Matthews v. Cain

• Decision Date: 29 August 2018
• Docket Number: CIVIL ACTION NO. 15-430
• Parties: Patrick MATTHEWS v. Burl CAIN, Warden
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana

337 F.Supp.3d 687

Patrick MATTHEWS

v.Burl CAIN, Warden

CIVIL ACTION NO. 15-430

United States District Court, E.D. Louisiana.

Signed August 29, 2018

Justin Caine Harrell, H2 Law LLC, New Orleans, LA, for Patrick Matthews.

Matthew Caplan, District Attorney's Office, Covington, LA, for Burl Cain, Warden.

SECTION: "G"(1)

ORDER

NANNETTE JOLIVETTE BROWN, CHIEF JUDGE

The Court, having considered the petition, the record, the applicable law and the Report and Recommendation of the United States Magistrate Judge, and the failure of any party to file any objection to the Magistrate Judge's Report and Recommendation, hereby approves the Report and Recommendation of the United States Magistrate Judge and adopts it as its own opinion. Accordingly,

IT IS ORDERED that Patrick Matthews' federal application for habeas corpus relief is GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART .

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Matthews' excessive sentence claim is GRANTED and IT IS ORDERED that he be released from confinement unless the state court resentences him to a constitutional sentence in accordance with this Court's opinion within one hundred twenty (120) days.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Matthews' federal application is DENIED in all other respects.

REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION

JANIS VAN MEERVELD, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

Patrick Matthews, a state prisoner incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, filed the instant federal application seeking habeas corpus relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. For all of the following reasons, IT IS RECOMMENDED that his petition be GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART .

On November 12, 2009, Matthews was convicted in state court of one count of simple burglary (Count 1) and two counts of theft (Counts 2 and 3) under Louisiana law.¹ On December 16, 2009, he was sentenced to a term of ten years imprisonment on Count 1 and to a term of seven years imprisonment on each Count 2 and Count 3.² On February 12, 2010, he was found to be a fourth offender and was resentenced as such on Count 1 to a term of life imprisonment without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence and on Count 2 to a term of twenty years imprisonment without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence; his sentence on Count 3 was unaffected.³ On December 22, 2010, the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed his convictions, habitual offender adjudications, and sentences.⁴ The Louisiana Supreme Court then denied his related writ application on December 2, 2011.⁵

After unsuccessfully seeking post-conviction relief in the state courts, Matthews filed the instant federal habeas corpus application.⁶ Former United States Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan issued a report finding that all of Matthews' claims were procedurally barred and, therefore, recommending that the application be dismissed with prejudice on that basis.⁷ Matthews filed objections to that Report and Recommendation, submitting documentation in support of his contention that his claims had been improperly barred by the state courts.⁸ The United States District Judge then rejected the Report and Recommendation, finding that the procedural rules invoked by the state courts were not adequate bases to bar federal review because they were not evenhandedly applied by the state courts.⁹ Thus, the matter was referred to the undersigned for a Report and Recommendation on the merits of Matthews' claims. After that referral, additional briefing was requested concerning Matthews' excessive sentence claim,¹⁰ and the parties' supplemental briefs have been filed into the record.¹¹

I. Facts

On direct appeal, the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal summarized the facts of this case as follows:

On or about April 16, 2009, the defendant and his co-perpetrator, Jason Blackwell, went to the residence of Leonard and Beatrice Sollberger, located on Bayou Liberty Road in Slidell, Louisiana. The Sollbergers' daughter, Kelsey Sollberger, was home alone at the time. After knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell, Kelsey opened the door. The defendant and Blackwell asked her about purchasing a vehicle on the property, and she informed them that it was not for sale. After Sollberger closed the door, she heard noises outside as the defendant and Blackwell stole a welding machine from the property before leaving. The welding machine belonged to Jerry Domecq and was being used by his son, Robert Brown, whom the Sollbergers had hired to add an elevator to their home. Demecq [sic] had purchased the welding machine for seven hundred fifty dollars. On the same date, the defendant and Blackwell took tools from a tool shed owned by Lester Nunez, Jr., located on Laurent Road in Slidell, Louisiana.

The next morning, on or about April 17, Michelle Parker and her two sons were at their residence in Slidell when the defendant and Blackwell arrived and began ringing the doorbell, knocking on the door, and banging on the front windows of the home. Parker contacted her husband, Travis Parker, and the police. The defendant and Blackwell stole a generator from the back yard of the home before leaving the property. Mr. Parker had purchased the generator for approximately seven hundred fifty to eight hundred dollars. The victims were recovering and rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina at the time of the offenses. The victims' property was recovered and returned.¹²

II. Matthews' Claims

A. Excessive Sentence

Matthews first claims that his enhanced sentence on Count 1, i.e. a term of life imprisonment without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence, was excessive. After that claim was first denied by the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal on direct review, the Louisiana Supreme Court treated Matthews' related writ application challenging the Court of Appeal's judgment as one seeking collateral review and denied relief based on the state's procedural rules which prohibit challenges to sentencing issues in post-conviction proceedings.¹³ When he thereafter asserted the claims for a second time in his subsequent state post-conviction application, the Louisiana Supreme Court then denied relief on a different procedural basis, holding that Matthews' post-conviction application was untimely filed.¹⁴

Because Matthews' excessive sentence claim was expressly denied by the Louisiana Supreme Court on procedural grounds on both occasions it was presented to that court, this Court reviews the merits of the claim de novo, unconstrained by the deferential standards of review of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).¹⁵ See Solis v. Cockrell, 342 F.3d 392, 394 (5th Cir. 2003) ("Both parties agree that the Texas state courts erroneously rejected the petitioner's ... claim on procedural grounds.... We therefore review the petitioner's claim de novo rather than under the deferential standards provided in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)."); see also Powell v. Quarterman, 536 F.3d 325, 343 (5th Cir. 2008) ("When a claim has been fairly presented to the state court, but the state court does not adjudicate the claim on the merits, and the claim is not procedurally defaulted, the deferential AEDPA standards of review do not apply.").¹⁶

That said, this Court is still constrained in another respect: federal habeas relief may be granted on this claim only if Matthews' sentence is excessive under federal law.¹⁷ That fact presents Matthews with a formidable challenge. Because the standard for granting such claims under federal law is so daunting, such claims rarely succeed. In light of that reality, opinions addressing such claims are often rather perfunctory. However, because Matthews' sentence is so strikingly harsh given his offenses, the Court must engage in a more thorough analysis in this instance.

A logical starting point in any discussion of excessive sentence claims is Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263, 100 S.Ct. 1133, 63 L.Ed.2d 382 (1980). In 1973, William James Rummel was charged with obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses—a felony which, by itself, was punishable by a sentence of not less than two nor more than 10 years. However, Rummel was a recidivist, previously having been convicted in 1964 of fraudulent use of a credit card to obtain $80 worth of goods or services and in 1969 of passing a forged check in the amount of $28.36. As such, he was sentenced to an enhanced term of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.

The question before the United States Supreme Court was whether Rummel's sentence was so excessive as to violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. In considering that issue, the Supreme Court noted that it had "on occasion stated that the Eighth Amendment prohibits imposition of a sentence that is grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime," but the Court also noted that "[o]utside the context of capital punishment, successful challenges to the proportionality of particular sentences have been exceedingly rare." 445 U.S. at 271-72, 100 S.Ct. 1133.

With respect to Rummel's sentence, the Court then noted:

[W]e need not decide whether Texas could impose a life sentence upon Rummel merely for obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses. Had Rummel only committed that crime, under the law enacted by the Texas Legislature he could have been imprisoned for no more than 10 years. In fact, at the time that he obtained the $120.75 by false pretenses, he already had committed and had been imprisoned for two other felonies, crimes that Texas and other States felt were serious enough to warrant significant terms of imprisonment even in the absence of prior offenses. Thus the interest of the State of Texas here is not simply that of making criminal the unlawful acquisition of another person's property; it is in addition the interest, expressed in all recidivist statutes, in dealing in a harsher manner with those who by repeated criminal acts have shown that they are simply incapable of conforming to the norms of society as

...