Hoon v. Iowa, 01-3078.

• Decision Date: 19 December 2002
• Docket Number: No. 01-3078.,01-3078.
• Citation: 313 F.3d 1058
• Parties: Richard Dale HOON, Petitioner/Appellee, v. State of IOWA, Respondent/Appellant, John F. Ault, Warden, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

313 F.3d 1058

Richard Dale HOON, Petitioner/Appellee, v. State of IOWA, Respondent/Appellant, John F. Ault, Warden, Respondent.

No. 01-3078.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: May 13, 2002.

Filed: December 19, 2002.

Thomas W. Andrews, argued, Des Moines, IA, for appellant.

George W. Appleby, argued, Des Moines, IA, for appellee.

Before WOLLMAN, BRIGHT, and JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judges.

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

The State of Iowa appeals from the district court's grant of Richard Dale Hoon's petition for writ of habeas corpus. We reverse and remand with directions to dismiss the petition.

I.

On October 22, 1994, three men robbed Ailleen Foley in her Davenport, Iowa home. The men knocked at Foley's door, and when she answered the door they violently threw open the storm door and two of them entered the house. One of the men threatened Foley with a sawed-off shotgun while the other searched the house. After taking her purse, which contained, among other things, Foley's rosary and rosary case, they left. The men wore masks made of maroon cloth that covered their noses and mouths but left their eyes exposed.

There were no developments in the case until February 1, 1995, when Davenport Police met Timothy Caskey at a Davenport motel. Caskey had Foley's rosary and rosary case in his possession at the time. Later that day, Caskey confessed to the robbery, stating that he and David Carney were the two men who entered Foley's house and that Carney threatened Foley with the shotgun while Caskey searched the house. Caskey told the detectives that on the evening of the robbery he and his then girlfriend, Chandra Wilson, were on the levee near a river boat. They were later joined by two of Caskey's friends. After taking Ms. Wilson to her home, Caskey returned to the levee, where he again met up with the two friends. The three men then drove around the city looking for someone to rob. After seeing the elderly Mrs. Foley sitting near the picture window in her home, the three decided that she would be a suitable victim. In subsequent photo arrays, at deposition, and at trial Foley identified Hoon and Caskey as the men who entered her house.

Caskey and Hoon were tried jointly. Hoon's attorney and the prosecutor agreed that the prosecutor would admit Caskey's confession through the testimony of two police detectives, but that they would not mention Hoon's name. When the detectives testified regarding Caskey's confession, they used words such as "the other individual" or "the other subject" in place of Hoon's name. They testified, among other things, that Caskey stated that he and two other individuals met on a levee near Davenport and planned the crime, that they stole a maroon Chevrolet Malibu, that the three of them drove around in the Malibu looking for someone to rob, and that they used the headliner of the car to make masks. While the detectives never mentioned Hoon's name in their testimony, they stated that Caskey identified Carney as one of the other men.

Caskey's confession was verified at trial in several ways. First, when the Malibu was recovered, Foley's ATM card was recovered from beneath the front seat. Second, Caskey had Foley's rosary and rosary case in his possession. Third, Chandra Wilson testified that Caskey, Carney, and Hoon had met on the levee earlier in the evening and that Carney had driven away in a maroon Malibu.

The Iowa Court of Appeals held that Hoon's counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the admission of Caskey's confession. The state court held that allowing the detectives to replace Hoon's name with "the other individual" while other evidence in the case identified Hoon as that individual violated Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968). The state court also held, however, that Hoon suffered no prejudice from this failure because there was sufficient additional evidence to convict him. Following the state court's ruling, Hoon filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court held that the state court's finding of no prejudice was an unreasonable application of federal law and granted the writ. The state now appeals.

II.

The sole issue we must decide is whether the district court properly concluded that the holding of the Iowa Court of Appeals that Hoon's counsel's failure to object to the admission of Caskey's confession did not amount to ineffective assistance of counsel was an unreasonable application of federal law. Because we conclude that the district court failed to give appropriate deference to the state court's finding that Hoon suffered no prejudice as a result of his counsel's error, we reverse.

We review the district court's legal conclusions de novo and its findings of fact for clear error. Hadley v. Groose, 97 F.3d 1131, 1134 (8th Cir.1996).

In ruling on a petition for habeas corpus, the scope of a federal court's review of a state court's decision is extremely limited. As the Supreme Court recently stated, "The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 modified a federal habeas court's role in reviewing state prisoner applications in order to prevent federal habeas `retrials' and to ensure that state-court convictions are given effect to the extent possible under law." Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685, 122 S.Ct. 1843, 1849, 152 L.Ed.2d 914 (2002). A federal court may grant a writ of habeas corpus to a state prisoner if the state court's decision was either (1) contrary to, or (2) an unreasonable application of federal law as determined by the Supreme Court. Siers v. Weber, 259 F.3d 969, 972 (8th Cir.2001); 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Hoon does not claim that the Iowa state court's decision was contrary to clearly established federal law, but maintains that the state court unreasonably applied federal law to his case. The focus under the unreasonable application test is "whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law is objectively unreasonable." Bell, 122 S.Ct. at 1850. The Supreme Court has repeatedly cautioned that an unreasonable application is different from an incorrect one. Id.; Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 409, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000).

The clearly established federal law to be applied in Hoon's case is found in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). To show his counsel was ineffective under the Strickland standard, Hoon must show that his attorney's performance was deficient and that he suffered prejudice as a result. Siers, 259 F.3d at 974 (citing Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052). We need not inquire into the effectiveness of counsel, however, if we determine that no prejudice resulted from counsel's alleged deficiencies. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 697, 104 S.Ct. 2052; Siers, 259 F.3d at 974. To show prejudice, Hoon would have to show that "there is a reasonable probability that but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result ... would have been different. A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome." Siers, 259 F.3d at 974 (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052). In evaluating the probability of a different result, the court must consider the totality of the evidence. Id.

The Iowa Court of Appeals did not engage in a lengthy discussion of its prejudice analysis in its opinion. After citing Iowa Supreme Court decisions that set forth the prejudice standard announced in Strickland, the court said:

Despite the fact that error was not properly preserved with respect to the testimony given by the police detectives ... we conclude that there was no prejudice entitling Hoon to a new trial on the robbery and burglary charges. There was enough other evidence in the record that would convict Hoon of these crimes.

Presuming, as do we, that the Iowa Court of Appeals based its finding of no prejudice upon a correct application of the Strickland standard, the district court concluded that the finding of no prejudice was unreasonable, concluding that if Caskey's confession were properly redacted by removing all references to the existence of a third person,¹ the confession would no longer implicate Hoon at all. The case would then come down to an evaluation of the credibility of the testimony given by Caskey, who claimed the other man in the house was Carney, and that given by Foley, who identified Hoon as the other man. The district court held that "different juries could reasonably disagree on the question," and that therefore there was a reasonable probability that if Hoon's counsel had objected to the introduction of Caskey's confession, Hoon would have been acquitted.

The district court may have been correct that a jury could have found Caskey more credible than Foley and therefore chosen to believe that Carney was the other man in the house, but that alone is not sufficient to overturn the state court's decision. In order to succeed, Hoon

must do more than show that he would have satisfied Strickland's test if his claim were being analyzed in the first instance, because under § 2254(d)(1), it is not enough to convince a federal habeas court that, in its independent judgment, the state-court decision applied Strickland incorrectly. Rather, he must show that the [Iowa] Court of Appeals applied Strickland to the facts of his case in an objectively unreasonable manner.

Bell, 122 S.Ct. at 1852 (internal citation omitted). Here, even though the district court acknowledged the proper standard of review established in Williams, it did not give the state court's ruling proper deference, but appears to have granted the petition based only on a difference "in its opinion of [the properly redacted confession's] probable effect on the outcome." Siers, 259 F.3d at 975; see also Evans v. Rogerson, 223 F.3d 869, 871 (8th Cir.2000) ("the district court put its own spin on the facts and disregarded...