Lam v. Tanner
| Decision Date | 27 January 2020 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL ACTION NO. 19-01785 SECTION: "A"(1) |
| Parties | THOMAS LAM v. ROBERT TANNER, WARDEN |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana |
Petitioner, Thomas Lam, is a Louisiana state prisoner incarcerated at the Rayburn Correctional Center in Angie, Louisiana. He filed this federal application seeking habeas corpus relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. For the following reasons, IT IS RECOMMENDED that the petition be DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE.
On August 12, 2015, on the second day of his jury trial, petitioner elected to accept a plea bargain offered by the state. Pursuant to that plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to seven offenses and was sentenced as follows: one count of manslaughter, forty years; two counts of attempted second degree murder, forty-five years without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence on each offense; one count of armed robbery with a firearm, forty-five years without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence; one count of possession of alprazolam, five years; one count of possession of oxycodone, five years; and one count of possession of morphine, five years. It was ordered that those sentences run concurrently.1
On August 3, 2016, petitioner filed an application for post-conviction relief with the state district court.2 That application was denied on October 20, 2017.3 His related writ applicationswere then denied by the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal on December 13, 2017,4 and the Louisiana Supreme Court on February 11, 2019.5
On February 21, 2019, petitioner filed the instant federal application seeking habeas corpus relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254.6 The state filed a response conceding that the application is timely and that petitioner exhausted his remedies in the state courts; however, the state argued that petitioner's claims should be denied on the merits.7 Petitioner filed a reply to the state's response.8
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA") comprehensively overhauled federal habeas corpus legislation, including 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Amended subsections 2254(d)(1) and (2) contain revised standards of review for pure questions of fact, pure questions of law, and mixed questions of both. The amendments 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, 693 (2002); accord Langley v. Prince, 926 F.3d 145, 155 (5th Cir. 2019) ().
As to pure questions of fact, factual findings are presumed to be correct and a federal court will give deference to the state court's decision unless it "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)(2); see also 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1) ( ).
As to pure questions of law and mixed questions of law and fact, a federal court must defer to the state court's decision on the merits of such a claim unless that decision "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Courts have held that the "'contrary to' and 'unreasonable application' clauses [of § 2254(d)(1)] have independent meaning." Bell, 535 U.S. at 694.
Regarding the "contrary to" clause, the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has explained:
A state court decision is contrary to clearly established precedent if the state court applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in the [United States] Supreme Court's cases. A state-court decision will also be contrary to clearly established precedent if the state court confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of the [United States] Supreme Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from [United States] Supreme Court precedent.
Wooten v. Thaler, 598 F.3d 215, 218 (5th Cir. 2010) ().
Regarding the "unreasonable application" clause, the United States Supreme Court has held: "[A] state-court decision is an unreasonable application of our clearly established precedent if it correctly identifies the governing legal rule but applies that rule unreasonably to the facts of a particular prisoner's case." White v. Woodall, 572 U.S. 415, 426 (2014). However, a federalhabeas court must be mindful that "an unreasonable application is different from an incorrect one." Bell, 535 U.S. at 694; accord Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 102-03 (2011) ; Langley, 926 F.3d at 156 (); Puckett v. Epps, 641 F.3d 657, 663 (5th Cir. 2011) (). Therefore:
"[T]he [AEDPA's] relitigation bar forecloses relief unless the prisoner can show the state court was so wrong that the error was well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement. In other words, the unreasonable-application exception asks whether it is beyond the realm of possibility that a fairminded jurist could agree with the state court.
Langley, 926 F.3d at 156 (citations and quotation marks omitted). "Under AEDPA's relitigation bar, the very existence of reasonable disagreement forecloses relief." Id. at 170.
Further, the Supreme Court has expressly cautioned:
Section 2254(d)(1) provides a remedy for instances in which a state court unreasonably applies this Court's precedent; it does not require state courts to extend that precedent or license federal courts to treat the failure to do so as error. Thus, if a habeas court must extend a rationale before it can apply to the facts at hand, then by definition the rationale was not clearly established at the time of the state-court decision. AEDPA's carefully constructed framework would be undermined if habeas courts introduced rules not clearly established under the guise of extensions to existing law.
Woodall, 572 U.S. at 426 (citations and quotation marks omitted). Therefore, when the Supreme Court's "cases give no clear answer to the question presented, let alone one in [the petitioner's]favor, it cannot be said that the state court unreasonably applied clearly established Federal law." Wright v. Van Patten, 552 U.S. 120, 126 (2008) (quotation marks and brackets omitted).
In summary, "AEDPA prevents defendants - and federal courts - from using federal habeas corpus review as a vehicle to second-guess the reasonable decisions of state courts." Renico v. Lett, 559 U.S. 766, 779 (2010) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court has expressly warned that although "some federal judges find [28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)] too confining," it is nevertheless clear that "all federal judges must obey" the law and apply the strictly deferential standards of review mandated therein. Woodall, 572 U.S. at 417.
Two of petitioner's claims concern purported ineffective assistance of counsel. He states:
Petitioner was denied his right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution when trial counsel advised Petitioner to plead guilty without notifying him [of] the true nature of the offenses and its required elements.10
He further states:
Petitioner was denied his right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution when trial counsel failed to notify him of relevant facts that prove his innocence. Counsel also failed to comply with his request, and chose to maliciously withhold evidence with the intent to coerce the guilty plea.11
Those claims were denied on the merits by the state courts. The state district court stated:
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