Magraw v. Roden

• Decision Date: 14 February 2014
• Docket Number: No. 13–1483.,13–1483.
• Citation: 743 F.3d 1
• Parties: David G. MAGRAW, Petitioner, Appellant, v. Gary RODEN, Superintendent, Respondent, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

743 F.3d 1

David G. MAGRAW, Petitioner, Appellant,

v.Gary RODEN, Superintendent, Respondent, Appellee.

No. 13–1483.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Feb. 14, 2014.

Jeffrey M. Brandt, with whom Robinson & Brandt, P.S.C. was on brief, for appellant.

Anne M. Thomas, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Bureau, with whom Martha Coakley, Attorney General, was on brief, for appellee.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, SOUTER,^* Associate Justice, and SELYA, Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This is a habeas proceeding brought by a state prisoner against a Massachusetts correctional official in an effort to secure relief from a conviction and life sentence for second-degree murder. In pursuit of that habeas relief, he advances three discrete claims of constitutional error. After thoughtful consideration, the district court rejected these claims. So do we.

I. BACKGROUND

Because the petitioner's asseverational array includes a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, we rehearse the background facts in the light most flattering to the jury's verdict. See Foxworth v. St. Amand, 570 F.3d 414, 420 (1st Cir.2009). In the summer of 1990, David and Nancy Magraw were in the throes of a nasty divorce. The warring spouses and their attorneys arranged to meet at 2:00 p.m. on July 23, but Nancy Magraw never arrived. After unsuccessfully attempting to ascertain her whereabouts, the attorneys and her husband (the petitioner here) were advised of her death. They immediately went to her home in Walpole, Massachusetts and found her badly bruised body on the living room floor. The police were already at the scene.

An autopsy determined the cause of death to be mechanical asphyxiation due to compression of the neck (and perhaps the mouth and nose). Following further investigation, a state grand jury indicted the petitioner for the slaying. The petitioner's initial trial resulted in his conviction for first-degree murder, but that conviction was set aside on appeal. See Commonwealth v. Magraw, 426 Mass. 589, 690 N.E.2d 400, 401 (1998).

At his second trial, the petitioner argued, inter alia, that the victim had died from natural causes and that, in all events, he was not her killer. The jury rejected these contentions and found the petitioner guilty of second-degree murder.

The petitioner appealed unsuccessfully to the Massachusetts Appeals Court (MAC). See Commonwealth v. Magraw ( Magraw II ), No. 99–P–1937, 793 N.E.2d 403, 2003 WL 21955875, at *1 (Mass.App.Ct. Aug. 15, 2003). The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied his application for leave to seek further appellate review. See Commonwealth v. Magraw, 440 Mass. 1107, 799 N.E.2d 593 (2003) (table). The petitioner then repaired to the federal district court, seeking a writ of habeas corpus. See28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court proved inhospitable to the petitioner's importunings, see Magraw v. Roden ( Magraw III ), No. 09–11534, 2013 WL 1213056, at *6 (D.Mass. Mar. 22, 2013), but issued a certificate of appealability as to three claims, see28 U.S.C. § 2253(c).

After limning the framework for habeas relief, we consider the petitioner's claims of error sequentially.

II. THE HABEAS FRAMEWORK

When (as in this case) the district court has not undertaken independent factfinding, its decision to grant or deny habeas relief engenders de novo review. See Pike v. Guarino, 492 F.3d 61, 68 (1st Cir.2007). The beacon by which a federal habeas court must steer is the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub.L. No. 104–132, § 104, 110 Stat. 1214, 1218–1219, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Where, as here, the state court has adjudicated a petitioner's federal claims on the merits, the federal court may issue the writ if the state-court proceedings “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). Under the AEDPA's unreasonable application standard, a “state court's decision is not vulnerable unless it evinces some increment of incorrectness beyond mere error.” Leftwich v. Maloney, 532 F.3d 20, 23 (1st Cir.2008); accord McCambridge v. Hall, 303 F.3d 24, 36 (1st Cir.2002) (en banc).

III. SUFFICIENCY OF THE EVIDENCE

The petitioner's first claim of error posits that the evidence adduced at his trial was insufficient to support his conviction for second-degree murder. In his view, the evidence failed to establish either that the victim was murdered or that, if a murder occurred, he was the perpetrator.

The constitutional standard for evidentiary sufficiency is familiar. Under clearly established Supreme Court precedent, a conviction must be sustained if, “after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). Although this standard exhibits great respect for the jury's verdict, an inquiring court must nonetheless avoid “evidentiary interpretations and illations that are unreasonable, insupportable, or overly speculative.” United States v. Spinney, 65 F.3d 231, 234 (1st Cir.1995). For present purposes, the question reducesto whether the MAC unreasonably applied the Jackson standard in determining that the evidence was sufficient to allow a rational jury to conclude both that the victim was murdered and that the petitioner was her killer.

A. Cause of Death.

We need not linger long over the sufficiency of the evidence anent the cause of death. The Commonwealth introduced considerable evidence that the victim was strangled. This evidence included the testimony of two medical examiners, one of whom was the physician who had performed the autopsy.

The autopsy findings bolstered this opinion testimony. The autopsy showed petechial hemorrhages on the victim's face, lungs, heart, and inner eyelids. The physician who performed the autopsy explained that these findings were consistent with rupture upon asphyxiation. Similarly, the autopsy revealed hemorrhage around the thyroid cartilage and other tissues in the victim's neck. Her inner lips were cut, and her tongue had bite marks. The medical witnesses attested that this pattern of injuries was consistent with strangulation.

This is not to say that the cause-of-death evidence was completely one-sided. The petitioner proffered a medical expert who opined that the victim died of natural causes. This witness expressed skepticism about the Commonwealth's theory because the victim's corpse lacked some common indicia of manual strangulation, such as bruising in certain neck tissues, suspicious marks on the outside of the neck, and fractured hyoid and cricoid bones. This witness also tried to explain away the petechiae and larynx hemorrhages. The capstone of this testimony was the witness's determination that the victim had suffered from chronic and acute inflammation of the heart, which he concluded was the probable cause of her death.

Citing this conflicting evidence, the petitioner reminds us that when “the evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict gives equal or nearly equal circumstantial support to a theory of guilt and a theory of innocence of the crime charged, this court must reverse the conviction.” O'Laughlin v. O'Brien, 568 F.3d 287, 301 (1st Cir.2009) (quoting United States v. Flores–Rivera, 56 F.3d 319, 323 (1st Cir.1995)). He argues that the evidence as to cause of death in this case is in equipoise and, thus, that the MAC unreasonably applied the Jackson standard in allowing the conviction to stand.

This argument is wide of the mark. It fails to recognize that this equal-evidence rule takes hold only after we have drawn all reasonable inferences in favor of the verdict. See, e.g., Morgan v. Dickhaut, 677 F.3d 39, 53–54 (1st Cir.), cert. denied,––– U.S. ––––, 133 S.Ct. 449, 184 L.Ed.2d 275 (2012). In this case, the jury had to choose between the conflicting views of each side's expert witnesses, and its verdict indicates that it chose to believe the Commonwealth's experts. Once that choice is factored into the equation, the evidence cannot fairly be said to be in equipoise.

Nor can we second-guess the MAC's decision to accept the jury's choice. See Magraw II, 2003 WL 21955875, at *2. Resolving conflicts in the evidence is customary fare for jurors and there is nothing unreasonable about what the jurors did here. This is particularly true because the record makes manifest that the Commonwealth's experts responded directly to the petitioner's theory. One acknowledged that the victim's heart showed signs of inflammation, but explained that such inflammation is not typically fatal. The other stated flatly that the victim's pre-existing cardiac condition “had nothing to do with the cause of death.”

That ends this aspect of the matter. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, it is readily evident that the jury chose to credit the Commonwealth's amply supported cause-of-death hypothesis. Because that choice was well within the jury's province, the MAC reasonably applied the Jackson standard in deeming the evidence sufficient to support a finding that the victim met her death through strangulation. See Cavazos v. Smith, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2, 6–7, 181 L.Ed.2d 311 (2011) (per curiam) (summarily reversing grant of habeas relief and upholding jury's choice between competing cause-of-death theories).

B. Identity of the Perpetrator.

The petitioner likewise brands the evidence insufficient to show that he killed his wife. In support, he notes that the case against him was entirely circumstantial; that no hard evidence linked him to his wife's demise; and that the prosecution put the time of death at sometime between 11:19 a.m. and 1:19 p.m., whereas the evidence indicated that he had left his wife's home no...