Holder v. Palmer
| Decision Date | 09 December 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. 07-1440.,07-1440. |
| Citation | 588 F.3d 328 |
| Parties | Michael Steven HOLDER, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Carmen PALMER, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ARGUED: Ariel B. Waldman, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Mark G. Sands, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Ariel B. Waldman, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. William C. Campbell, Eric Restuccia, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee.
Before: MOORE and GILMAN, Circuit Judges; PHILLIPS, District Judge.*
PHILLIPS, D.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which GILMAN, J., joined. MOORE, J. (pp. 342-46), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.
Petitioner was convicted in a jury trial of sexual penetration with an uninformed partner by a person infected with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), in violation of Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.5210, and sentenced to 120-180 months imprisonment. Petitioner appeals the district court's judgment denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Petitioner contends that he received ineffective assistance of counsel when his counsel failed to challenge the seating of jurors whose voir dire responses showed them to be racially biased.
We conclude the district court correctly found that the state courts' decisions reasonably comport with clearly established federal law. For the following reasons, we AFFIRM the decision of the district court and DENY the Writ.
Holder was charged by the State of Michigan with sexual penetration without informing his partner that he had the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), and brought to trial in Bay County Circuit Court. Holder is African-American. His partner, Monica Kosecki, is white.
Holder's counsel prepared a questionnaire that the trial court agreed to administer to prospective jurors, to determine whether they might harbor prejudices that would disqualify them from a trial in which an African-American man was accused of a sexual crime against a white woman. Five of the jurors revealed possible biases against African-Americans or against Holder in their responses during voir dire. Relevant portions of the voir dire, including the efforts the court and Holder's counsel made to rehabilitate these jurors, follow:
When the trial court questioned Juror Flynn further about the crime, she stated that a Hispanic man had stolen something from her father.
The court then asked whether "that fact alone" was "gonna make [her] decide the case on [her] feelings instead of the evidence that would come in front of [her]." Juror Flynn replied that it would not, and also said that race would not affect her verdict.
Holder's counsel later examined Juror Flynn about her answers to other questions, and the examination included the following exchange:
COUNSEL: I just want to, in my own mind, clarify an answer that you have written in your questionnaire. And this is a—a question that I think Judge Bielawski talked to you about in—in great detail. But I want to get a little bit more information from you about your particular answer. And that's the question dealing with the fact that—and I'll just read it so that there's no—there's nothing that—that I don't say exactly like the questionnaire did:
The defendant in this case is a black man who is accused of having sex with a white woman without telling her that he had the HIV virus. Based upon this information, have your already formed an opinion about him and, if so, what is your opinion?
And your answer was:
Now, Judge Bielawski talked to you about the presumption of innocence and—and if you had to make a decision right now based upon what you know, what your—what the verdict would have to be, or what your decision would have to be.
Were you—did the word "accused," was that the word that did it for you as far as your answer?
The court then asked the Juror Coppinger to consider what her views would be if one of her daughters began dating a black man who was "head of the business department at the college ... a very nice person, never been married, very polite, makes a nice income, and thinks the world of your daughter," while the other daughter was dating a white man with "long, greasy hair, earrings in his nose and his tongue and his ears, and tattoos all over his body," who, when asked what he did said "Well, Man, I'm just takin' it cool and doin' whatever." The court then asked:
THE COURT: And you look at the two guys and what do you think? I—if you had to choose—
Would—sometimes, Miss Coppinger, would you agree that your values and your choices in life change with the circumstances?
Holder's counsel did not question Juror Coppinger.
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...courts must focus on the reasonableness of the result, not on the reasonableness of the state court's analysis. Holder v. Palmer, 588 F.3d 328, 341 (6th Cir. 2009) ("'[O]ur focus on the 'unreasonable application' test under Section 2254(d) should be on the ultimate legal conclusion that the......
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