Hines v. Griffith
| Decision Date | 18 September 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 4:15 CV 1376 DDN,4:15 CV 1376 DDN |
| Parties | CLEO HINES, Plaintiff, v. CINDY GRIFFITH, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri |
This action is before the Court upon the petition of Missouri state prisoner Cleo Hines for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The parties have consented to the exercise of plenary authority by the undersigned United States Magistrate Judge pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(c). For the reasons set forth below, the petition for a writ of habeas corpus is denied.
In January 2011, petitioner Hines was charged with the Class A felonies of first-degree robbery and felony murder in the Circuit Court of St. Charles County. On August 24, 2012, petitioner pled guilty to both charges. The circuit court sentenced petitioner to two concurrent sentences of life imprisonment.
Petitioner subsequently filed in the circuit court a pro se motion for post-conviction relief under Missouri Supreme Court Rule 24.035. Petitioner thereafter, with the assistance of appointed counsel, filed an amended motion for post-conviction relief. Following an evidentiary hearing, the circuit court denied the motion on December, 18, 2013. On November 12, 2014, the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the circuit court's denial of post-conviction relief. Hines v. State of Missouri, 456 S.W.3d 50, 51 (Mo. Ct. App. 2014). On August 28, 2015, petitioner filed the instant petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254.
Petitioner alleges three grounds for relief in this habeas action:
Petitioner alleges that, but for these errors, he would not have pled guilty and would have insisted on going to trial. He argues that any procedural default of these claims should be excused due to the ineffective assistance of his plea counsel.
Respondent contends that petitioner's claims are all procedurally barred, because he failed to properly raise them during the post-conviction relief proceedings. Respondent further contends that the Missouri state court decisions are entitled to deference and that all of petitioner's claims are without merit.
Congress requires that state prisoners exhaust their state law remedies for claims made in federal habeas corpus petitions. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A). A state prisoner has not exhausted his remedies "if he has the right under the law of the State to raise, by any available procedure, the question presented." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(c); Anderson v. Harless, 459 U.S. 4, 6 (1982) (per curiam). A petitioner must have fairly presented the substance of each federal ground to the state trial and appellate courts. Sweet v. Delo, 125 F.3d 1144, 1149 (8th Cir. 1997). If he has not done so and he has no remaining state procedure available for doing so, any such ground for federal habeas relief generally is barred from being considered by the federal courts. King v. Kemna, 266 F.3d 816, 821 (8th Cir. 2001) (en banc); Grass v. Reitz, 643 F.3d 579, 584 (8th Cir. 2011).
A petitioner may overcome the procedural bar, if he can demonstrate legally sufficient cause for the default and actual prejudice resulting from it, or that the federal courts' failure to review the claim would result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750 (1991). To establish cause for a procedural default, petitioner must "show that some objective factor external to the defense impeded counsel's efforts to comply with the State's procedural rule." Id. at 753. To establish actual prejudice, petitioner "must show that the errors of which he complains worked to his actual and substantial disadvantage, infecting his entire trial with error of constitutional dimensions." Ivy v. Caspari, 173 F.3d 1136, 1141 (8th Cir. 1999) (internal citations omitted).
Petitioner raised each of his three federal grounds in his amended post-conviction relief motion. (Doc. 11, Ex. 1 at 160-89). However, in his appeal from the denial of that relief, petitioner raised only Ground 1. (Doc. 11, Ex. 3 at 1-36). Petitioner argues that the court should excuse his failure to raise Grounds 2 and 3 because of his post-conviction counsel's ineffective assistance. Petitioner further claims that the failure to address these claims infringed on his constitutional rights and thus resulted in a miscarriage of justice. In Ground 2, petitioner argues that but for his counsel's assurance that he would receive no more than a twenty-year sentence if he pled guilty, he would have insisted on going to trial. In Ground 3, petitioner argues that if plea counsel had called Ms. Gleason as a witness at the sentencing hearing, she would have testified he was kind and caring and not capable of murder. As discussed below, these arguments are without merit. Petitioner has not presented a sufficient reason to explain his failure to raise these grounds in his state court appeal, nor has he demonstrated actual prejudice arising from the default or that this court's failure to consider these claims would result in a miscarriage of justice. Accordingly, petitioner's Grounds 2 and 3 are procedurally barred.
Respondent argues that petitioner's first claim should also be barred because the Missouri Court of Appeals declined to address this claim on the merits. In Ground 1, petitioner asserts that the State violated his due process rights by using inconsistenttheories of prosecution to convict petitioner and his co-defendant. Although petitioner raised this ground in his motion for post-conviction relief, and again on appeal, the Missouri Court of Appeals found that petitioner waived this claim, because it was known to him at the time he pleaded guilty, and he knowingly and voluntarily entered a guilty plea anyway. (Doc. 11, Ex. 5 at 4). That court held that "[by] entering a knowing and voluntary guilty plea, a defendant waives all nonjurisdictional defects including statutory and constitutional guarantees." (Id.). When "the last state court rendering a judgment in the case clearly and expressly states that its judgment rests on a state procedural bar," such as waiver of a claim under state law, federal habeas review of the defaulted claim is inappropriate. Harris v. Reed, 489 U.S. 255, 263-66 (1989).
Nevertheless, even if petitioner's claims were not procedurally defaulted, they would still fail on the merits. If this court concludes that the procedurally barred grounds are without merit, Congress has authorized it to consider them and to dismiss them. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(2). The undersigned has considered all of petitioner's federal grounds and concludes that they are without merit.
The federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA") provides that habeas relief may not be granted by a federal court unless the state court adjudication:
28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)-(2).
A state court's decision is contrary to clearly established federal law if it "arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by Court on a question of law or . . . decides a case differently than [the] Court has on a set of materially indistinguishablefacts." Thaler v. Haynes, 559 U.S. 43, 47 (2010) (citations omitted). This standard is difficult to meet, because 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, 131 S. Ct. 770, 786 (2011) (citations omitted). A state court's decision involves an "unreasonable application" of clearly established federal law if "the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from Court's decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case." Thaler, 559 U.S. at 48.
A state court's factual findings are presumed to be correct. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1); Wood v. Allen, 130 S. Ct. 841, 845 (2010). Review under § 2254(d)(1) is limited to the record before the state court that adjudicated the claim on the merits. Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1398 (2011). For habeas relief under § 2254(d)(2), clear and convincing evidence that factual findings lack evidentiary support is required. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1); Wood, 130 S. Ct. at 845.
Petitioner first alleges that the State used one theory of prosecution to provide the factual basis for his guilty plea and another to convict his co-defendant Paul White. In petitioner's case, the State relied on facts suggesting that petitioner waited in the car while co-defendant Paul White robbed an insurance agent and shot him to death. Petitioner claims this theory is inconsistent with the theory used during Paul White's trial, where the State argued that petitioner was inside the office during the shooting and was a more active participant.
On this matter, neither the prosecution, the motion court, nor the court of appeals acted contrary to federal law. The motion court did not believe that the state used inconsistent theories in prosecuting petitioner and his...
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