Miller v. Stovall

Decision Date11 February 2014
Docket NumberNo. 12–2171.,12–2171.
Citation742 F.3d 642
PartiesSharee MILLER, Petitioner–Appellant, v. Clarice STOVALL, Warden, Respondent–Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

ARGUED: Kimberly Thomas, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, for Appellant. John S. Pallas, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Kimberly Thomas, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, for Appellant. Mark G. Sands, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee.

Before BOGGS, MOORE, and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges.

BOGGS, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which KETHLEDGE, J., joined, and MOORE, J., joined in the result. MOORE, J. (pg. 651), delivered a separate opinion concurring in the judgment.

OPINION

BOGGS, Circuit Judge.

Sharee Miller (Miller) was convicted in Michigan state court of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole. The prosecution alleged, and the jury found, that Miller had plotted with her lover, Jerry Cassaday, to murder her husband, Bruce Miller. The evidence of Miller's guilt included extensive email and instant-message (“IM”) conversations between Cassaday and Miller, in which Miller lied to Cassaday that she was pregnant with his children but that her husband abused her and caused her to miscarry; convinced Cassaday that her husband was a dangerous man involved in organized crime and that her life was in danger; and plotted with Cassaday the precise details of her husband's murder. Shortly before the murder, Cassaday, who lived some distance away from Miller, told his brother Mike that he was leaving town for a couple of days and that, if he did not return, Mike should look for a briefcase under Cassaday's bed. Bruce Miller was murdered on November 9, 1999. By December, Miller had broken off her relationship with Cassaday and started dating someone else.

On February 11, 2000, Cassaday committed suicide. While cleaning Cassaday's home following his death, Mike found a briefcase and four notes. Three of the notes were addressed to family members: his youngest son, his ex-wife, and his parents. The fourth was taped to the briefcase and directed Mike not to open the briefcase alone, but rather, to open it in the presence of an attorney, which Mike did. Inside were copies of the emails and IM conversations implicating Miller in the murder. Mike sent the other three notes along to their respective addressees.

The contents of the briefcase were admitted into evidence at trial along with evidence linking the electronic communications to Miller's and Cassaday's individual America On–Line (“AOL”) accounts. Cassaday's suicide note to his parents was also admitted at trial. Only the admission of the suicide note is disputed in this appeal. Miller claims that the admission of the note violated her clearly established right under the Sixth Amendment to confront her accuser. Miller therefore appeals the district court's denial of her petition for a writ of habeas corpus. We hold that the Michigan Court of Appeals did not err in upholding the note's admission at trial and affirm the order of the district court.

I

This case is before us for the second time. The Michigan trial and appellate courts originally analyzed the admissibility of Cassaday's suicide note under Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66–68, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), which held that hearsay statements were admissible provided they bore sufficient “indicia of reliability.” Before Miller's conviction became final under state law, however, the Supreme Court decided Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), which, abrogating Ohio v. Roberts, barred the admission of hearsay statements that are testimonial in nature, save under limited circumstances not applicable here. Miller notified the Michigan Supreme Court of the decision in Crawford while her motion for leave to appeal was pending. The Michigan Supreme Court denied Miller leave to appeal on April 1, 2004, and denied a motion to reconsider on June 30, 2004. Miller did not seek a writ of certiorari from the United States Supreme Court.

In a split decision on habeas review, this court held that the Michigan courts should have re-adjudicated Miller's claim in light of Crawford, since her appeal to the state's highest court was still pending at the time Crawford was decided and the state-court decision had therefore not yet become final under state law. Miller v. Stovall, 608 F.3d 913, 919 (6th Cir.2010), cert. granted, judgment vacated,––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 573, 181 L.Ed.2d 418 (U.S.2011). This court further held that the suicide note was testimonial in nature and therefore inadmissible under Crawford, that the State had waived harmless-error review, and that, in view of the foregoing, Miller was being held in violation of her clearly established rights under the Confrontation Clause. Id. at 925–28. Michigan appealed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated this court's judgment, and remanded for further consideration in light of its decision in Greene v. Fisher, –––U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 38, 43, 181 L.Ed.2d 336 (2011). In Greene, the Court clarified that state courts must follow clearly established law as it existed “at the time of the state-court adjudication on the merits.” That is, under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), “clearly established Federal law” is the law at the time the original decision was made, not, as this court had held in Miller, 608 F.3d at 919, the law “before the conviction became final.” See Greene, 132 S.Ct. at 44. Thus, even though Greene's appeal was still pending before the state supreme court when there was an intervening change in federal law, the state was not required to revisit the original decisions of its trial and appellate courts. The Supreme Court also observed that Greene had failed to seek certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court and failed to pursue state post-conviction relief before filing a habeas claim in federal court. Id. at 45.

As relevant here, Miller's case appears to be identical to Greene's. Because Crawford was not decided until after the state trial and appellate courts evaluated Miller's Confrontation Clause claim on the merits, the state courts were not obligated to revisit Miller's claim in light of Crawford. And, as in Greene, Miller did not seek relief from the U.S. Supreme Court and did not pursue state post-conviction relief. In light of the Supreme Court's remand and its decision in Greene, we remanded Miller's case to the district court for reconsideration.

The parties now agree that, in light of Greene, the relevant law to be applied in assessing the state court's evaluation of Miller's Confrontation Clause claim is the law that existed at the time of the state trial and appellate courts' adjudication on the merits, namely, the law under Ohio v. Roberts and its progeny. The district court denied petitioner relief but granted a Certificate of Appealability (“COA”) on the constitutional claims that it found were reasonably debatable. The district court granted a COA on three issues: (1) whether the Michigan Court of Appeals applied a rule contrary to Supreme Court precedent when it relied on the “consistency” of the statements in Cassaday's suicide note to uphold the admission of the note; (2) whether the court's decision involved an unreasonable application of Ohio v. Roberts; and (3) whether the court erred in ruling that the admission of the note did not violate Miller's Confrontation Clause right under the Sixth Amendment. See Miller v. Stovall, No. 05–73447, 2012 WL 3151541 (E.D.Mich. Aug. 2, 2012).

We evaluate Miller's claims under the highly deferential standard of review mandated by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”). See28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). AEDPA's deferential standard applies where a state prisoner's habeas claims were “adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings.” Robinson v. Howes, 663 F.3d 819, 822–23 (6th Cir.2011) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)). Under AEDPA, habeas relief shall not be granted unless, as relevant here, the state court's adjudication “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). “AEDPA requires a state prisoner to show that the state court's ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Burt v. Titlow, ––– U.S. ––––, 134 S.Ct. 10, 16, 187 L.Ed.2d 348 (2013) (internal alteration and quotation marks omitted).

II
A

In Ohio v. Roberts, the Supreme Court held that the statements of a hearsay declarant unavailable for cross-examination at trial were only admissible if they bore “adequate indicia of reliability.” 448 U.S. at 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531 (internal quotation marks omitted). Where the statements did not fall within “a firmly rooted hearsay exception,” they were inadmissible “absent a showing of particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.” Id. The “relevant circumstances” for determining whether evidence satisfied this standard included only those that surrounded the making of the statement and that rendered the declarant “particularly worthy of belief.” Idaho v. Wright, 497 U.S. 805, 819, 110 S.Ct. 3139, 111 L.Ed.2d 638 (1990).

The Supreme Court has never identified a particular set of requirements that had to be met for a statement to be deemed trustworthy. See Wright, 497 U.S. at 822, 110 S.Ct. 3139 (We ... decline to endorse a mechanical test for determining ‘particularized guarantees of trustworthiness' under the Clause.”). Instead, the Court emphasized that “the unifying principle” was whether the declarant “was particularly likely to be telling the truth when...

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