Parker v. Renico

• Decision Date: 17 October 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-2419.,06-2419.
• Citation: 506 F.3d 444
• Parties: Saejar Deonte PARKER, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Paul RENICO, Warden, Respondent-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

506 F.3d 444

Saejar Deonte PARKER, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Paul RENICO, Warden, Respondent-Appellant.

No. 06-2419.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: September 18, 2007.

Decided and Filed: October 17, 2007.

ARGUED: Debra M. Gagliardi, Office of the Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant. Andrew N. Wise, Federal Public Defenders Office, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Raina I. Korbakis, Office of the Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant. Andrew N. Wise, Federal Public Defenders Office, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee.

Before COLE and COOK, Circuit Judges; and MILLS, District Judge.^*

OPINION

COOK, Circuit Judge.

A Michigan jury convicted Saejar Deonte Parker of the twin crimes of being a felon in possession of a firearm and felony-firearm. Mich. Comp. Laws §§ 750.224f, 750.227b. After exhausting his state-court remedies, Parker sought a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court, claiming that insufficient evidence supported the jury's conclusion that he constructively possessed a firearm. Because Parker has shown that the state courts unreasonably applied Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), we affirm the district court's grant of the petition.

I

Parker rode in a white four-door Pontiac Grand Am with three men who, as the jury concluded, conspired to murder Fred Stewart ("the victim"). Jack Tillman drove the car, Elijah Tillman rode in the front passenger's seat, Terrence Williams sat in the backseat on the passenger's side, and Parker sat in the backseat on the driver's side. As the victim sat in his wife's car in his driveway drinking a beer sometime after 2 a.m., a man — either Elijah Tillman or Williams — approached the car and fired several shots into it, four of which struck the victim.¹ The shooter reentered the Grand Am and drove off.

Michigan State Troopers Craig Tuer and Kenneth Campbell were on DUI patrol in their marked cruiser when they heard the gunshots. Soon after, they saw the Grand Am driving erratically; suspecting a drunk driver, they followed. When the troopers activated the cruiser's sirens and flashers, a chase unfolded as the Grand Am increased speed, at times in excess of 60 miles per hour, and tried to evade the police. During the chase, the officers saw a door on the driver's side open briefly: Tuer recalled two openings, while Campbell observed only one. Narrating a video of the chase, the officers spoke generally about "a" or "the" driver's side, but when asked on cross-examination, Officer Campbell identified the opening door as the driver's door. Based on the high-crime area they were patrolling, Officer Campbell assumed that the person opening the door was tossing drugs out of the car.

The chase ended when the Grand Am crashed into a tree and then a telephone pole. The driver, Jack Tillman, opened his door and took off running, and Officer Campbell chased him. Officer Tuer saw Elijah Tillman exiting the front passenger's door, Williams crawling out the rear passenger's side window, and Parker "moving in the compartment of the vehicle also coming in the direction of the driver's side door." Tuer ordered the men to stay in the car, and Parker complied immediately. When Parker later exited the Grand Am on the passenger's side, he sat on the ground and, in a voice audible on the video, repeatedly told Tuer that he intended to follow his orders.

Tuer struggled to subdue both Elijah Tillman and Williams. Officer Chad Foerster soon arrived on the scene and assisted Tuer in securing the two men. During the struggle, as Foerster later testified, Parker protected him from Elijah Tillman: as Tillman reached into the car to pick up a gun from the front floorboard, Parker pushed his hand away.

A later search of the car yielded two pistols, one on the front passenger side's floor and one on the passenger side's back-seat. Police also found a Luger pistol on the ground along the chase route off to the Grand Am's passenger's side. See supra n. 1.

Michigan charged the quartet with numerous crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder, assault with intent to commit murder, felon in possession of a firearm, and felony-firearm. At the close of evidence, Parker moved for a directed verdict on each of those counts. The trial court granted his motion as to the conspiracy and assault counts, concluding that there was "absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Parker participated in the assault with intent to murder or that he agreed to conspire in that fact, nor is there any evidence that he was an aider and abettor, mere presence being insufficient." As for the possession counts, the court denied his motion "for the reason that the firearms were in plain sight," explaining that the jury "could find that he had constructive, if not physical custody of a weapon." The jury convicted Parker of the possession charges, and Parker was sentenced to 28 to 90 months in prison on the felon-in-possession charge and a consecutive 2-year sentence for the felony-firearm charge.

When Parker appealed, the Michigan Court of Appeals rejected his sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge in a single paragraph:

Parker argues that his conviction for felon in possession was not supported by sufficient evidence because the prosecutor merely demonstrated that he was in the presence of firearms, not that he carried one. We disagree. The police found another pistol jammed in a locked position on the backseat where Williams and Parker sat, but the evidence suggested that Williams carried a Luger, used only the Luger in the shooting, and threw the Luger out his window during the chase. The evidence also showed that a driver's side door repeatedly opened during the chase, suggesting that Parker attempted to dispose of the gun or use it against his pursuers. The pursuing officer also testified that Parker initially attempted to escape through the driver's side door, but abandoned the attempt when the officer dragged Williams to the ground. From this evidence, a rational jury could reasonably conclude that Parker possessed the pistol at some point during the evening's events.

Tillman, 2004 WL 1459559, at *6 (internal citations omitted).

Judge Hoekstra dissented:

I respectfully dissent from that part of the majority opinion that holds that the prosecution presented sufficient evidence to convict defendant Parker of felon in possession of a firearm. From my review of the evidence, I conclude that other than mere presence, the prosecution failed to produce any evidence to show that defendant possessed, constructively or otherwise, the weapons associated with this incident. A person's mere proximity to contraband is insufficient, by itself, to prove possession.

In this case, the inability of the prosecution to establish defendant Parker's involvement in the principal charges of assault with intent to murder or conspiracy to commit murder, or to show any connection to the weapons other than mere presence and the possibility of access by virtue of his presence, in my judgment causes a finding of guilt on the charge of felon in possession of a firearm to be unsustainable.

Id. (Hoekstra, J., dissenting) (internal citations and footnote omitted).

The Michigan Supreme Court denied Parker leave to appeal. People v. Parker, 690 N.W.2d 114 (Mich.2004) (table). After the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granted Parker's petition for writ of habeas corpus, Parker v. Renico, 450 F.Supp.2d 727 (E.D.Mich.2006), Michigan appealed, arguing that the district court improperly substituted its judgment for that of the state court.

II

We review de novo the district court's decision to grant or deny habeas corpus relief. Wilson v. Mitchell, 498 F.3d 491, 497-98 (6th Cir.2007); Joseph v. Coyle, 469 F.3d 441, 449 (6th Cir.2006). Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"), a federal court may grant a writ of habeas corpus only if the state courts ruled in a way contrary to, or involving an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1); see Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 404-05, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000); Varner v. Stovall, 500 F.3d 491, 494-95 (6th Cir.2007). A state-court decision is an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law if it "correctly identifies the governing legal rule but applies it unreasonably to the facts of a particular prisoner's case." Williams, 529 U.S. at 407-08, 120 S.Ct. 1495. When assessing unreasonableness, "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.

As framed by AEDPA, the issue is whether the district court erred in concluding that the Michigan Court of Appeals unreasonably applied Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). Under Jackson, habeas corpus relief is appropriate based on insufficient evidence only where the court finds, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, that no rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781. The law therefore commands deference at two levels in this case — first, to the jury's verdict as contemplated by Jackson, and, second, to the state court's consideration of the jury's verdict as dictated by AEDPA.

Where we consider the jury's verdict, we do so "with explicit reference to the substantive elements of the criminal offense as defined by state law." Id. at 324 n. 16, 99 S.Ct. 2781; see also Brown v. Palmer, 441 F.3d 347, 351 (6th Cir.2006). To support a conviction on the felon-in-possession charge...