Knoefel v. Phillips

• Decision Date: 17 June 2022
• Docket Number: 1:20-cv-1529
• Parties: KEVIN KNOEFEL, Petitioner, v. WARDEN MICHAEL PHILLIPS, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

KEVIN KNOEFEL, Petitioner, v. WARDEN MICHAEL PHILLIPS, Defendant.

No. 1:20-cv-1529

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Eastern Division

June 17, 2022

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

BRIDGET M. BRENNAN, JUDGE.

This matter appears before the Court on objections to the Report and Recommendation (“R&R”) of the Magistrate Judge (Doc. No. 10) filed by Petitioner Kevin Knoefel.^[1] Upon due consideration, the Court overrules the objections and adopts the Report and recommended findings and conclusions of the Magistrate Judge and incorporates them herein. Therefore, it is ordered that the petition is hereby DENIED, and this matter is hereby DISMISSED.

I. STANDARD OF REVIEW

When a party timely objects to a Magistrate Judge's report and recommendation on a dispositive matter, the district court must conduct a de novo review of the portions of the report and recommendation to which a proper objection is made. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C) (“A judge of the court shall make a de novo determination of those portions of the report or specified proposed findings or recommendations to which objection is made.”). After review, the district judge “must consider timely objections and modify or set aside any part of the order that is clearly erroneous or is contrary to law.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 72(a).

A general objection - “[a]n ‘objection' that does nothing more than state a disagreement with a magistrate's suggested resolution, or simply summarizes what has been presented before” - is not considered a proper objection for the district court's de novo review. Aldrich v. Bock, 327 F.Supp.2d 743, 747 (E.D. Mich. 2004); see also LR 72.3(b) (stating that any objecting party shall file “written objections which shall specifically identify the portions of the proposed findings, recommendations, or report to which objection is made and the basis for such objections”). A general objection to an R&R has the same effect as a failure to object: a general objection waives de novo review by the district court and any later appellate review of the district court's decision. Aldrich, 327 F.Supp.2d at 747-48.

In conducting its de novo review in the habeas context, this Court must be mindful of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (“AEDPA”), which provides:

An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim-

1. resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or

2. resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Section 2254(d) reflects the view that “[t]he writ of habeas corpus is an ‘extraordinary remedy' that guards only against ‘extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice system.'” Shinn v. Ramirez, 142 S.Ct. 1718, 1731 (2022) (quoting Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 102-103 (2011).

II. FIRST CLAIM FOR RELIEF: INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL

Petitioner raises three objections to the R&R's analysis of his First Claim for Relief: Denial of Effective Assistance of Counsel.

First, Petitioner challenges the Magistrate Judge's finding that his ineffective assistance of counsel claim was meritless. The objection reads as follows:

Petitioner does not dispute the legal standard set forth in the Magistrate's Report and recommendation. However, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254(b), the Ohio Courts[] unreasonably determined that Petitioner failed to meet the requirements under Strickland. Petitioner raised legitimate, factual issues regarding the ineffectiveness of counsel. The most egregious being the complete disregard for Petitioner's challenge to effectiveness outlined in his Petition for Post-Conviction Relief. It was objectively unreasonable to find that counsel was effective.

(Doc. No. 11 at PageID 5127.)

This objection is hardly more than a general objection, as it fails to identify any specific problems with the Magistrate Judge's analysis. See Aldrich, 327 F.Supp.2d at 747. But to the extent it is more than a general objection, the objection fails. In the R&R, the Magistrate Judge devotes eight pages to addressing the merits of the ineffective assistance of counsel claim, providing analysis for each reason Petitioner claims he was robbed of effective counsel. And after a thorough review of this analysis, the Court adopts this portion of the R&R. As the R&R notes (and Plaintiff concedes in his objection), Plaintiff must satisfy a demanding standard to prevail because the deferential Strickland and AEDPA standards require that he prove - not that counsel's actions were merely unreasonable - but that there is no reasonable argument that counsel satisfied Strickland's deferential standard. Harrington, 562 U.S. at 105. Here, the R&R correctly concludes that Plaintiff cannot satisfy this difficult standard.

Second, Petitioner alleges that the States Court's conclusion “that Petitioner could not challenge ineffectiveness in his Post-Conviction proceedings, due to res judicata, was unreasonable.”^[2] (Doc. No. 11 at PageID 5127.) Again, this objection fails to identify any deficiency in any of the Magistrate Judge's reasons for denying relief from the state courts' findings on res judicata. Specifically, the R&R articulates that this is not a cognizable claim for habeas relief because it is a state law claim, as opposed to a federal habeas claim. Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 67-68 (1991) (“Today, we reemphasize that it is not the province of a federal habeas court to reexamine state-court determinations on state-law questions. In conducting habeas review, a federal court is limited to deciding whether a conviction violated the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.); Landrum v. Mitchell, 625 F.3d 905, 934 (6th Cir. 2010) (finding that an Ohio court's application of res judicata was an independent state ground, which foreclosed habeas relief). Further, the R&R notes that if this claim were cognizable, it is meritless because the appellate court overruled the trial court's application of res judicata as to most of his ineffective assistance arguments and then conducted an independent review of them on the merits. (Doc. No. 7-2 at Page ID 1840-42.) And for the one ineffective assistance argument that the appellate court determined the lower court properly applied res judicata, the appellate court found that the issue was fully litigated and reviewed by another appellate court. (Id. at PageID 1840; Doc. No. 7-1 at PageID 355-57.) After reviewing the caselaw and record, the Court adopts these reasons for denying relief due to any issues surrounding the state courts' application of res judicata.

Third, in his last ineffective assistance of counsel objection, Plaintiff asserts that regardless of whether his claims pass scrutiny under Strickland and the AEDPA, “his claims can still survive if failure to consider them will result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice.”

(Doc. No. 11 at Page ID 5128.) Petitioner then explains that he “is serving a life term with no ability to hold his trial counsel accountable for his ineffectiveness, ” and “[i]t would be a miscarriage of justice if he were not given the opportunity to be heard on this claim in his Habeas

Petition.” (Id.) This objection fails because multiple courts have reviewed - and found meritless - his ineffective assistance of counsel claim, including the Magistrate Judge in the R&R to which he is now objecting. And, as stated above, the Magistrate Judge correctly determined that the state courts' handling of his ineffective assistance of counsel claim did not entitle him to habeas relief. In the end, there is “no miscarriage of justice” here because multiple courts have reviewed this argument and determined that it lacked merit.

III. THIRD CLAIM FOR RELIEF: DUE PROCESS VIOLATION

Petitioner's final objection is related to the Magistrate Judge's findings on his third claim for relief. It reads as...