LeBlanc v. Duval, Civ. A. No. 92-10176-NG.
| Decision Date | 27 September 1995 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 92-10176-NG. |
| Citation | 900 F. Supp. 538 |
| Parties | Robert LeBLANC, Petitioner, v. Ronald DUVAL, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts |
Robert LeBlanc, South Walpole, MA, pro se.
Albert F. Cullen, Jr., Cullen & Butters, Boston, MA, for Petitioner.
Gregory I. Massing, Attorney General's Office, Boston, MA, Nancy W. Geary, Attorney General's Office, Criminal Bureau, Boston, MA, for Respondent.
MEMORANDUM AND DECISION
I. INTRODUCTION
On March 23, 1976, a jury found petitioner Robert LeBlanc guilty of the first degree murder of Sgt. Richard F. Halloran of the Boston Police Department, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the conviction. See Commonwealth v. LeBlanc, 373 Mass. 478, 367 N.E.2d 846 (1977).
On May 13, 1988, petitioner filed a pro se motion for a new trial in Superior Court, raising six claims of error. The Superior Court Judge refused to hear the first three claims on the ground that they were not raised at trial. The remaining three claims were rejected on the merits.
On November 1, 1990, petitioner, still pro se, moved before a single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court for leave to appeal and for appointment of counsel. Counsel was appointed and argued the leave to appeal motion before the single justice, who denied it without written opinion.1
On January 8, 1992, petitioner, pro se, filed this petition for writ of habeas corpus asserting the same six claims of error raised in his motion for a new trial. On March 20, 1992, respondent filed a motion to dismiss the petition on the grounds that petitioner had procedurally defaulted on certain of his claims, and had failed to exhaust his state court remedies on any of the claims. On September 10, 1992, this Court, Zobel, J., allowed respondent's motion to dismiss claims A through E, leaving only claim F, which alleged ineffective assistance of counsel.2
On October 13, 1992 petitioner wrote to the Court, requesting reconsideration the Court's decision with respect to claims A and D, and appointment of counsel. On December 3, 1992, the Court appointed counsel to represent petitioner, but did not otherwise act on his request.
On March 8, 1994, petitioner, now represented by counsel, filed a memorandum in support of his petition. The memorandum argues in favor of issuing the writ on the basis of claims A and F of the petition. Since respondent in his opposition has thoroughly addressed both of these claims, I will treat petitioner's memorandum as supporting his motion for reconsideration of the Court's dismissal of claim A, as well as issuance of the writ proper with respect to claim F.
II. PETITIONER'S SANDSTROM CLAIM (CLAIM A)
Petitioner contends that his trial was constitutionally defective because the judge's instructions to the jury permitted jurors to presume the intent element of first degree murder, contrary to the teaching of Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979). The judge's instructions included the following statement:
This statement is almost identical to a statement which the Sandstrom court found to be constitutionally defective because it shifted the burden of proving of an element of the crime, namely intent, from the prosecution to the defense.3
Respondent makes four arguments in support of dismissal of this claim: 1) that it is procedurally barred, 2) that it is barred by the doctrine of Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989) (), 3) that the trial judge's faulty language was cured by other parts of his instruction stating the correct burden of proof, and 4) that any error committed by the trial judge was harmless. I address each argument in turn.
It is by now well settled that claims may not be raised in a habeas corpus petition where they were barred in the state court proceeding by an independent and adequate procedural ground. See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 86-87, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 2506-07, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977). In order for a procedural ground to be adequate, however, it must be "strictly or regularly followed" by the courts of the state invoking it. Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. 578, 587, 108 S.Ct. 1981, 1987, 100 L.Ed.2d 575 (1988); Dugger v. Adams, 489 U.S. 401, 410, n. 6, 109 S.Ct. 1211, 1217 n. 6, 103 L.Ed.2d 435 (1989); Burks v. Dubois, 55 F.3d 712, 716 (1st Cir. 1995) ().
Respondent contends that petitioner's Sandstrom claim is barred because it was rejected by the Superior Court on an independent and adequate procedural ground, namely that petitioner had failed to raise it at trial. However, as petitioner points out, the Supreme Judicial Court has carved out an exception to this rule for Sandstrom-type claims arising out of convictions which became final before Sandstrom was decided. The Court reasoned that the case law prior to Sandstrom provided insufficient guidance for the defendant to have had "a genuine opportunity" to raise the issue at trial. DeJoinville v. Commonwealth, 381 Mass. 246, 250-251, 408 N.E.2d 1353 (1980). See also Commonwealth v. Repoza, 400 Mass. 516, 520, 510 N.E.2d 755 (1987).
Thus, while petitioner does appear to have been found in default by the last state court to review his claim on the merits, it is clear that Massachusetts has not "strictly or regularly" imposed defaults in similar situations. Accordingly, Massachusetts' ground for denying petitioner's claim was not "adequate" within the meaning of Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. at 587, 108 S.Ct. at 1987, and does not, therefore, stand as a bar to this Court's own review.
Such a conclusion is, however, a pyrrhic victory for the petitioner. The very observation which excuses petitioner's failure to object at trial, that trial counsel could not have known that there were grounds to object, arguably undermines his position under the Teague doctrine.
In Teague, a plurality of the Court announced a new standard for determining whether new rules of law should apply retroactively to cases on collateral review. Noting that the principal purpose of habeas corpus review is to insure that state trials are conducted according to the constitutional standards in place at the time, the Teague plurality concluded that, ordinarily, a new rule of constitutional law should not be applied retroactively to scrutinize convictions which became final prior to its announcement. 489 U.S. at 306, 109 S.Ct. at 1073. The plurality found only two narrow exceptions to this general principle of non-retroactivity: where the new rule "places certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal law-making authority to proscribe" or where "it requires observance of those procedures that are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty." Teague, 489 U.S. at 305-310, 109 S.Ct. at 1072-1075. A majority of the Court has since adopted this standard, making it binding precedent. See Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989); Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 488-495, 110 S.Ct. 1257, 1260-1264, 108 L.Ed.2d 415 (1990).
The first question to be answered is whether Teague applies here because Sandstrom, on which petitioner relies, announced a new rule which was not in place when petitioner's conviction became final. Assuming it does, the second question is whether the rule that it announced falls within either of Teagues narrow exceptions.
Candidly, I cannot say that the case law regarding when a "new rule" is announced is unambiguous.4 The cases state that, in the Teague context, a rule is considered "new" if, under a reasonable, good-faith interpretation of existing precedents, a state court would not have felt bound to follow it. Saffle, 494 U.S. at 488, 110 S.Ct. at 1260. The implication is that a state court could have been wrong in its interpretation of existing federal precedents but that unless it was acting unreasonably or in bad faith, its erroneous interpretation of the federal precedents could bar federal review. In the cases after Teague, the Supreme Court has suggested that this characterization of "new" is so broad that it could be found to apply not only to petitioners seeking incremental changes in the law, but also to the application of settled standards to different facts, the prototypical mixed fact law question.5 There is no question that the issue presented by this petition is in the latter category. At what point the application of settled law to new facts gives rise to a new rule remains an open question.
The precedent is helpful, but not dispositive. In DeJoinville, the Supreme Judicial Court concluded that the Sandstrom theory was not "sufficiently developed at the time of ... trial and appeal to afford the petitioner a genuine opportunity to raise his claim." DeJoinville, 381 Mass. at 248, 408 N.E.2d 1353. As the DeJoinville Court noted, Sandstrom relied on a number of prior Supreme Court cases, none of which, by themselves, would have clearly barred the contested instruction. See DeJoinville, 381 Mass. at 248-251, 408 N.E.2d 1353. Two of the cases relied upon by the Sandstrom Court address the constitutionally required burden placed on the prosecution in criminal cases. In In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970), the Court held that the reasonable doubt...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Moore v. Ponte
...the error was harmless. See Libby v. Duval, 19 F.3d at 739-40; Anderson v. Butler, 23 F.3d 593, 597 (1st Cir.1994); LeBlanc v. Duval, 900 F.Supp. 538, 544 (D.Mass.1995). In particular, unless the purported error had a "substantial or injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's v......
- Carlton v. Babbitt, Civ. A. No. 93-1174
-
LeBlanc v. Duval
...and the opinion of the district court below. Essentially for the reasons given by the district court in its opinion, LeBlanc v. Duval, 900 F.Supp. 538 (D.Mass.1996), we agree with the district court's conclusion that the jury instruction constituted harmless error and that petitioner was no......