McCray v. Capra
| Citation | 45 F.4th 634 |
| Decision Date | 17 August 2022 |
| Docket Number | 18-2336,August Term 2020 |
| Parties | Terence Sandy MCCRAY, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Michael CAPRA, Superintendent, Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) |
Jonathan I. Edelstein, Edelstein & Grossman, New York, NY, for Petitioner-Appellant.
Priscilla Steward, Assistant Attorney General (Barbara D. Underwood, Solicitor General, and Nikki Kowalski, Deputy Solicitor General for Criminal Matters, on the brief), for Letitia James, Attorney General of the State of New York, New York, NY, for Respondent-Appellee.
Before: Jacobs, Lynch, and Sullivan, Circuit Judges.
Judge Jacobs dissents in a separate opinion.
Petitioner Terrence Sandy McCray appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Singleton, J. ) denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, following his conviction in New York state court for first-degree rape. The underlying criminal case was ultimately a credibility contest. According to the victim,1 she was violently raped by McCray. According to McCray, he and the victim had consensual sex, the victim subsequently demanded money from him, he refused, she tried to steal his pants and his cash, a brief struggle ensued, and the victim left. The physical evidence – including photos of the victim's bruised face and the bite marks on McCray's arm – was consistent with both stories. Before trial, the prosecution informed McCray that the victim had a history of mental illness, which prompted McCray to request all of her mental health records. The trial court conducted an in camera review of the victim's full mental health records, which totaled more than 5,000 pages, and disclosed to McCray a twenty-eight-page sample that it deemed representative. At trial, the prosecution elicited testimony from the victim regarding her mental health, and the defense vigorously cross-examined her on that subject. The jury returned a guilty verdict.
On direct appeal in the New York state courts, McCray challenged the decision to provide him with only a sample of the victim's mental health records, arguing that doing so violated his right to due process under Brady v. Maryland , 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), and his right to confront his accuser under the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause. The New York Court of Appeals ultimately affirmed McCray's conviction, holding that the trial court did not err by providing a sample of the victim's mental health records and finding that the sample was sufficiently representative of the records as a whole. McCray subsequently petitioned for relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, which the district court denied.
We must decide whether the New York Court of Appeals unreasonably applied clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States. We conclude that it did not. Because the New York Court of Appeals's application of Brady and its progeny was reasonable and there is no binding Supreme Court precedent providing that a defendant's right to confrontation extends to pretrial discovery in a criminal case, we AFFIRM the district court's denial of McCray's petition.
Both the victim and McCray testified that they met in 2009 and went on a date in Albany, New York. After an evening of exploring Albany, McCray led the victim to the home of one of his friends, who let the couple in and then immediately retired to his bedroom. Alone on the living room couch, McCray and the victim started kissing. The victim testified that McCray wanted to have sex after about fifteen minutes, but she refused, telling McCray that it was too early in their relationship. When McCray pressed the point, the victim got angry with him and stormed out of the apartment. McCray chased her down on the street outside to apologize. The victim eventually accepted McCray's apology and proceeded to walk around Albany with him until about midnight. According to the victim, McCray then led her to an abandoned house, where he violently raped her.
After she left the abandoned house, the victim – then weeping and struggling to speak – called 911 from a nearby payphone. She told the operator that McCray had beaten her, made her beg for her life, and raped her. A police officer approached the victim while she was on the phone and saw blood on her clothes and face. Photographs taken later that morning and hospital records show that the victim had abrasions and bruises on her left arm and left cheek, as well as lacerations on the inside of her mouth. A DNA test on samples of semen recovered from the victim's vagina and breasts matched McCray's DNA.
A week later, an Albany County grand jury indicted McCray on the charge of first-degree rape. Before trial, the prosecution provided the defense with a synopsis of the victim's mental health history, including information about her hospitalizations; her diagnoses of bipolar disorder, epilepsy, Tourette's syndrome, attention deficit disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder ("PTSD"); and her histories of hypersexuality and auditory and visual hallucinations. The prosecution also disclosed the victim's allegations that she had been the victim of three prior sexual-abuse incidents. Following these disclosures, McCray sought all of the victim's mental health records relating to her testimonial capacity, memory, and/or credibility. The trial court directed that the records be submitted in camera so that it could review the records and determine which were material and needed to be disclosed to the defense. After reviewing more than 5,000 pages of the victim's mental health records, the trial court provided the defense with a twenty-eight-page sample it deemed representative of the relevant corpus of documents. On direct examination, the victim told the jury about her mental health diagnoses and the medications she took at the time of the incident. She was also cross-examined at length by defense counsel about her mental health status and treatment.
Following the prosecution's case, McCray elected to testify in his own defense. During that testimony, McCray disputed key portions of the victim's testimony and stated unequivocally that the sexual encounter was completely consensual. The jury ultimately returned a verdict finding McCray guilty of first-degree rape. He was subsequently sentenced to twenty-two years' imprisonment.
McCray appealed to the Appellate Division, Third Department, which affirmed his conviction. See People v. McCray (McCray I ), 102 A.D.3d 1000, 958 N.Y.S.2d 511, 514 (3d Dep't 2013). He then appealed to the New York Court of Appeals, which also affirmed. See People v. McCray (McCray II ), 23 N.Y.3d 193, 196, 989 N.Y.S.2d 649, 12 N.E.3d 1079 (2014). One of McCray's key arguments on direct appeal was that the trial court violated his confrontation and due process rights by refusing to provide him with the victim's full mental health records. The New York courts rejected this argument.
In 2015, McCray petitioned pro se for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the Northern District of New York. The district court denied the petition, finding that the New York Court of Appeals's conclusion that the withheld documents were not material was not "unreasonable or contrary to Brady or its progeny." McCray v. Capra (McCray III ), No. 15-cv-1129 (JKS), 2018 WL 3559077, at *11 (N.D.N.Y. July 24, 2018). The district court nonetheless granted a certificate of appealability on the sole question of whether the nondisclosure of the victim's mental health records violated Brady . McCray filed a counseled motion to expand the certificate of appealability to include the question of whether the nondisclosure of the victim's mental health records also violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation, which this Court granted.
We review the denial of a section 2254 petition de novo.
Scrimo v. Lee , 935 F.3d 103, 111 (2d Cir. 2019). A federal court may not grant a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to section 2254 unless (1) the state court's decision was "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established [f]ederal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," or (2) the state court's decision was "based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the [s]tate court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) ; see also Harrington v. Richter , 562 U.S. 86, 100, 131 S.Ct. 770, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011). On a habeas petition under section 2254, we review the "last reasoned decision" by the state court, Ylst v. Nunnemaker , 501 U.S. 797, 804, 111 S.Ct. 2590, 115 L.Ed.2d 706 (1991), only for the "reasonableness" of its bottom-line "result," not the "quality of [its] reasoning," Sellan v. Kuhlman , 261 F.3d 303, 312 (2d Cir. 2001) (citation omitted). Thus, we extend considerable "deference" even to "deficient reasoning ..., at least in the absence of an analysis so flawed as to undermine confidence that the constitutional claim has been fairly adjudicated." Cruz v. Miller , 255 F.3d 77, 86 (2d Cir. 2001) (internal citations omitted). Put differently, our review under section 2254 is not "a substitute for ordinary error correction through appeal." Richter , 562 U.S. at 102–03, 131 S.Ct. 770 (citation omitted). Rather, it "functions as a guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems." Greene v. Fisher , 565 U.S. 34, 38, 132 S.Ct. 38, 181 L.Ed.2d 336 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted).
A state court's decision is contrary to clearly established federal law when it "applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [Supreme Court caselaw] or ... confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of Court and nevertheless arrives at a result...
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