Oken v. Corcoran

• Decision Date: 01 May 2000
• Docket Number: CA-97-585-PJM,No. 99-27,99-27
• Parties: (4th Cir. 2000) STEVEN H. OKEN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. THOMAS CORCORAN, Warden of the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center and the Maryland Penitentiary; J. JOSEPH CURRAN, JR., Attorney General of the State of Maryland, Respondents-Appellees. (). . Argued:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 259

220 F.3d 259 (4th Cir. 2000)

STEVEN H. OKEN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. THOMAS CORCORAN, Warden of the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center and the Maryland Penitentiary; J. JOSEPH CURRAN, JR., Attorney General of the State of Maryland, Respondents-Appellees.

No. 99-27 (CA-97-585-PJM).

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS, FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT.

Argued: May 1, 2000.

Decided: July 18, 2000.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Greenbelt.

Peter J. Messitte, District Judge.

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] COUNSEL ARGUED: Fred Warren Bennett, BENNETT & NATHANS, L.L.P., Greenbelt, Maryland, for Appellant. Ann Norman Bosse, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Appeals Division, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Christopher M. Davis, DAVIS & DAVIS, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General of Maryland, Criminal Appeals Division, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellees.

Before WILKINSON, Chief Judge, and LUTTIG and MICHAEL, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Luttig wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge Wilkinson joined. Judge Michael wrote a concurring opinion, concurring in all but Part II.A. of the majority opinion and concurring in the judgment.

OPINION

LUTTIG, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner-appellant Steven Howard Oken, a Maryland inmate under sentence of death, appeals from the district court's denial of his application under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 for a writ of habeas corpus. Oken claims, inter alia, that the state trial court's voir dire questions were constitutionally inadequate under Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U.S. 719 (1992), and that he surrendered his right to testify at the criminal responsibility phase of his trial in reliance on advice from the trial court that was erroneous under Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377 (1968). Because we conclude that the district court correctly upheld the Maryland Court of Appeals' rejection of these and other claims advanced by Oken, we affirm the district court's judgment denying Oken's petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

I.

Oken was sentenced to death in 1991 by a Baltimore County jury for the murder of Dawn Garvin.¹ Four years earlier, Garvin's naked corpse had been found by her father in the bedroom of her apartment, with two contact gunshot wounds to her head and a bottle protruding from her vagina. A .25 caliber handgun seized from Oken's bedroom was later determined to be the murder weapon, and a piece of rubber recovered from the crime scene was traced to Oken's tennis shoes. Moreover, several of Garvin's neighbors identified Oken as the person who had attempted to gain entry to their residences under various false pretenses a few days prior to Garvin's murder. On direct review, the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed Oken's convictions for first degree murder and first degree sexual offense, as well as his sentence of death, but reversed his conviction and sentence for burglary.² See Oken v. State, 612 A.2d 258, 283 (Md. 1992) ("Oken I"), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 931 (1993). On state collateral review, the Maryland Court of Appeals again rejected Oken's challenges to his conviction and sentence, affirming the lower court's denial of Oken's petition for post-conviction relief. See Oken v. State, 681 A.2d 30, 53 (Md. 1996) ("Oken II"), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 1079 (1997). Oken then filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court denied Oken's application for a writ of habeas corpus and subsequently denied his motion for reconsideration.

II.

To determine whether the Maryland Court of Appeals' rejection of Oken's claims "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), we apply the standard of review set forth by the Supreme Court in Williams v. Taylor, 120 S. Ct. 1495, 1523 (2000), which with one exception affirmed this court's interpretation of section 2254(d)(1) in Green v. French , 143 F.3d 865 (1998), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1090 (1999). Specifically, the Court affirmed the following interpretation of the "contrary to" clause that we set forth in Green:

[A] decision is "contrary to" precedent only when, either through a decision of pure law or the application of law to facts indistinguishable in any material way from those on the basis of which the precedent was decided, that decision reaches a legal conclusion or a result opposite to and irreconcilable with that reached in the precedent that addresses the identical issue.

143 F.3d at 870. See Williams, 120 S. Ct. at 1519 (holding that the preceding interpretation "accurately reflects th[e] textual meaning" of the word "contrary"). The Court then restated the governing standard in the following terms, which correspond closely with the preceding sentence, and to which we of course adhere in reviewing Oken's claims:

Under the "contrary to" clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by this Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than this Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts.

Id. at 1523. The Court also upheld the following interpretation of the "unreasonable application" clause that we set forth in Green:

[A] decision represents an "unreasonable application of" precedent only when that decision applies a precedent in a context different from the one in which the precedent was decided and one to which extension of the legal principle of the precedent is not reasonable, when that decision fails to apply the principle of a precedent in a context where such failure is unreasonable, or when that decision recognizes the correct principle from the higher court's precedent, but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts before it[.]

143 F.3d at 870. See Williams, 120 S. Ct. at 1520 (holding that the preceding interpretation was "generally correct").³ The Court then restated the governing standard in the following terms, to which we of course also adhere in reviewing Oken's claims:

Under the "unreasonable application" clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from this Court's decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case.

Id. at 1523.

The Court also adopted our holding that the "unreasonable application" inquiry is an objective one, see Green , 143 F.3d at 870 ("the writ of habeas corpus should issue [. . .] if [the state court's] decision rests upon an objectively unreasonable application of established principles to new facts" (emphasis added)). Nevertheless, it rejected our statement that state courts unreasonably apply clearly established federal law only when they "interpret[ ] or apply[ ]" such law "in a manner that reasonable jurists would all agree is unreasonable," Green, 143 F.3d at 870, on the ground that this statement"would tend to mislead federal habeas courts by focusing their attention on a subjective inquiry rather than on an objective one," Williams, 120 S. Ct. at 1522. Although the Court rejected reference to "all reasonable jurists" in conducting the "unreasonable application" inquiry, we thus understand the Court to have affirmed our categorical holding that the relevant inquiry is an objective one. See supra.

A.

Oken argues that the district court erred in denying him relief on his claim that the state trial court's voir dire questions were constitutionally inadequate under Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U.S. 719 (1992), because they failed to satisfy Morgan's requirement of an "inquiry" sufficient to identify "those jurors who, even prior to the State's case in chief, had predetermined [. . .] whether to impose the death penalty," id. at 736. Specifically, Oken contends that, even though the trial judge asked some of the potential jurors follow-up questions, the initial questions propounded to every member of the jury panel were inadequate to identify all of the potential jurors who would need to be asked follow-up questions in order to satisfy the dictates of Morgan.

We reject this claim as procedurally defaulted, and, in the alternative, on its merits.

1.

We reject Oken's Morgan claim as procedurally defaulted because he failed to raise this claim on direct appeal in Oken I and thereby waived it as a matter of state law, and because, as a matter of state law, he failed to show special circumstances excusing this waiver. See Oken II, 681 A.2d at 36-38. We are satisfied that this state procedural rule requiring that, absent special circumstances, issues first be raised on direct review is both "independent" and"adequate," as required by Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750 (1991). It is "adequate" because it is "consistently or regularly applied," Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. 578, 587 (1988), by Maryland courts. See, e.g., McElroy v. State, 617 A.2d 1068, 1070, 1075 (Md. 1993); Smith v. Warden, Maryland Penitentiary, 243 A.2d 897, 898 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1968), cert. denied sub nom. Smith v. Maryland, 393 U.S. 989 (1968); Anglin v. Director, Patuxent Institution, 232 A.2d 532, 533 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1967), cert. denied sub nom. Anglin v. Maryland, 389 U.S. 873 (1967). We are also satisfied that this procedural bar is sufficiently "independent" of federal law, even though the Maryland Court of Appeals, in applying it, referred to Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458 (1938), since the Maryland court's decision does not "fairly appear to rest primarily on federal law or to be interwoven with federal law," Coleman, 501 U.S. at 735, 740. The rule that issues must first be raised on direct appeal, on which the ...