Owens v. Guida

• Decision Date: 09 December 2008
• Docket Number: No. 05-6105.,05-6105.
• Citation: 549 F.3d 399
• Parties: Gaile K. OWENS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Earline GUIDA, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

549 F.3d 399

Gaile K. OWENS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Earline GUIDA, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 05-6105.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: January 29, 2008.

Decided and Filed: December 9, 2008.

ARGUED: Gretchen L. Swift, Federal Public Defender's Office, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Gordon W. Smith, Office of the Attorney General, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Gretchen L. Swift, Christopher M. Minton, Federal Public Defender's Office, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Gordon W. Smith, Office of the Attorney General, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Before: BOGGS, Chief Judge; and MERRITT and SILER, Circuit Judges.

BOGGS, C.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which SILER, J., joined. MERRITT, J. (pp. ___ - ___), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

BOGGS, Chief Judge.

Gaile K. Owens ("Owens") is on Tennessee's death row because she hired Sidney Porterfield to kill her husband and Porterfield successfully carried out his assignment. Owens appeals the district court's dismissal of her petition for a writ of habeas corpus. She argues that: 1) she received ineffective assistance of counsel ("IAC") when trial counsel failed to adequately investigate her background and failed to overcome the state's hearsay objection to one of her penalty-phase witnesses; 2) the state violated Brady v. Maryland by failing to turn over letters between her deceased husband and his paramour; and 3) the trial court unconstitutionally prevented her from offering, as mitigating evidence, testimony that she wanted to plead guilty in return for receiving a life sentence.

We reject the first argument and hold that the Tennessee courts reasonably applied Strickland v. Washington by concluding that Owens sabotaged her own defense and that counsel's performance is not deficient when counsel follows a client's instructions. Likewise, we reject her second argument and hold that the Tennessee courts reasonably applied Brady because even if the letters were favorable evidence, and were suppressed by the state, Owens was not prejudiced because she could have presented other evidence of the affair but chose not to do so. Finally, we reject her third argument and hold that the Tennessee courts reasonably applied Lockett v. Ohio in refusing to admit Owens's evidence because no court, let alone the Supreme Court, has held that failed plea negotiations may be admitted at a penalty-phase hearing. Therefore, we affirm.

I

In early 1985, Owens solicited several men to kill her husband, Ronald Owens. Evidence at her trial, as detailed in State v. Porterfield, 746 S.W.2d 441 (Tenn.1988), showed that she met with one of the would-be hitmen, Sidney Porterfield, at least three times. Ronald Owens was found in the family's den on February 17, 1985 with his skull smashed from at least 21 blows from a tire iron. He had been beaten with so much force that fragments of his skull had been driven into his brain and his face had been driven into the floor. Blood was splattered over the walls and floor. A pathologist's report showed extensive injuries to his hands, indicating that he had been trying to cover his head with his hands during the savage attack.

After Ronald Owens's corpse was discovered, George James, one of the other men solicited by Owens, feared that he might be a murder suspect and went to the police. James agreed to wear a wire and meet with Owens. At the meeting, Owens explained that she had her husband killed because of "bad marital problems" and paid James $60 to keep quiet. Police listened from a nearby car and arrested Owens immediately and Porterfield soon afterwards. Owens ultimately confessed to hiring, and Porterfield to committing, the murder. Porterfield stated that Owens offered him $17,000 to murder her husband, and also that he went to Owens's house about 9:00 pm on the night of the murder, ambushed Ronald Owens in the backyard, and then fought with him until they ended up inside where Porterfield beat Ronald Owens to death. Gaile Owens explained to the police that she had Ronald killed because "we've just had a bad marriage over the years, and I just felt like he had been cruel to me. There was very little physical violence."

Prior to trial, the prosecution offered both defendants a life sentence in return for a guilty plea, contingent on both of them accepting the plea. Owens accepted, but Porterfield refused, so the offer was withdrawn and the pair were tried jointly for first-degree murder. Neither defendant testified at trial. At trial, Owens's counsel's theory was that Owens had withdrawn her murder solicitation and that Porterfield murdered Ronald in a botched burglary. The prosecution introduced both Porterfield's and Owens's confessions, as well as testimony that Porterfield and Owens were seen talking together the day of the murder. Porterfield introduced no evidence in his defense, while Owens introduced testimony from a neighbor who said that Owens was hysterical after her husband's body was found. The jury convicted both Owens and Porterfield of first-degree murder.

During the penalty phase, Owens offered testimony from Dr. Max West, a psychiatrist who said that he had treated her in 1978 for severe behavior problems and from two jail employees who said that she was a model prisoner. The jury found Owens guilty of two aggravating circumstances, murder-for-hire and a murder that was "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel." It also found Porterfield guilty of three aggravating circumstances, and sentenced both parties to death. The defendants took a joint but unsuccessful appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court. After that, both parties continued to appeal, but through different avenues.¹

Owens then unsuccessfully sought state post-conviction relief. In 2000, she filed a federal habeas petition in the Western District of Tennessee, raising 26 claims. The petition addressed only her death sentence; it explicitly admitted that she hired Porterfield to murder her husband. The district court denied the petition in a 118-page opinion issued on June 15, 2005, and later denied Owens's motion to amend the judgment. The court then granted Owens a limited certificate of appealability (COA). From Claim 1, penalty-phase IAC, the district court certified Subclaim 1(a), for failure to investigate mitigating evidence, and Subclaim 1(c), for failure to overcome the state's hearsay objections. The district court also certified Claim 2, for a Brady violation. This court expanded the COA to include a third claim, that the trial court unconstitutionally prevented Owens from presenting evidence that she had accepted the prosecution's plea offer.

II

We review the district court's decision de novo. Slagle v. Bagley, 457 F.3d 501, 513 (6th Cir.2006). Owens filed her federal petition after the enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA"). AEDPA's familiar standards therefore apply. Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 327, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997).

Under AEDPA, a state court's factual findings are presumed correct and must be accepted unless the petitioner rebuts them with clear and convincing evidence. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1); McAdoo v. Elo, 365 F.3d 487, 493-94 (6th Cir.2004). Our review of the state court's legal conclusions is also deferential. AEDPA permits us to grant a state prisoner's habeas petition only if the state court's decision was (1) "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or (2) ... [was] based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).

A state-court decision is contrary to clearly established federal law "if the state court arrives at a conclusion that is opposite to that reached by [the Supreme Court] on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than [the Supreme Court] has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts." (Terry) Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 413, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). A state-court decision unreasonably applies federal law "if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from [the Supreme Court's] decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case." Ibid. As Justice O'Connor explained in Williams, the term "unreasonable application" may be difficult to define, id. at 410, 120 S.Ct. 1495, but the standard is deferential because

Congress specifically used the word "unreasonable," and not a term like "erroneous" or "incorrect." Under § 2254(d)(1)'s "unreasonable application" clause, then, a federal habeas court may not issue the writ simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Rather, that application must also be unreasonable.

Id. at 411, 120 S.Ct. 1495. Elsewhere, the Supreme Court has held that "[t]he question under AEDPA is not whether a federal court believes the state court's determination was incorrect but whether that determination was unreasonable — a substantially higher threshold." Schriro v. Landrigan, 550 U.S. 465, 127 S.Ct. 1933, 1939, 167 L.Ed.2d 836 (2007). "[C]learly established federal law" refers to "the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme] Court's decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision." Williams, 529 U.S. at 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495. "AEDPA also requires federal habeas courts to presume the correctness of state courts' factual findings unless applicants rebut this presumption with `clear and convincing evidence.'" Schriro, 127 S.Ct. at 1939-40. Ultimately, AEDPA's highly deferential standard requires that this court give the state-court decision "the benefit of the doubt." Slagle, 457 F.3d at 514 (quoting Woodford...