Kruelski v. Connecticut Superior Court

• Decision Date: 03 January 2003
• Docket Number: Docket No. 01-2394.
• Parties: Edward KRUELSKI, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. State of CONNECTICUT SUPERIOR COURT FOR THE JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF DANBURY and Geographical Area # 3 at Danbury, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 103

316 F.3d 103

Edward KRUELSKI, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. State of CONNECTICUT SUPERIOR COURT FOR THE JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF DANBURY and Geographical Area # 3 at Danbury, Respondent-Appellee.

Docket No. 01-2394.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: June 18, 2002.

Decided: January 3, 2003.

G. Douglas Nash, State of Connecticut Public Defender Chief of Legal Services, Hamden, CT, appearing for petitioner-appellant.

Robert L. Marconi, Assistant Attorney General, for Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General, New Britain, CT, appearing for respondent-appellee.

Before: CALABRESI, SACK, and B.D. PARKER, Circuit Judges.

Judge SACK concurs in a separate opinion.

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge.

Edward Kruelski appeals the district court's (Chatigny, J.) denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Kruelski argues that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution foreclosed his continued prosecution after the Connecticut trial court, at the close of evidence, acquitted him based on an erroneous interpretation of the applicable statute of limitations. We affirm the district court's denial of the writ.

I.

Edward Kruelski was charged in Connecticut State Superior Court for the Danbury Judicial District with having committed the offense of "offering to make home improvements without being registered," in violation of section 20-427(b)(5) of the Connecticut General Statutes. Before trial, Kruelski filed a Motion to Dismiss claiming that the charge against him was barred by the relevant statute of limitations, section 54-193 of the Connecticut General Statutes. This motion was left undecided by the trial court.

In May 1995, the case was tried to a jury. During the trial, Kruelski called to the stand a police officer, who testified that although the arrest warrant was signed by a judge on August 22, 1994, two days short of the one-year statute of limitations, it did not come to the attention of a police officer until late on the afternoon of August 25, one day after the year had run, and was not served until that same night. After the close of evidence, Kruelski moved for acquittal, arguing both that the State of Connecticut had failed to provide sufficient evidence of the elements of the offense charged and that the State had failed to initiate prosecution within the statute of limitations. The trial court rejected Kruelski's adequacy of the evidence argument, finding that "[t]he State has introduced evidence sufficient to sustain a conviction in this prosecution for violation of section 20-427(b)(5) of the General Statutes." But it granted Kruelski's motion for acquittal based on the statute of limitations. The court was not convinced by the State's contention that the issuance of an arrest warrant by a judge of the Superior Court satisfied the statute of limitations, and held instead that there must be proof that the appropriate police department had received the warrant by the statutory deadline.

The State appealed to the Connecticut Appellate Court, which reversed the trial court's decision on the statute of limitations. The Appellate Court ruled that in order to meet the requirements of a Connecticut statute of limitations, an arrest warrant need only be issued within the time limitations and then executed without unreasonable delay. It sent the case back for a new trial. State v. Kruelski, 41 Conn.App. 476, 677 A.2d 951 (1996).

On remand, Kruelski, relying on the Fifth Amendment's ban on double jeopardy, U.S. Const. amend. V, filed a motion to dismiss the prosecution. Holding that a second trial was permitted under United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 98 S.Ct. 2187, 57 L.Ed.2d 65 (1978), the trial court denied the motion. Kruelski appealed and the Appellate Court, also relying on Scott, affirmed the trial court's decision. State v. Kruelski, 49 Conn.App. 553, 715 A.2d 796 (1998). Kruelski appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court, which affirmed the Appellate Court's decision and its reading of Scott. State v. Kruelski, 250 Conn. 1, 737 A.2d 377 (1999).

In July 2000, Kruelski filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus based on his double jeopardy argument in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. On May 31, 2001, the district court issued a decision denying the petition. Kruelski v. Connecticut Superior Court, 156 F.Supp.2d 185 (D.Conn.2001). The court held that the state trial court's entry of a judgment of acquittal did "not constitute an acquittal barring further prosecution," id. at 188, and that even if it did, the Connecticut Supreme Court's decision was not an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), id. at 190. Kruelski appeals this decision.

II.

We review de novo a district court's denial of habeas corpus relief. Washington v. Schriver, 255 F.3d 45, 52 (2d Cir.2001); Fama v. Comm'r of Corr. Servs., 235 F.3d 804, 808 (2d Cir.2000); Chalmers v. Mitchell, 73 F.3d 1262, 1266 (2d Cir.1996).

The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) revised the conditions under which federal courts may grant habeas relief to a person in state custody. 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Among the AEDPA's new conditions is the requirement that an application for a writ of habeas corpus may be granted only if (1) the state decision "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) the state decision "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented" to the state court. § 2254(d). The facts in this case are not in dispute. Consequently, the writ may be granted only if the Connecticut Supreme Court's decision was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Cf. Williams v. Artuz, 237 F.3d 147, 151-53 (2d Cir.2001).

The concurrence argues that because the AEDPA applies, we should abstain from discussing the correct interpretation of Supreme Court precedent and limit ourselves to the question of whether the Connecticut court's interpretation of that precedent was a reasonable one. But where reasonable minds can differ on a constitutional question, either because the Supreme Court has not yet addressed the issue or because it has addressed it in a way that leaves room for interpretation as to the constitutional rule, we often have an obligation to inform state courts what we believe the correct answer to be.

Comity, as recognized in the AEDPA, mandates that lower federal courts yield to many state court interpretations of federal law even when such interpretations are wrong, so long as they are reasonable. But just as state courts enjoy a special expertise in matters of state law, by which federal courts often wish to be guided,¹ so federal district and circuit courts have a particular knowledge of federal law, which state courts faced with federal questions may want to consult. Given the absence of "reverse" certification from state courts to federal courts of appeals and the minimal likelihood of certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States,² the only way state courts can do this, should they want to, is if federal courts state their views of federal law, even when a different view is not unreasonable. For this reason, it is often appropriate in considering a habeas petition under the AEDPA for the federal court to go through two steps: first, the court determines what the correct interpretation of Supreme Court precedent is; second, if the state court's understanding or application of that precedent is determined to be erroneous, the federal court must still ask whether that error was a reasonable one.³

The Supreme Court has stated that federal courts should take a similar approach, for similar reasons, when deciding claims of qualified immunity from suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, where the question is the reasonableness of the defendant's belief that his or her action was constitutional. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001) ("This is the process for the law's elaboration from case to case, and it is one reason for our insisting upon turning to the existence or nonexistence of a constitutional right as the first inquiry. The law might be deprived of this explanation were a court simply to skip ahead to the question whether the law clearly established that the officer's conduct was unlawful in the circumstances of the case."); see also Poe v. Leonard, 282 F.3d 123, 133 (2d Cir.2002) ("Were we immediately to decide whether [the defendant's] actions were objectively reasonable, we would fail to provide any guidance to supervisors of future [potential plaintiffs] about what the law requires."). These considerations apply pari ratione to a federal court's consideration of state court decisions pursuant to habeas petitions, as governed by the AEDPA.

Under the AEDPA, the result of the first step of the analysis — our conclusions as to the correct interpretation of Supreme Court precedent — will not, of course, be binding on state courts. Mask v. McGinnis, 252 F.3d 85, 90 (2d Cir.2001) (per curiam) (noting that a petitioner cannot win habeas relief solely by demonstrating that the state court unreasonably applied Second Circuit precedent). In fact, what is said in the first step is not binding on federal courts either, since the reasonableness of the state court's application of Supreme Court precedent — the decisive issue under the AEDPA — does not turn on the federal court's view of the correct interpretation of that precedent. Cf. Horne v Coughlin, 178 F.3d 603, 604 (2d Cir.1999) (petition for rehearing).

That the federal court's reading of Supreme Court precedent is dicta does not mean, however, that it is necessarily unreliable. This is not an area in which "the presentation lacks the `concrete adverseness... upon which the court so...