Madej v. Robert
| Decision Date | 29 January 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 07 C 3549,07 C 3549 |
| Parties | GREGORY A. MADEJ, Plaintiff, v. BRADLEY J. ROBERT, as Warden of Centralia Correctional Center, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Petitioner Gregory Madej seeks a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his 80-year extended-term sentence for first-degree murder.1 Madej claims that the sentencing court failed to find that aggravating factors warranting an extended sentence existed beyond a reasonable doubt as required by 725 ILCS 5/111-3(c-5) of the Illinois Code of Criminal Procedure. The state court's defiance of the state sentencing statute's heightened burden of proof requirement, Madej argues, deprived him of his liberty interest under the Due Process Clause. For the reasons explained more fully below, Madej's petition is denied.
The facts in the underlying criminal case are not disputed. Following a bench trial in 1982, Gregory Madej was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder, armed robbery, rape, and deviate sexual assault of 38-year-old Barbara Doyle. People v. Madej, No. 1-04-2467 (Ill. App. Ct. June 30, 2006). The facts presented at trialestablished that Madej was arrested on August 23, 1981, after evading police in a highspeed car chase. Id. The police found both Madej's person and the inside of the vehicle he was driving covered with the victim's blood. Id. The vehicle was later determined to belong to Doyle. Id. The police also found a large knife and the victim's clothing inside the vehicle. Id. Shortly thereafter, Barbara Doyle's naked body was found in an alley on the northwest side of Chicago. Id. She had been stabbed and slashed approximately 34 times, and semen was found in her vagina and rectum. Id. Madej claimed that he had had consensual sex with Doyle on the morning in question, and that he killed her in self-defense during a drug deal gone awry. Id.
The state trial court found Madej guilty of murder, armed robbery, and rape. People v. Madej, 478 N.E.2d 392, 394 (Ill. 1985) (Madej I). Madej waived his right to a jury determination for both capital eligibility and sentencing. Id. at 395. The court accordingly found Madej eligible for the death penalty beyond a reasonable doubt under Illinois' felony murder statute, 720 ILCS 5/9-1(b)(6)(c), because Madej had murdered Doyle in the course of committing two felonies (armed robbery and rape). Id. at 393-94. Following a sentencing hearing, the court sentenced Madej to death on the murder count and concurrent 30-year terms of imprisonment for armed robbery and rape. Id. at 394.
Since the time of the trial, Madej has embarked on a long and convoluted journey seeking both direct and collateral review of his conviction and sentence. Petitioner first appealed directly to the Illinois Supreme Court, which affirmed hisconvictions and sentences. Id. at 401. The United States Supreme Court denied Madej's petition for writ of certiorari in 1985. Madej v. Illinois, 474 U.S. 935 (1985). Petitioner then filed a post-conviction petition in the Circuit Court of Cook County, which was denied. People v. Madej, 685 N.E.2d 908, 914 (Ill. 1997) (Madej II). The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed, and the United States Supreme Court again denied certiorari on April 27, 1998. Madej v. Illinois, 523 U.S. 1098 (1998).
Madej then sought a writ of habeas corpus in this Court, raising thirty-one grounds for relief. United States ex rel. Madej v. Gilmore, 2002 WL 370222 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 8, 2002). The previously-assigned district judge granted the petition in part, and ordered a new capital sentencing hearing in light of the ineffective assistance of counsel that Madej had received at the aggravation/mitigation stage of his sentencing hearing. Id. at *38. The state trial court's death-eligibility finding, however, was left undisturbed. Id. at *29. Before the re-sentencing could occur, then-Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted Petitioner's death sentence to natural life imprisonment. People v. Madej, No. 1-04-2467 (Ill. App. Ct. June 3, 2006). The order of commutation was upheld in People ex rel. Madigan v. Snyder, 804 N.E.2d 546, 559 (Ill. 2004), but the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ordered the State to re-sentence Madej anyway, since he could conceivably receive a sentence less than natural life imprisonment. Madej v. Briley, 371 F.3d 898, 899 (7th Cir. 2004).
At Madej's re-sentencing hearing in June 2004, the parties agreed that, under the first-degree murder sentencing statute, Madej could be sentenced to (1) 20 to 40 years; (2) a 40 to 80 year extended sentence; or (3) natural life. The relevant statesentencing statute provided that first-degree murder is punishable by 20 to 40 years' imprisonment, but if the court finds that the murder was accompanied by "exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty," the court may sentence the defendant to a term of natural life imprisonment. 730 ILCS 5/5-8-1(a)(1)(b). Petitioner argued that under the Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), any extended term sentence could only be imposed after a court found beyond a reasonable doubt that Madej's crime was exceptionally brutal or heinous and indicative of wanton cruelty. People v. Madej, No. 1-04-2467 (Ill. App. Ct. June 30, 2006). The State, relying on the Illinois Supreme Court's decision in People v. Ford, 761 N.E.2d 735 (Ill. 2001), argued that once a defendant has been found death-eligible beyond a reasonable doubt, no available sentence—including an extended-term sentence—could possibly exceed the disputed and prescribed maximum sentence, and therefore Apprendi did not apply. Id. at 738. After declining to impose natural life imprisonment, the court re-sentenced Petitioner to an extended term of 80 years after finding by a preponderance of the evidence that Madej's actions were exceptionally brutal or heinous. Id. The state court did not explicitly find that the state had failed to prove that the crime was exceptionally brutal or heinous beyond a reasonable doubt; instead, the state court did not say one way or the other, and simply found that the state had proven the factor by a preponderance of the evidence.
725 ILCS 5/111-3(c-5). Petitioner contended that section 111-3(c-5) gave rise to a liberty interest, and by refusing to hold the State to the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard, the sentencing court had denied him due process of law in violation of the Supreme Court's decisions in Apprendi and Hicks v. Oklahoma, 447 U.S. 343 (1980). People v. Madej, No. 1-04-2467 (Ill. App. Ct. June 30, 2006). The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the 80-year sentence, holding that Id.
Madej again unsuccessfully petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court for leave to appeal, People v. Madej, No. 103166 (Ill. 2004), as well as the United States Supreme Court for certiorari, Madej v. Illinois, 550 U.S. 972 (2007), thus bringing us up to date on Madej's legal journey. On June 25, 2007, Madej filed the instant habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, raising substantially the same claim that he raised in the state appellate court: namely, that the imposition of an extended-term sentence withoutfinding the existence of exceptionally heinous or brutal conduct beyond a reasonable doubt violated his due process liberty interest. R. 7, Pet'r's Br. ¶ 19.
Madej's § 2254 petition is governed by the provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 322-23 (1997); Benefiel v. Davis, 357 F.3d 655, 659 (7th Cir. 2004). Under the AEDPA, a federal district court may issue a writ of habeas corpus when a prisoner is in state custody pursuant to a state court judgment obtained "in violation of the Constitution or the laws and treaties of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). "The relevant decision for purposes of federal habeas review is the decision of the last state court to rule on the merits of the petitioner's claim." Eichwedel v. Chandler, 696 F.3d 660, 671 (7th Cir. 2012) (internal quotations and citations omitted). Moreover, the Court may only review a state prisoner's habeas claims after he has exhausted his state remedies, see 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A).
The scope of federal review of a habeas petition under § 2254 is narrow, U.S. ex rel. Guirsch v. Battaglia, 2007 WL 4557819, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 20, 2007), and the burden of proof falls on the petitioner to show that he is entitled to relief. Cullen v. Pinholster, –––U.S.–––, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1398 (2011). A federal court may not grant habeas corpus relief unless the state court decision (1) was...
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