Marshall v. Lewis

• Docket Number: 1:19-cv-00083-SRC
• Decision Date: 28 January 2022
• Parties: JOHN MARSHALL, Petitioner, v. JASON LEWIS, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri

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JOHN MARSHALL, Petitioner, v. JASON LEWIS, Respondent.

No. 1:19-cv-00083-SRC

United States District Court, E.D. Missouri, Southeastern Division

January 28, 2022

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

STEPHEN R. CLARK, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.

John Marshall violently kidnapped his wife because she witnessed him commit a crime. Doc. 15-5 at pp. 2-3. Marshall choked her and beat her with a pair of pliers, telling her that “it's a shame that [her] kids are going to grow up knowing they found their mother in a dumpster.” Id. at p. 3. Though Marshall had taken her cell phone, she recovered it after Marshall fell asleep. Id. at pp. 2-3. She texted a family member who called the police, and Marshall ran away as soon as officers arrived. Id. at p. 3.

A state-court jury found Marshall guilty of one count of kidnapping and one related count of second-degree domestic assault. Doc. 15-2 at pp. 77, 79. The jury found Marshall not guilty of witness tampering. Id. at p. 80. The state court sentenced Marshall to ten years of imprisonment for kidnapping and a term of seven years of imprisonment for second-degree domestic assault to run concurrently with the sentence imposed for kidnapping but consecutively to the sentence imposed in another criminal case. Id. at pp. 96-98. Marshall appealed his conviction to the Missouri Court of Appeals, which affirmed. Doc. 15-5. Marshall remains incarcerated and now petitions this Court under 28 U.S.C § 2254 for a writ of habeas corpus alleging various errors by the state trial court and ineffective assistance of counsel. Doc. 1. For the reasons discussed below, the Court denies Marshall's petition for writ of habeas corpus.

I. Facts and background

The Missouri Court of Appeals described the pertinent facts as follows:

Defendant was married to Kneesha Marshall (Victim). Sometime in 2010, Victim became a witness against Defendant in an unrelated felony case, and Defendant was upset about that. Victim moved with her two daughters from the first floor apartment she shared with Defendant to an apartment in the same building, but on the third floor.

On February 18, 2011, Defendant came up to the third floor apartment and accused Victim of hiding a letter from him. They argued for several hours. He kept saying that he needed it and knew she had hidden it, and she kept telling him she did not have it. At one point Defendant walked over, grabbed Victim's hair, choked her, and held her up against the patio door. Defendant also had pliers in his hand, and he hit Victim on the head with them. Victim tried to leave, but Defendant would not let her leave. He took her cell phone and removed the battery. He told her “it's a shame that [her] kids are going to grow up knowing they found their mother in a dumpster, ” and she took that to mean he was going to kill her.

During the argument between Defendant and Victim, Defendant told her to tell his defense attorney that someone else committed the felony in the case for which Victim was a witness. At some point the next morning, Defendant fell asleep. Victim was able to get her phone from the table and put in the battery. She texted her sister and asked her to call the police. When officers arrived, Defendant woke up and ran out the back door.

Detective Joan Williams (Detective Williams) interviewed Victim. Victim was crying and visibly shaken. Detective Williams did not observe any marks on Victim's neck, but she said in her experience, it was not uncommon for choking or strangulation to leave no mark. She said Victim declined to seek medical attention, which also was not uncommon in her experience.

Defendant did not testify. His mother testified that Defendant was living with her at the time of this incident. She said he was home all night on February 18, 2011, and in the morning of February 19, 2011.

The jury found defendant guilty of kidnapping and second-degree domestic assault, but not guilty of witness tampering. The trial court sentenced Defendant to concurrent terms of 10 years in prison for kidnapping and seven years for domestic assault.

Doc. 15-5 at pp. 2-3. Marshall appealed his convictions to the Missouri Court of Appeals, which affirmed. Doc. 15-5; State v. Marshall, 476 S.W.3d 307 (Mo. App. E.D. 2015) (mem.). Marshall filed a Missouri Rule 29.15 post-conviction relief motion, which the motion court denied after an evidentiary hearing. Doc. 15-10 at p. 5. He appealed this decision, and the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the motion court's denial of post-conviction relief on the merits. Doc. 15-10; Marshall v. State, 567 S.W.3d 283 (Mo. App. E.D. 2019). Marshall now seeks habeas corpus relief in this Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254.

II. Standard

“A state prisoner who believes that he is incarcerated in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States may file a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254.” Osborne v. Purkett, 411 F.3d 911, 914 (8th Cir. 2005), as amended (Jun 23, 2005). Federal habeas review exists only “as ‘a guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems, not a substitute for ordinary error correction through appeal.'” Woods v. Donald, 575 U.S. 312, 315 (2015) (per curiam) (quoting Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 102-03 (2011)). Accordingly, “[i]n the habeas setting, a federal court is bound by the AEDPA [the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act] to exercise only limited and deferential review of underlying state court decisions.” Lomholt v. Iowa, 327 F.3d 748, 751 (8th Cir. 2003) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 2254). For a federal court to grant an application for a writ of habeas corpus brought by a person in custody by order of a state court, the petitioner must show that the state court's adjudication on the merits:

(1) 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; or (2) resulted in a decision that 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)(1)-(2). A determination of a factual issue made by a state court is presumed correct unless the petitioner successfully rebuts the presumption of correctness by clear and convincing evidence. § 2254(e)(1).

A state court's decision is “contrary to” clearly established Supreme Court precedent “if the state court either ‘applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [Supreme Court] cases' or ‘confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of [the] Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from [the] precedent.'” Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782, 792 (2001) (citing Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06 (2000)). An unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent occurs where the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the case. Ryan v. Clarke, 387 F.3d 785, 790 (8th Cir. 2004). Finally, a state court decision may be considered an unreasonable determination of the facts “only if it is shown that the state court's presumptively correct factual findings do not enjoy support in the record.” Id.

III. Discussion

Marshall asserts six grounds for relief in his habeas petition. Doc. 1. In ground 1, Marshall claims that the trial court erred in not acquitting him because the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's guilty verdicts. Id. at pp. 41-61, 78-87. In ground 2, Marshall claims that the trial court erred in admitting testimony from a detective regarding whether it was uncommon for a victim of strangulation to have marks showing signs of strangulation. Id. at pp. 41, 62-77, 88-92. In grounds 3 through 6, Marshall claims that his trial counsel ineffectively failed to object on two occasions, id. at pp. 93-100, 101-06, failed to introduce evidence of alleged physical disabilities, id. at pp. 93, 107-10, and failed to impeach his wife with her prior statements, id. at pp. 93, 111-16.

A. Allegations of trial-court error 1.Ground 1

Marshall challenges the trial court's decision not to enter a judgment of acquittal or grant a new trial due to insufficiency of the evidence. Doc. 1 at pp. 41, 42-61, 78-87. At trial, the testimony of Detective Williams and Marshall's wife supported the convictions. Doc. 15-1 at pp. 215-321. Marshall claims that, because the jury acquitted him of witness tampering and that count was supported only by his wife's testimony, it must have disbelieved his wife's testimony and relied entirely on Detective Williams's “speculation” that his wife was telling the truth in convicting him of the other two counts. Doc. 15-5 at p. 4.

After he argued this point on direct appeal, the Missouri Court of Appeals denied his claim, explaining that the state presented sufficient evidence from which the jury could find him guilty of kidnapping and domestic assault beyond a reasonable doubt. Doc. 15-5 at p. 3 (applying the sufficiency-of-the-evidence standard set out in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S 307, 319 (1979)). The court of appeals reiterated that juries may believe all or any part of a witness's testimony, and that it the jury in this case “could have believed Victim as it related to Defendant's attack on her and disbelieved that Defendant told her she should lie as a witness in the other felony case.” Doc. 15-5 at p. 4. “If the jury believed Victim regarding the attack, her testimony is sufficient to support the jury's guilty verdict, ” id., because “[t]estimony of a single witness may be sufficient to constitute substantial evidence to make a submissible case, ” State v. Ervin, 835 S.W.2d 905, 921 (Mo. 1992). As a...