Holman v. Page

• Decision Date: 28 August 1996
• Docket Number: No. 95-2758,95-2758
• Citation: 95 F.3d 481
• Parties: Anselm HOLMAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Thomas PAGE, Menard Correctional Center, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 481

95 F.3d 481

65 USLW 2239

Anselm HOLMAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Thomas PAGE, Menard Correctional Center, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 95-2758.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 12, 1996.

Decided Aug. 28, 1996.

Ralph Ruebner (argued), John Marshall Law School, Chicago, IL, for petitioner-appellant.

Rita M. Novak, Michael Hurst (argued), Office of the Atty. Gen., Chicago, IL, for respondent-appellee.

Before CUMMINGS, COFFEY, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

MANION, Circuit Judge.

Convicted murderer-rapist Anselm Holman petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus alleging his natural life sentence imposed under Illinois law was constitutionally improper and that he was denied the right to effective assistance of appellate counsel. The district court denied the petition. Holman appeals. We affirm.

I.

On the night of May 11, 1984, 75-year-old Mary Brackenridge lay asleep on her couch next to her seven-year-old adopted son, Ricky Brown. Outside, Anselm Holman, 17, and Richie Cole, 16, were sizing up Mary's house. They knocked on the front door, but Mary, still sleeping, did not respond. Holman told Cole to stay on the front steps and watch for police, and then went around back, broke into the rear of the home, and let Cole in the front door. The two then headed upstairs, finding Mary and Ricky asleep.

On Holman's orders, Cole grabbed Ricky and stuffed him in a closet. Holman forced Mary, crying and fighting, into a back room and onto a bed, ripped off her underwear, and began to rape her. Cole went to an adjacent room and waited, closing the bedroom door behind him. Holman then emerged several minutes later and offered Cole a turn, but he declined. Holman returned to the room to rape Mary again. Mary cried out and struggled for a time, and then fell silent, suffocated by Holman's hand.

When Holman finally left the bedroom, he and Cole rummaged through the house. Finding nothing of value, they left. Ricky heard everything from the closet. When he emerged he found Mary on the bed, a white substance flowing from her mouth, but he did not understand she was dead. The next morning Ricky told a neighbor what had happened. The neighbor found Mary lying on the bed with her dress pulled up. An autopsy revealed Mary had been murdered by asphyxia and found semen in her bruised vaginal canal. Several witnesses testified at trial that they saw Holman and Cole at Mary's home the night of the murder. Both Cole and Holman confessed and gave detailed statements. Holman essentially admitted the foregoing facts, except he claimed Cole, not he, suffocated Mary.

In separate trials, Holman and Cole were found guilty of murder, rape, residential burglary, robbery, and home invasion. Explicitly finding Holman had suffocated Mary, the trial judge sentenced him to natural life in prison (life without possibility of parole) for murder, concurrent extended terms of 60 years each for rape and home invasion, and 30 years for residential burglary. Cole, whom the judge found less responsible for the murder, was sentenced to 40 years for murder, concurrent terms of 30 years for rape and home invasion, and 15 years for the burglary.

Represented by separate appellate counsel, Holman and Cole appealed. The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed Holman's convictions, although it reduced the sentences for rape and home invasion to 30 years. However, the court reversed Cole's convictions because his statements were the fruit of an illegal arrest. People v. Cole, 168 Ill.App.3d 172, 118 Ill.Dec. 965, 972-74, 522 N.E.2d 635, 642-44 (1988). Holman's appellate attorney had not challenged the suppression rulings. See People v. Holman, 250 Ill.App.3d 503, 189 Ill.Dec. 905, 907, 620 N.E.2d 1222, 1224 (1993).

Holman later petitioned for post-conviction relief in state court alleging that (1) the failure of his appellate counsel to challenge the admission of his post-arrest statements on appeal constituted ineffective assistance of appellate counsel; (2) the Illinois sentencing scheme authorizing a natural life sentence gives judges inappropriate discretion to impose a life sentence rather than a determinate extended term; and (3) the Illinois statute authorizing a natural life sentence is unconstitutionally vague. The petition was denied and the denial affirmed on appeal. Id., 189 Ill.Dec. at 917, 620 N.E.2d at 1234. The Supreme Courts of both Illinois and the United States denied further review. People v. Holman, 153 Ill.2d 564, 191 Ill.Dec. 624, 624 N.E.2d 812 (1993); Holman v. Illinois, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1652, 128 L.Ed.2d 370 (1994).

On January 24, 1995, Holman filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in federal district court raising the three issues previously argued in his unsuccessful petition for state post-conviction relief. The district court denied Holman's petition and he appeals. We first address Holman's two-part attack on the Illinois sentencing scheme and then turn to his ineffective assistance claim.

II.

Under Illinois law, when a sentencing judge determines that a murder for which a defendant was convicted was "accompanied by exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty," he may choose either of two sentencing options. He may impose a natural life prison term without possibility of release. ILCS ch. 730, para. 5/5-8-1(a)(1)(b) (1995). Or he may impose a determinate extended prison sentence of not less than 40 and not more than 80 years. Id. paras. 5-5-3.2(b)(2) and 5-8-2(a)(1). The Illinois Supreme Court has held that the "exceptionally brutal" language which triggers either a natural life term or an extended term of years is identical. People v. Andrews, 132 Ill.2d 451, 139 Ill.Dec. 469, 475, 548 N.E.2d 1025, 1031 (1989).

A.

Holman contends this sentencing scheme invites arbitrariness and disparate treatment of similarly situated offenders and as such violates the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. For support he directs us to the dissent in Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957, 1009-10, 111 S.Ct. 2680, 2709-10, 115 L.Ed.2d 836 (1991) (dissenting opinion), for the proposition that a natural life sentence cannot be imposed arbitrarily, and to Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 103 S.Ct. 3001, 77 L.Ed.2d 637 (1983), Hutto v. Davis, 454 U.S. 370, 102 S.Ct. 703, 70 L.Ed.2d 556 (1982), and Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263, 100 S.Ct. 1133, 63 L.Ed.2d 382 (1980), for the assertion that criminal sentences must be proportional. These cases addressed a type of arbitrariness or disparate treatment--the imposition of allegedly disproportionate sentences--and whether that is proscribed by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. In Harmelin a splintered Supreme Court affirmed an exceedingly narrow proportionality element as part of the Eighth Amendment analysis. "The Eighth Amendment," wrote Justice Kennedy in a concurrence defining the limits of the proportionality principle, "does not require strict proportionality between crime and sentence. Rather, it forbids only extreme sentences that are 'grossly disproportionate' to the crime." 501 U.S. at 1001, 111 S.Ct. at 2705 (Kennedy, J., concurring).

Holman does not challenge his sentence as disproportionate under the Eighth Amendment, and wisely so. Despite disagreement over the standard of review, the Harmelin majority agreed that a mandatory life sentence for a first-time felon convicted of possessing 650 grams of cocaine was not cruel and unusual punishment. Id. at 994-96, 111 S.Ct. at 2700-02. With Harmelin as a point of reference, there is no chance that Holman's life sentence for the rape and murder of a 75-year-old woman violates the Eighth Amendment. Holman seems to urge the creation of a more exacting proportionality standard under the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses. We decline the invitation. The Eighth Amendment explicitly addresses the constitutionality of punishments. Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 273, 114 S.Ct. 807, 813, 127 L.Ed.2d 114 (1994), holds that "[w]here a particular amendment [to the Constitution] 'provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection' against a particular sort of government behavior, 'that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of substantive due process, must be the guide for analyzing these claims.' " (quoting Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 1871, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989)); see also Kernats v. O'Sullivan, 35 F.3d 1171, 1182 (7th Cir.1994) ("[C]laims alleging substantive due process violations often are more appropriately analyzed under the more specific guarantees of the various provisions of the Bill of Rights."); Armendariz v. Penman, 75 F.3d 1311, 1325-26 (9th Cir.1996) ("Substantive due process analysis has no place in contexts already addressed by explicit textual provisions of constitutional protection...."). This principle, which in this context also applies to an equal protection claim, counsels against opening a new avenue under the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses for challenging the proportionality of sentences. Cf. United States v. Marshall, 908 F.2d 1312, 1320 (7th Cir.1990) (en banc) ("This is not an appropriate case for the deployment of that elusive doctrine [i.e., substantive due process].").

As in United States v. Marshall, 908 F.2d 1312, Holman's due process and equal protection attack on the entire Illinois sentencing scheme is not about his own sentence. Rather, he objects to the possibility that others might receive sentences too long or too short. "But these are only possibilities, which have nothing to do with [Holman's] sentence[ ]." Id. at 1320. Holman's sentence of natural life imprisonment for murder is eminently rational. Illinois has the highest interest in meting out severe punishment for such brutality, both to deter others of similar moral depravity from committing like crimes and to prevent repeat offenses. It has...