Ingram v. Warden, Holman Corr. Facility

• Docket Number: 22-11459
• Decision Date: 06 September 2023
• Citation: 80 F.4th 1304
• Parties: Robert Shawn INGRAM, Petitioner-Appellant, v. WARDEN, HOLMAN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

80 F.4th 1304

Robert Shawn INGRAM, Petitioner-Appellant, v. WARDEN, HOLMAN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 22-11459

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

Filed: September 6, 2023

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, D.C.Docket No. 1:17-cv-01464-LSC, L. Scott Coogler, Chief U.S. District Judge

John Anthony Palombi, Lucie T. Butner, Donna Venable, Federal Defender Program, Inc., Middle District of Alabama, Montgomery, AL, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Beth Jackson Hughes, Edmund Gerard LaCour, Jr., Alexander Barrett Bowdre, Stephen Frisby, Alabama Attorney General's Office, Montgomery, AL, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before Jordan, Branch, and Grant, Circuit Judges.

Jordan, Circuit Judge:

When Robert Shawn Ingram was charged in Alabama with the 1993 capital murder of Gregory Huguley, he immediately began cooperating.Acting without an attorney, he secured a plea agreement with the state.He agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of murder and receive a parole-eligible sentence of life imprisonment.In exchange, he would testify against his three co-defendants.

After Mr. Ingram obtained counsel, one of the co-defendants convinced him that they would all be acquitted if they remained silent: "Nobody talks, everybody walks."Against the advice of his attorneys, Mr. Ingram refused to perform his part of the plea agreement and testify at the trial of one of his co-defendants.The state then declared the agreement void and tried him for capital murder.The jury found him guilty, and the trial court—following the jury's recommendation—sentenced him to death.

After his conviction and sentence were upheld on direct appeal, Mr. Ingram sought state post-conviction relief.As relevant here, he asserted that his attorneys rendered ineffective assistance by failing to properly advise him about the risks of not following through with his plea agreement and by not doing enough to persuade him to testify against his co-defendant.The Alabama courts rejected this ineffectiveness claim, ruling in part that Mr. Ingram could not show prejudice resulting from his attorneys' conduct.

The district court denied Mr. Ingram's federal habeas corpus petition, concluding that the decision of the Alabama courts was not an unreasonable application of applicable Supreme Court precedent and was not based on an unreasonable determination of the facts.See28 U.S.C. §§ 2254(d)(1)-(2).Following our review of the record, and with the benefit of oral argument, we agree and affirm.

I

On July 31, 1993, Mr. Ingram and three others—Anthony Boyd, Moneek Ackles, and Dwinaune Quintay Cox—kidnapped Mr. Huguley at gunpoint from a public street in Anniston, Alabama because he had failed to pay $200 for crack cocaine that they had sold to him.SeeIngram v. State, 779 So. 2d 1225, 1238(Ala. Crim. App.1999).Mr. Ingram and his co-defendants took Mr. Huguley to a baseball field in a rural area and, while he was pleading for his life, they"taped him to a bench, doused him with gasoline, set him on fire, and burned him to death."Id.Mr. Ingram was a principal actor in the murder—he wielded the gun, used force to effect the kidnapping, poured the gasoline, and lit it with a match.Seeid.After Mr. Huguley had been set on fire, Mr. Ingram and his co-defendants stood around for approximately 20 minutes and watched him burn to death.Seeid.

Mr. Huguley's body was found the next morning.Shortly thereafter, Mr. Ingram and his three co-defendants were identified as having been involved in the murder.Mr. Ingram immediately began cooperating with the authorities and gave a number of statements admitting his involvement in the murder.Mr. Ingram was then charged with the capital murder of Mr. Huguley during a kidnapping.

A

Before his trial, Mr. Ingram entered into a self-negotiated plea agreement with the state.Pursuant to the agreement, Mr. Ingram would plead guilty to a lesser-included offense of murder and receive a parole-eligible life sentence.In exchange, he would cooperate with the state's investigation and testify against his co-defendants.

The plea agreement provided that it would become "null and void" if Mr. Ingram did not testify against his co-defendants or failed to cooperate with the state's investigation.Given what later transpired, that language in the agreement proved to have significant consequences.

Mr. Ingram and his co-defendants were incarcerated together at the county jail.During jailhouse conversations, one of the co-defendants, Mr. Ackles—who had not given a statement to the police—convinced the others, including Mr. Ingram, that the state's case against them was weak, and that if they did not testify, none of them would be convicted.Mr. Ackles' advice was simple: "Nobody talks, everybody walks."

Mr. Boyd's trial was the first to go forward.When the time came for Mr. Ingram to fulfill his plea agreement by testifying against Mr. Boyd, he refused.At that time, Mr. Ingram was represented by Jeb Fannin and Mark Nelson, who did not learn of his decision to not testify until he took the stand on the second day of Mr. Boyd's trial.¹

Once Mr. Ingram announced his refusal to testify, the trial court gave him the opportunity to meet with his attorneys to discuss his decision to renege on his plea agreement.Mr. Ingram told his attorneys that Mr. Ackles had come up with a plan—if they all remained quiet they would "all go home."He also explained that he did not want to testify against Mr. Boyd because he did not want to be labeled a "snitch"—"you don't last in the penitentiary when you get a label like that."The attorneys advised and urged Mr. Ingram to honor the plea agreement and "explained to him what could happen to him if he did not testify against [Mr.] Boyd—i.e., that he could receive the death penalty."The attorneys also "warned him that one of his [co-defendants] would take the [s]tate's offer if he did not want to take it[.]"

Mr. Ingram, however, was "adamant in his decision" and Mr. Fannin explained that he and Mr. Nelson could not "twist his arm and make him testify."The attorneys told Mr. Ingram that it was his decision whether to follow through with his plea agreement and testify against Mr. Boyd.

After Mr. Ingram had an opportunity to meet with his attorneys, everyone appeared before the trial court.One of the prosecutors told the trial court that the state was viewing Mr. Ingram's failure to testify against Mr. Boyd as a breach of the plea agreement.The prosecutor also informed the trial court that the state would try Mr. Ingram for capital murder, that Mr. Ingram had given a "confession" admitting his involvement in the crime, and that the prosecution intended to use his statements against him at trial.Mr. Nelson told the trial court that he and Mr. Fannin had met with Mr. Ingram and had gone "over all the options and all the possible punishments," and that Mr. Ingram said he understood but "did not wish to testify."

The trial court then engaged in a colloquy with Mr. Ingram to ensure that he knew what he was doing and understood the consequences of his decision.The trial court asked him whether he understood that murder carried with it a sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole, while capital murder carried with it either a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole or a sentence of death.The trial court also explained that the state was going to view his decision to not testify as a breach of the plea agreement and was going to prosecute him for capital murder.

Mr. Ingram repeatedly said that he understood and maintained that he wanted to exercise his right to remain silent.The trial court specifically cautioned him that he was "deciding [his] fate . . . to some extent" by breaching the plea agreement, and gave him a final chance to change his mind, but he continued to refuse to testify against Mr. Boyd.The trial court determined that he understood what he was doing and what he was giving up.

At the end of the day, Mr. Ingram did not testify against Mr. Boyd.As a result, the state rescinded the plea agreement.²

The state subsequently tried Mr. Ingram for capital murder.SeeIngram, 779 So. 2d at 1237.The state presented overwhelming evidence of his guilt at trial, and the jury found him guilty.The jury recommended a sentence of death, and the trial court followed that recommendation.

On direct appeal, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Mr. Ingram's conviction and death sentence.Seeid. at 1282-83.So did the Alabama Supreme Court.SeeEx parte Ingram, 779 So. 2d 1283, 1285(Ala.2000), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 1193, 121 S.Ct. 1194, 149 L.Ed.2d 109(2001).

B

After his direct appeal concluded, Mr. Ingram filed a petition for post-conviction relief under Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure.He alleged, in part, that his attorneys had rendered ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674(1984), and its progeny by failing to properly advise him about the risks of not following through with his plea agreement and by not doing enough to persuade him to testify against Mr. Boyd.

Following a series of appeals and remands, the state post-conviction court held an evidentiary hearing.With respect to the ineffectiveness claim, it heard testimony from Mr. Fannin (one of Mr. Ingram's former attorneys), Mr. Ingram, and several of Mr. Ingram's family members.

Mr. Fannin testified that, leading up to Mr. Boyd's trial, he had hoped that Mr. Ingram would uphold his plea agreement.He explained that he had conversations with Mr. Ingram about testifying against Mr. Boyd.Although he could not specifically remember those conversations from 29 years ago, he said that he"would have made [Mr. Ingram] aware of the evidence and his chances so to speak."

In addition, Mr. Fannin testified that he and Mr. Nelson were not aware that Mr....