKLIN Petitioner,
v.
PAUL BLAIR Respondent.

No. 4:21-cv-00343-RK

United States District Court, W.D. Missouri

March 11, 2022

ORDER

ROSEANN A. KETCHMARK, JUDGE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

Petitioner Jessica Hicklin^[1] is a convicted prisoner currently confined at the Potosi Correctional Center and has filed a petition f or writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2 2 54. (Doc. 1.) Petitioner seeks to challenge her 1997 convictions and sentences for first-degree murder and armed criminal action which were entered in the Johnson County Circuit Court. Petitioner was less than eighteen years old at the time she committed the crimes and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and 100 years' imprisonment, to be served concurrently. For the reasons set forth below, this petition is DENIED, a certificate of appealability is DENIED, and the case is DISMISSED.

I. Statement of Facts

In 1995, Petitioner shot and killed Sean Smith. Petitioner was 16 years old at the time of this offense. Following a jury trial, Petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in 1997. Petitioner was then sentenced to concurrent terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of probation or parole and 100 years' imprisonment, respectively. Petitioner appealed her conviction, which was affirmed. State v. Hicklin, 969 S.W.2d 303, 305 (Mo.Ct.App. 1998). Petitioner then timely sought post-conviction relief pursuant to Missouri Supreme Court Rule 29.15. (See Doc. 1 at 2-3.) After an evidentiary hearing, the motion court denied all of Petitioner's claims. (Id.) Petitioner filed her first petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court in 2003, which was dismissed with prejudice as time-barred in 2004. Hicklin v. Roper,

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No. 4:03-cv-01154-HFS (W.D. Mo. Apr. 5, 2004) (D o c . 8).

In 2014, Petitioner filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus with the Supreme Court of Missouri. (Case No. SC94211; see Doc. 1 at 4.) Petitioner requested that her sentence be brought in conformity with Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (June 25, 2012). In Miller, the United States Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment precludes life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for individuals under the age of 18 at the time of their offense. Miller, 567 U.S. at 489. Miller found that “[m]andatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features - among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences.” Id. at 477. Consequently, “[b]y making youth (and all that accompanies it) irrelevant to imposition of that harshest prison sentence, such a scheme poses too great a risk of disproportionate punishment.” Id. at 479.

While Petitioner's state habeas action was pending, the United States Supreme Court decided Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (Jan. 25, 2016). Montgomery held that “Miller announced a substantive rule that is retroactive in cases on collateral review.” Montgomery, 577 U.S. at 206. Montgomery further held that:

Giving Miller retroactive effect . . . does not require States to relitigate sentences, let alone convictions, in every case where a juvenile offender received mandatory life without parole. A State may remedy a Miller violation by permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole, rather than by resentencing them. See, e.g., Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-10-301(c) (2013) (juvenile homicide offenders eligible f or parole after 25 years). Allowing those offenders to be considered for parole ensures that juveniles whose crimes reflected only transient immaturity - and who have since matured - will not be forced to serve a disproportionate sentence in violation of the Eighth Amendment

Id. at 212.

On March 15, 2016, the Missouri Supreme Court sustained Petitioner's 2014 state habeas petition in part, “in order to comply with the requirements of Miller and Montgomery, ” and ordered that Petitioner “shall be eligible to apply for parole unless his sentence is otherwise brought into conformity with Miller and Montgomery by action of the governor or enactment of necessary legislation.” (Doc. 15-12 at 2.)

On April 1, 2016, Petitioner filed a motion for rehearing. In May of 2016, while that motion was still pending in the Missouri Supreme Court, Petitioner filed a petition for declaratory judgment in the Circuit Court of Cole County, in which she challenged the relief ordered by the

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Missouri Supreme Court and sought a declaration that section 565.020, RSMo 1994, was unconstitutional as applied to her. (Doc. 15-5 at 6.) While the motion for rehearing was pending, and before the declaratory judgment claims could be finally determined, a new Missouri law went into effect on July 13, 2016. The new law, codified at Missouri Revised Statute § 558.047, provides that:

Any person sentenced to a term of imprisonment for life without eligibility for parole before August 28, 2016, who was under eighteen years of age at the time of the commission of the offense or offenses, may submit to the parole board a petition for a review of his or her sentence, regardless of whether the case is final for purposes of appeal, after serving twenty-five years of incarceration on the sentence of life without parole

Mo. Rev. Stat. § 558.047.1(1). As part of the “parole review hearing” provided under section 558.047, the statute requires the board to consider the ten factors set forth in section 565.033.2 (sentencing factors as to new juvenile offenders), as well as five additional independent factors. § 558.047.5, RSMo.

On July 19, 2016, the Missouri Supreme Court vacated its March 15, 2016 Order that sustained in part Petitioner's 2014 state habeas petition. The July 19, 2016 Order states, in its entirety: “On the Court's own motion, the Court's March 15, 2016, order is vacated. The motion for rehearing is overruled as moot. The petition is denied. See Senate Bill No. 590, 98th General Assembly. All other pending motions are overruled as moot.” (Doc. 15-13 .)

On November 24, 2020, the Missouri Supreme Court entered its order affirming the circuit court's judgment gra n ting the State's motion for judgment on the pleadings, ^[2] denying Petitioner's petition f or declaratory relief. The Missouri Supreme Court concluded:

Through enactment of section 558.047 and the other provisions discussed, Missouri's General Assembly has provided Ms. Hicklin with the benefit of parole eligibility on her first-degree murder sentence after she serves 25 years of that sentence. The Supreme Court in Montgomery expressly approved this course of action when it said states were not required to resentence Miller-impacted juvenile offenders and, instead, invited states to correct Miller errors by supplying parole eligibility. This does not violate the separation of powers. As neither the sufficiency of the parole procedures used to implement Miller and Montgomery nor

3

Ms. Hicklin's requests to vacate her sentence are properly before this Court in this declaratory judgment action, the circuit court's judgment [denying Ms. Hicklin's petition for declaratory relief] is affirmed.

(Doc. 15-5 at 20.)

On April 15, 2021, Petitioner filed the instant Petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 for Writ of Habeas Corpus by Person in State Custody (“Petition”). (Doc. 1.)

II. Standard

State prisoners who believe that they are incarcerated in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States may file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. “[H]abeas 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) (citation and quotation marks omitted). This Court's review of the petition for habeas corpus is limited by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”), 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Harrington, 562 U.S. at 97. AEDPA “bars relitigation [in federal court] of any claim adjudicated on the merits in state court, subject only to the exceptions in §§ 2254(d)(1) and (2).” Id. at 98.

Accordingly, a state habeas petitioner is not entitled to relief unless the state court proceedings:

(1) resulted in a decision that is contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or

(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of th e facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.

§ 2254(d).

As to § 2254(d)(1), a state court violates the “contrary to” clause if it “applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth” by the Supreme Court or if the state court “confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of [the] Court and nevertheless arrives at a [different] result.” Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 406 (2000). A state court violates the “unreasonable application” clause of § 2254(d)(1) if it “identifies the correct governing legal rule from [the Supreme] Court's cases but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular state prisoner's case.” Id. at 407. “It is not enough f or us to conclude that, in our independent judgment, we would have applied federal law differently from the state court; the state court's application must have been objectively unreasonable.” Flowers v. Norris, 585 F.3d 413, 417 (8th Cir. 2009)

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(citation omitted).

As to § 2254(d)(2), “a petitioner must show that the facts underlying the claim would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the...