Lancaster v. Metrish

• Decision Date: 27 August 2012
• Docket Number: No. 10–2112.,10–2112.
• Citation: 683 F.3d 740
• Parties: Burt LANCASTER, Petitioner–Appellant, v. Linda METRISH, Michigan Department of Corrections, and Patricia L. Caruso, Director, Respondents–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

683 F.3d 740

Burt LANCASTER, Petitioner–Appellant,

v.Linda METRISH, Michigan Department of Corrections, and Patricia L. Caruso, Director, Respondents–Appellees.

No. 10–2112.

United States Court of Appeals,Sixth Circuit.

June 29, 2012.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Aug. 27, 2012.^*

ON BRIEF:Kenneth M. Mogill, Mogill, Posner & Cohen, Lake Orion, Michigan, for Appellant. Laura Moody, Office of the Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellees.

Before: BATCHELDER, Chief Judge; CLAY and GILMAN, Circuit Judges.

GILMAN, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which CLAY, J., joined. BATCHELDER, C.J. (pp. 754–57), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge.

Burt Lancaster appeals from the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. In 1993, Lancaster was charged by the state of Michigan with first-degree murder and with possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. At his 1994 jury trial, he was convicted on both counts despite his asserted defenses of insanity and diminished capacity. The judgment was later overturned, however, due to an error by the State during jury selection (a Batson violation).

When Lancaster was retried in 2005, he opted to be tried without a jury. Lancaster had planned to limit his defense in the second trial to that of diminished capacity. But the trial court prohibited Lancaster from asserting the defense because, in the interim between his two trials, the Michigan Supreme Court had abolished the diminished-capacity defense in the case of People v. Carpenter, 464 Mich. 223, 627 N.W.2d 276 (2001). Lancaster was once again convicted and sentenced to life plus an additional two years in prison.

In his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, Lancaster claims that his right to due process was violated by the state court's retroactive application of Carpenter. The district court denied his petition. For the reasons set forth below, we REVERSE the decision of the district court and GRANT Lancaster's petition for a writ of habeas corpus unless the State commences a new trial within 180 days of this Opinion in which Lancaster is permitted to assert the defense of diminished capacity.

I. BACKGROUND

On April 23, 1993, Lancaster, a former Detroit police officer with a long history of mental illness, shot and killed his girlfriend, Toni King, in the parking lot of a shopping plaza in Southfield, Michigan. He was charged with first-degree murder, in violation of M.C.L. § 750.316, and with possessing a firearm in the commission of a felony, in violation of M.C.L. § 750.227. At his 1994 jury trial in state court, Lancaster admitted that he had killed his girlfriend, but asserted the defenses of insanity and diminished capacity. The jury rejected these defenses and convicted him on both counts.

After exhausting his appeals in state court, Lancaster filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. He raised several claims, including a claim under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), in which he contended that the State had used one of its peremptory challenges to improperly exclude an African–American juror based on the juror's race. The district court conditionally granted the writ on the basis of Lancaster's Batson claim. This court affirmed. Lancaster v. Adams, 324 F.3d 423, 427 (6th Cir.2003).

Lancaster was retried in state court in 2005 on the same charges. This time, he waived his right to a jury trial. He also limited his defense to that of diminished capacity, abandoning his alternative defense of insanity. The diminished-capacity defense

allows a defendant, even though legally sane, to offer evidence of some mental abnormality to negate the specific intent required to commit a particular crime. The theory is that if because of mental disease or defect a defendant cannot form the specific state of mind required as an essential element of a crime, he may be convicted only of a lower grade of the offense not requiring that particular mental element.

Carpenter, 627 N.W.2d at 280 (brackets, citation, and internal quotation marks omitted).

In Carpenter, however, the Michigan Supreme Court held that diminished capacity was no longer a valid defense under Michigan law as a result of the 1975 enactment by the state legislature of a statutory framework for the insanity defense. Id. at 285. The Michigan trial court in Lancaster's case decided that Carpenter applied retroactively, thus prohibiting Lancaster from asserting the diminished-capacity defense at his second trial. Lancaster sought an interlocutory appeal from the trial court's order that precluded him from pursuing the defense of diminished capacity. But both the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court declined to consider the merits of the appeal. Lancaster was subsequently convicted on both charges at the conclusion of the bench trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder conviction, to be served consecutively to two years' imprisonment for the felony-firearm conviction.

After exhausting his state-court remedies, Lancaster filed a § 2254 habeas petition in the district court. In his petition, he argues that the Michigan Supreme Court's abolition of the diminished-capacity defense was a substantive change in state law and that, by applying the change retroactively, the trial court violated his right to due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The district court denied Lancaster's petition, reasoning that the abolition of the diminished-capacity defense was foreseeable because the defense was not well-established in Michigan law. It then granted a certificate of appealability on the issue, and this timely appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS

A. Standard of review

“We review the district court's legal conclusions in a habeas proceeding de novo and its factual findings under the clear-error standard.” Davis v. Lafler, 658 F.3d 525, 530 (6th Cir.2011). “Because the Petition [in this case] was filed after April 24, 1996, the effective date of the Anti–Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (‘AEDPA’), our review of the decisions of the state trial and appellate courts is governed by AEDPA.” Lancaster v. Adams, 324 F.3d 423, 428 (6th Cir.2003).

AEDPA provides in pertinent part that

[a]n 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 ... 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....28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). “A state court decision may be an ‘unreasonable application’ of clearly established Supreme Court precedent ‘if the state court identifies the correct governing legal rule from the Supreme Court's cases but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular case’ or ‘if the state court ... unreasonably refuses to extend that principle to a new context where it should apply.’ ” Lancaster, 324 F.3d at 429 (alterations omitted) (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 407, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000)).

B. The retroactive application of Carpenter violated Lancaster's right to due process

Lancaster claims that his right to due process was violated by the state trial court's retroactive application of the Michigan Supreme Court's 2001 decision in Carpenter. The United States Supreme Court “has often recognized the basic [due process] principle that a criminal statute must give fair warning of the conduct that it makes a crime.” Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451, 457, 121 S.Ct. 1693, 149 L.Ed.2d 697 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). This “federal right turns upon ... the appearance to the individual of the status of state law as of that moment [when the crime was allegedly committed].” Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 354, 84 S.Ct. 1697, 12 L.Ed.2d 894 (1964) (internal quotation marks omitted).

“[A] judicial alteration of a common law doctrine of criminal law violates the principle of fair warning, and hence must not be given retroactive effect, only where it is ‘unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.’ ” Rogers, 532 U.S. at 462, 121 S.Ct. 1693 (quoting Bouie, 378 U.S. at 354, 84 S.Ct. 1697). Put another way, “[w]hen a state court overrules a consistent line” of decisions interpreting a criminal statute or common law and applies that decision “retroactively to subject a person to criminal liability for past conduct, the effect is to deprive him of due process of law.” Bouie, 378 U.S. at 354–55, 84 S.Ct. 1697. This tenet of due process is the judicial counterpart to the Ex Post Facto Clause found in Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which applies only to legislatures. Rogers, 532 U.S. at 456, 121 S.Ct. 1693 (“[L]imitations on ex post facto judicial decisionmaking are inherent in the notion of due process.”). “Indeed, an unforeseeable judicial enlargement of a criminal statute, applied retroactively, operates precisely like an ex post facto law, such as Art. I, s[.] 10, of the Constitution forbids.” Bouie, 378 U.S. at 353, 84 S.Ct. 1697.

Here, Lancaster was deprived of the defense of diminished capacity by the retroactive application of Carpenter. The Ex Post Facto Clause prohibits a state legislature from making certain changes in criminal statutes retroactive, including changes that “deprive[ ] one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed.” Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U.S. 37, 42, 110 S.Ct. 2715, 111 L.Ed.2d 30 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted). Because...