Moreland v. Bradshaw

• Decision Date: 19 December 2012
• Docket Number: No. 09–3528.,09–3528.
• Citation: 699 F.3d 908
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit
• Parties: Samuel MORELAND, Petitioner–Appellant, v. Margaret BRADSHAW, Warden, Respondent–Appellee.

699 F.3d 908

Samuel MORELAND, Petitioner–Appellant,

v.Margaret BRADSHAW, Warden, Respondent–Appellee.

No. 09–3528.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: April 18, 2012.

Decided and Filed: Nov. 15, 2012.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Dec. 19, 2012.

ARGUED: Justin C. Thompson, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Charles L. Wille, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Justin C. Thompson, Melissa J. Jackson, Office of the Federal Public Defender, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Charles L. Wille, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.

Before: BOGGS, ROGERS, and GRIFFIN, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

ROGERS, Circuit Judge.

Samuel Moreland, an Ohio death-row prisoner, appeals a district court judgment denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In 1986, a three-judge panel convicted Moreland of killing his girlfriend Glenna Green, her adult daughter, and three of her grandchildren. Moreland contends that his conviction is not supported by sufficient evidence, that the trial court did not conduct an adequate evidentiary hearing on a child eyewitness's competence to testify, that the trial court wrongly excluded expert testimony concerning the child eyewitness, and that he was denied effective assistance of counsel. For the following reasons, the district court properly rejected Moreland's claims and denied habeas relief.

I.

The facts of this case are taken largely from the opinion of the Supreme Court of Ohio, Ohio v. Moreland, 50 Ohio St.3d 58, 552 N.E.2d 894 (1990). At the time of the murders in November 1985, Samuel Moreland lived with his girlfriend Glenna Green in a home rented by Glenna's daughter, Tia Talbott. Tia's boyfriend Thurston Jones and Tia's five children also lived at the residence. On the night in question, Tia's sister Lana Green and Lana's three children were spending the night at the residence.

At approximately 10:30 p.m. on November 1, 1985, Tia, her boyfriend Thurston, and Lana's son Gregory left the residence to go to the grocery store. Around the time of their departure, Moreland and his girlfriend Glenna began arguing over Glenna's refusal to give him money for alcohol. Moreland left Glenna's bedroom, went to his own room, then returned and resumed the argument. Glenna continued to refuse Moreland's request. Moreland eventually left the house for about one-half hour, returned, argued with Glenna a third time, and left again for about ten minutes. Moreland returned to the home with a rifle and proceeded to shoot Glenna twice in the head. He then shot Tia's eleven-year-old son Dayron Talbott in the hand and face and hit Dayron with the end of the rifle. When Tia, Thurston, and Gregory returned home near midnight, they discovered the bodies of Lana Green, Violana Green, Glenna Green, Datwan Talbott, and Daytrin Talbott.¹ Dayron, Tia Green, and Glenna Talbott were injured but survived.² Moreland had left the home by this time.

Later that night, Moreland met with Samuel Thomas. Together, the two purchased alcohol and returned to Thomas's home. While there, a car passed by the home and Moreland commented, “I bet it was a cruiser pass.” Thomas looked out of the window and saw a police cruiser passing by the residence. Moreland also commented that he had shot a gun and the bullet hole “went in small and came out big.” Thomas testified that he did not understand what Moreland meant by this comment. Thomas later drove Moreland home, where police arrested Moreland.

While police read Moreland his Miranda rights, he told the arresting officer that the officer was “too late.” Moreland later proved uncooperative when the police attempted to swab his hands to perform an atomic absorption test to detect the presence or absence of gunshot residue. During the test, Moreland commented that “[t]his isn't going to do any good anyway. I've been firing three to four hundred rounds at a range in Vandalia.” When asked if he signed in and out at the range, Moreland changed his story and stated that he had been firing the shots along a river bank. Moreland also made a number of statements that were eventually used against him at trial, including, “I have Fifth Amendment rights,” “In fact, the Constitution is written for guys like me,” and “You don't have any evidence against me, and I'll be damned if I'll help you.”

At trial, Moreland presented testimony from an expert who estimated that Moreland would have had a blood alcohol level of between .30 and .36 around the time the murders were committed, suggesting that he would have been too intoxicated to carry out the acts as described. However, in addition to Samuel Thomas, other witnesses reported seeing Moreland that night and called into question his intoxication defense. Bruce Shackleford saw Moreland at approximately 11:00 p.m. and testified that Moreland did not appear to be drunk nor did he have difficulty walking or talking. Richard Cunningham also saw Moreland and observed that Moreland did not seem to have difficulty walking.

Police subsequently recovered what they believed to be the murder weapon—a .22–caliber rifle. Because the rifle had been in an alley for weeks after the crime, it was discolored, rusty, and broken. Police linked the rifle to the crime after determining that bullets found in some of the victims' bodies matched that of a .22–caliber rifle. When police test-fired the rifle and compared the test bullets with the bullets found in the victims' bodies, they found that the two bullet types shared the same characteristics.

In April 1986, after Moreland waived trial by jury, a three-judge panel found Moreland guilty of the aggravated murders of Glenna, Lana, and Violana Green, and Daytrin and Datwan Talbott. Each of the five aggravated murders carried death penalty specifications, and the panel ultimately sentenced Moreland to death. Further, the panel found Moreland guilty of the attempted aggravated murders of Tia Green, Glenna Talbott, and Dayron Talbott, and sentenced Moreland accordingly. The panel acquitted Moreland of five counts of aggravated felony murder, three counts of attempted aggravated felony murder, one count of aggravated robbery, and the death specifications that the murders were committed to escape detection or apprehension and that they were committed in conjunction with aggravated robbery.

Moreland appealed his conviction and sentence to the Ohio Court of Appeals, which affirmed the decision of the trial court. See Ohio v. Moreland, No. 9907, 1988 WL 95894 (Ohio Ct.App. Sept. 16, 1988). The Ohio Supreme Court subsequently affirmed that decision, and the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari. See Moreland, 552 N.E.2d 894,cert. denied,498 U.S. 882, 111 S.Ct. 231, 112 L.Ed.2d 185 (1990). Moreland next sought relief in state post-conviction proceedings. The trial court granted the State's motion for summary judgment. Moreland appealed and the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed in part, but remanded the action for an evidentiary hearing to determine if Moreland had knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently waived his right to trial by jury. After remand, the trial court and the state court of appeals held that Moreland failed to prove that his jury trial waiver was invalid. The Ohio Supreme Court declined to accept Moreland's appeal for review.

Moreland filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, raising nine claims. The magistrate judge recommended that Moreland's habeas petition be denied on all grounds, but recommended certifying for appeal Moreland's claims (1) that his conviction for aggravated murder with prior calculation and design was not supported by sufficient evidence, (2) that the trial court failed to conduct an adequate evidentiary hearing into the competence of Dayron and the admissibility of his testimony, (3) that the trial court wrongly excluded expert testimony about Dayron's susceptibility to suggestion, (4) that counsel were ineffective in failing to object to gruesome photographs and in failing to object to Moreland's statements concerning his post-arrest assertion of Miranda rights, and (5) that counsel were ineffective at the penalty phase of his trial. The district court adopted the magistrate judge's recommendations in full. Moreland v. Bradshaw, 635 F.Supp.2d 680 (S.D.Ohio 2009); Moreland v. Bradshaw, No. 3:05–cv–334, 2010 WL 99263 (S.D.Ohio Jan. 6, 2010). Moreland timely appealed.

II.

A. Sufficiency of the Evidence³

The Supreme Court of Ohio reasonably applied clearly established federal law in deciding that sufficient evidence supported Moreland's convictions for committing aggravated murder with prior calculation and design. Moreland filed his federal habeas petition after the effective date of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”). The provisions of that act therefore apply in this case. Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 336–37, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997). Under AEDPA's deferential standard, a writ may be granted only if the state court's decision “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1); Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 404–05, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). We apply two layers of deference in reviewing habeas claims challenging evidentiary sufficiency. McGuire v. Ohio, 619 F.3d 623, 631 (6th Cir.2010) (citing Brown v. Konteh, 567 F.3d 191, 204–05 (6th Cir.2009)). “First ... we must determine whether, viewing the trial testimony and exhibits in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” Brown, 567 F.3d at 205 (citing Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979)). “Second, even were we to conclude that a rational trier of fact could not have found a petitioner...