Parker v. Matthews

• Decision Date: 11 June 2012
• Docket Number: No. 11–845.,11–845.
• Citation: 567 U.S. 37,132 S.Ct. 2148,183 L.Ed.2d 32
• Parties: Philip PARKER, Warden v. David Eugene MATTHEWS.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

567 U.S. 37

132 S.Ct. 2148

183 L.Ed.2d 32

Philip PARKER, Warden

v.David Eugene MATTHEWS.

No. 11–845.

Supreme Court of the United States

June 11, 2012.

PER CURIAM.

In this habeas case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit set aside two 29–year–old murder convictions based on the flimsiest of rationales. The court's decision is a textbook example of what the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) proscribes: "using federal habeas corpus review as a vehicle to second-guess the reasonable decisions of state courts." Renico v. Lett, 559 U.S. ––––, ––––, 130 S.Ct. 1855, 1866, 176 L.Ed.2d 678 (2010). We therefore grant the petition for certiorari and reverse.

I

Between 1 and 2 a.m. on the morning of June 29, 1981, respondent David Eugene Matthews broke into the Louisville home he had until recently shared with his estranged wife, Mary Marlene Matthews (Marlene). At the time, Matthews' mother-in-law, Magdalene Cruse, was staying at the home with her daughter. Matthews found Cruse in bed and shot her in the head at point-blank range, using a gun he had purchased with borrowed funds hours before. Matthews left Cruse there mortally wounded and went into the next room, where he found his wife. He had sexual relations with her once or twice; stayed with her until about 6 a.m.; and then shot her twice, killing her. Cruse would die from her wound later that day.

Matthews was apprehended that morning at his mother's house, where he had already begun to wash the clothes he wore during the crime. Later in the day, police officers found the murder weapon secreted below the floorboards of a backyard shed on the property. At the police station, Matthews made a tape-recorded statement to a police detective in which he denied responsibility for the murders.

A grand jury indicted Matthews for the two murders and for burglary. At trial, he did not contest that he killed the two victims. Instead, he sought to show that he had acted under "extreme emotional disturbance," which under Kentucky law serves to reduce a homicide that would otherwise be murder to first-degree manslaughter. Ky.Rev.Stat. Ann. §§ 507.020(1)(a), 507.030(1)(b) (West 2006). As support for that claim, Matthews pointed to the troubled history of his marriage with Marlene. Matthews and his wife had been frequently separated from one another, and their periods of separation were marked by extreme hostility. Marlene would regularly procure criminal warrants against Matthews; several weeks before the murders she obtained one charging Matthews with sexual abuse of Marlene's 6–year–old daughter, which had led to Matthews' spending roughly three weeks in jail. Witnesses also testified that Marlene sought to control Matthews when they were together and would yell at him from across the street when they were separated; and Matthews' mother recounted that Marlene would leave the couple's young child crying in the street late at night outside the house where Matthews was sleeping in order to antagonize him.

Matthews also introduced the testimony of a psychiatrist, Dr. Lee Chutkow, who had evaluated Matthews. Dr. Chutkow related what Matthews had told him about the murders, including that Matthews had been drinking heavily and taking Valium and a stimulant drug. Dr. Chutkow testified that he had diagnosed Matthews as suffering from an adjustment disorder, which he described as a "temporary emotional and behavioral disturbance in individuals who are subject to a variety of stresses," that would temporarily impair a person's judgment and cause symptoms such as "anxiety, nervousness, depression, even suicide attempts or attempts to hurt other people." 6 Record 558. Dr. Chutkow testified to his opinion that Matthews was acting under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the murders—in particular, that he experienced "extreme tension, irritability, and almost a kind of fear of his late wife," id., at 567, whom he perceived as having tormented and emasculated him.

The jury convicted Matthews on all charges, and he was sentenced to death. The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and sentence, rejecting Matthews' 37 claims of error. Matthews v. Commonwealth, 709 S.W.2d 414, 417 (1985). In response to Matthews' argument that the evidence was insufficient to establish that he had acted in the absence of extreme emotional disturbance, the court concluded that the evidence regarding Matthews' "conduct before, during and after the crimes was more than sufficient to support the jury's findings of capital murder." Id., at 421. A claim that the prosecutor had committed misconduct during his closing argument was rejected on the merits, but without discussion.

Following an unsuccessful state postconviction proceeding, Matthews filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. Matthews contended, among other things, that the Kentucky Supreme Court had contravened clearly established federal law in rejecting his claim that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he had not acted under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance and in rejecting his claim of prosecutorial misconduct. The District Court dismissed the petition, but a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit reversed with instructions to grant relief. 651 F.3d 489 (2011).

II

Under AEDPA, the Sixth Circuit had no authority to issue the writ of habeas corpus unless the Kentucky Supreme Court's decision "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," or "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). The Sixth Circuit gave two grounds for its conclusion that Matthews was entitled to relief under this "difficult to meet ... and highly deferential standard," Cullen v. Pinholster,

563 U.S. ––––, ––––, 131 S.Ct. 1388, 1398, 179 L.Ed.2d 557 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). Neither is valid.

A

First, the Sixth Circuit held that the Kentucky Supreme Court had impermissibly shifted to Matthews the burden of proving extreme emotional disturbance, and that the Commonwealth had failed to prove the absence of extreme emotional disturbance beyond a reasonable doubt. The Sixth Circuit reasoned that, at the time Matthews committed his offenses, the allocation of the burden of proof on extreme emotional disturbance was governed by the Kentucky Supreme Court's decision in Gall v. Commonwealth, 607 S.W.2d 97, 108 (1980), which placed the burden of producing evidence on the defendant, but left the burden of proving the absence of extreme emotional disturbance with the Commonwealth in those cases in which the defendant had introduced evidence sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt on the issue. According to the Sixth Circuit, however, the Kentucky Supreme Court departed from that understanding in Matthews' case and placed the burden of proving extreme emotional disturbance "entirely on the defendant," 651 F.3d, at 500.

The Sixth Circuit's interpretation is supported by certain aspects of the Kentucky Supreme Court's opinion in Matthews' case. For example, the state court indicated that Matthews had "present[ed] extensive evidence" of his extreme emotional disturbance, yet the court rejected his sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim by finding the evidence he had presented "far from overwhelming," rather than by stating that it failed to raise a reasonable doubt. Matthews, 709 S.W.2d, at 420–421. The state court also observed that it had recently clarified in Wellman v. Commonwealth, 694 S.W.2d 696 (1985), that "absence of extreme emotional disturbance is not an element of the crime of murder which the Commonwealth must affirmatively prove." Matthews, supra, at 421. In the Sixth Circuit's view, the Kentucky Supreme Court's reliance on this Wellman formulation of extreme emotional disturbance in resolving Matthews' appeal violated the Due Process Clause, as construed by this Court in Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 354, 84 S.Ct. 1697, 12 L.Ed.2d 894 (1964), because it involved the retroactive application of an " 'unexpected and indefensible' " judicial revision of the Kentucky murder statute.

The Kentucky Supreme Court's initial assessment of the evidence and reliance upon Wellman would be relevant if they formed the sole basis for denial of Matthews' sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim. It is not clear, however, that they did. The Kentucky Supreme Court explained that "[t]he trial court's instructions in regard to extreme emotional disturbance were adequate, and the proof supported the jury's findings of intentional murder." 709 S.W.2d, at 421. Those jury instructions required the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Matthews had not acted "under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance for which there was a reasonable justification or excuse under the circumstances as he believed them to be." 6 Record 625, 628–629. The case had been submitted to the jury with the burden assigned to the Commonwealth, the jury had found that burden carried, and the Kentucky Supreme Court found the evidence adequate to sustain that finding. That ground was sufficient to reject Matthews' claim, so it is irrelevant that the court also invoked a ground of questionable validity. See Wetzel v. Lambert, 565 U.S. ––––, –––– – ––––, 132 S.Ct. 1195, 1198–1199, 182 L.Ed.2d 35 (2012)(per curiam) .¹

The Sixth Circuit's opinion also challenges the conclusion that the evidence supported a finding of no extreme emotional disturbance. We have said that "it is the responsibility of the jury—not the court—to decide what conclusions should be drawn from evidence admitted at trial," Cavazos v. Smith, 565 U.S. ––––, ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2, 4, 181 L.Ed.2d 311 (2011)(per curiam) . The evidence is sufficient to support a...