Martinez v. Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

• Decision Date: 21 May 2002
• Docket Number: No. 02-40755.,02-40755.
• Citation: 292 F.3d 417
• Parties: Johnny Joe MARTINEZ; Gary Etheridge; Napoleon Beazley, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. THE TEXAS COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS; Sharon Keller, Presiding Judge; Lawrence E. Meyers, Michael Keasler, Tom Price, Barbara Hervey, Paul Womack, Charles Holcolm, Cheryl Johnson, Cathy Cochran, Associate Judges, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; and Janie Cockrell, Director, Institutional Division, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

292 F.3d 417

Johnny Joe MARTINEZ; Gary Etheridge; Napoleon Beazley, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. THE TEXAS COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS; Sharon Keller, Presiding Judge; Lawrence E. Meyers, Michael Keasler, Tom Price, Barbara Hervey, Paul Womack, Charles Holcolm, Cheryl Johnson, Cathy Cochran, Associate Judges, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; and Janie Cockrell, Director, Institutional Division, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 02-40755.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

May 21, 2002.

David R. Dow, University of Houston Law Center, Houston, TX, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

James William Marcus, Texas Defender Service, Houston, TX, for Gary Wayne Etheridge.

David L. Botsford, Law Office of David L. Botsford, Austin, TX, for Napolean Beazley.

Gena Blount Bunn, Asst. Atty. Gen., Austin, TX, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Before KING, Chief Judge, and JONES and STEWART, Circuit Judges.

KING, Chief Judge:

Plaintiffs-Appellants Johnny Joe Martinez, Gary Etheridge, and Napoleon Beazley challenge the district court's judgment dismissing, for lack of jurisdiction, their complaint alleging claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. For the following reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. Due to the exigencies of time, we construe this appeal alternatively as an application for permission to file a successive habeas corpus petition, which we DENY.

Plaintiffs-Appellants Johnny Joe Martinez, Gary Etheridge, and Napoleon Beazley (collectively, "the Plaintiffs") are all prisoners under sentence of death in the State of Texas. Each of the Plaintiffs was convicted of capital murder. Each Plaintiff has directly appealed his conviction, and has collaterally attacked his conviction by filing petitions seeking a writ of habeas corpus in both state and federal court.¹ None of these post-conviction challenges has been successful. Martinez's sentence of death is scheduled to be carried out tomorrow, on May 22, 2002. Etheridge's sentence of death is scheduled to be carried out on June 27, 2002. Beazley's sentence of death is scheduled to be carried out on May 28, 2002.

On May 17, 2002, the Plaintiffs filed the instant 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action in federal district court against Defendants-Appellees the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the judges comprising that court, and the Director of the Institutional Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (collectively, "the Defendants"). The essential theory of the complaint is that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has violated the Plaintiffs' rights under the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments by engaging in a policy of "knowingly and intentionally" appointing incompetent lawyers to represent indigent death row inmates in their state habeas proceedings. Specifically, each of the Plaintiffs alleges that he had obvious and potentially meritorious claims of constitutional error (including, inter alia, claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel and/or prosecutorial misconduct) that were not raised in his petition for state habeas relief due to the incompetence of his appointed state habeas counsel. Each Plaintiff was unsuccessful in his subsequent attempt to secure federal habeas relief, because the federal courts were procedurally barred from considering the constitutional claims omitted from the state habeas petition. See supra note 1. Accordingly, the Plaintiffs were never afforded an opportunity to present these claims to any state or federal court.

The Plaintiffs allege that Texas' "policy" of appointing incompetent state habeas counsel deprived them of their right of meaningful access to the courts, as provided by the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as their Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. The Plaintiffs further contend that these procedural inadequacies render their death sentences unreliable, and thus constitutionally suspect under the Eighth Amendment. They seek: (1) a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction preventing the Defendants from executing them during the pendency of this litigation; (2) a permanent injunction directing the Defendants to appoint competent state habeas counsel in all Texas death penalty cases; and (3) a declaratory ruling from this court that federal courts need not apply the procedural bar of 28 U.S.C. § 2254 to procedural defaults occasioned by incompetence of state habeas counsel if the state does not authorize filing of a successive state habeas application.

The district court dismissed the Plaintiffs' complaint. Relying on this court's suggestion that the "core issue in determining whether a prisoner must pursue habeas corpus relief rather than a civil rights action is ... whether the prisoner challenges the `fact or duration' of his confinement or merely challenges the rules, customs, and procedures affecting `conditions' of confinement," Cook v. Texas Dep't of Criminal Justice Transitional Planning Dep't, 37 F.3d 166, 168 (5th Cir.1994) (quoting Spina v. Aaron, 821 F.2d 1126, 1128 (5th Cir.1987)), the district court concluded that the Plaintiffs' 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claims in the instant case were properly construed as requests for writs of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court determined that dismissal was thus appropriate because, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(3)(A), district courts lack jurisdiction to consider second or successive habeas petitions unless this court has granted the petitioners express permission to file such a petition. The Plaintiffs timely appealed the district court's dismissal of their complaint, requesting that this court enjoin state officials from carrying out any executions until the merits of this litigation are resolved and remand this case to the district court for development of the factual record. We review a district court's dismissal of a § 1983 complaint for lack of jurisdiction de novo. See Bazrowx v. Scott, 136 F.3d 1053, 1054 (5th Cir.1998).

The Plaintiffs argue that the district court erred in construing their § 1983 action as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. They contend that their § 1983 action cannot be a de facto habeas action because they are not asking the federal courts to set aside their state convictions or sentences, as they would in a habeas action. The Plaintiffs maintain that their only goal in pursuing this action is to obtain "a forum in which to litigate their Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment claims."

The Supreme Court has determined that state prisoners may not obtain equitable relief under § 1983 when the federal habeas corpus statute is the exclusive remedial mechanism for obtaining the requested relief. In Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973), the Court considered a § 1983 action brought by state prisoners alleging that state prison officials had unconstitutionally deprived them of good-conduct-time credits. The petitioners sought injunctive relief compelling restoration of the credits, which would entitle them to immediate release from prison. Id. at 476-77, 93 S.Ct. 1827. While the Court acknowledged that the petitioners' claims fell within the literal language of § 1983, id. at 488-89, 93 S.Ct. 1827, the Court determined that "the specific language of the federal habeas corpus statute, explicitly and historically designed to provide the means for a state prisoner to attack the validity of his confinement, must be understood to be the exclusive remedy available in a situation like this where it so clearly applies." Id. at 489, 93 S.Ct. 1827. The Court accordingly held that habeas corpus is the exclusive remedy for state prisoners seeking immediate release or speedier release from prison. Id. at 490, 93 S.Ct. 1827. The Court reasoned that to hold otherwise would permit prisoners to circumvent the exhaustion requirement of § 2254(b), thus undermining the considerations of federal-state comity that underlie this exhaustion requirement. Id. at 491, 93 S.Ct. 1827.

The Court subsequently extended this holding to claims challenging method of execution. In Gomez v. United States District Court for the Northern District of California, 503 U.S. 653, 112 S.Ct. 1652, 118 L.Ed.2d 293 (1992), the Court considered a § 1983 claim brought by a capital offender alleging that the State of California's method of execution (i.e., lethal gas) was cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The Court determined that the § 1983 suit was "an obvious attempt to avoid the application of" the Court's prior holding in McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467, 111 S.Ct. 1454, 113 L.Ed.2d 517 (1991), barring assertion of claims in subsequent habeas petitions that could have been raised in prior habeas petitions. Gomez, 503 U.S. at 653, 112 S.Ct. 1652. Thus, the Court implicitly determined that the petitioner's challenge to his method of execution was properly considered a de facto habeas challenge rather than a § 1983 action.²

The Court also clarified its Preiser holding in Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 641, 117 S.Ct. 1584, 137 L.Ed.2d 906 (1997). In Edwards, an inmate challenged the procedures used by state prison officials in his disciplinary hearing, alleging that these procedures violated his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. He requested declaratory relief and monetary damages; he did not, however, request restoration of his good-time credits. The Supreme Court found that habeas corpus was the exclusive remedy for this claim because the "principal procedural defect complained of by the petitioners (i.e., deceit and bias on the part of the decisionmaker) would, if established, necessarily imply the invalidity of the deprivation of his good-time credits," and, thus, necessarily imply a need for immediate or speedier release from prison. Id. at 648, 117 S.Ct. 1584, However, in considering the petitioner's related due process claim for...