Ramirez v. Dixon

• Docket Number: 23-21006-CIV-ALTMAN
• Decision Date: 04 August 2023
• Parties: YILIAN QUINTANA RAMIREZ, Petitioner, v. RICKY DIXON, SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida

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YILIAN QUINTANA RAMIREZ, Petitioner, v. RICKY DIXON, SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Respondent.

No. 23-21006-CIV-ALTMAN

United States District Court, S.D. Florida

August 4, 2023

Yilian Quintana Ramirez, pro se

ORDER

ROY K ALTMAN, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

In this petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, the Petitioner, Yilian Quintana Ramirez, challenges the constitutionality of his state-court conviction for DUI manslaughter and reckless driving. See Petition [ECF No. 1] at 1.^[1] After careful review, we DENY the Petition.

The Facts

On December 28, 2014, Ramirez “drove his vehicle into the passenger side of Amanda Lazo's vehicle,” killing Lazo and severely injuring her passenger, Moises Castro. See Direct Appeal Answer Brief [ECF No. 13-1] at 113. The State of Florida charged Ramirez with vehicular homicide (Count 1), reckless driving leading to serious bodily injury (Count 2), and DUI manslaughter (Count 3). See Amended Information [ECF No. 13-1] at 59-63. On May 10, 2018, a Florida jury found Ramirez guilty of all three counts. See Verdict [ECF No. 13-1] at 65-67. Before sentencing, the state judge vacated Ramirez's conviction on Count 1 because the parties had agreed that it was just a lesser-included offense of Count 3. See Order Vacating Count 1 [ECF No. 13-1] at 83; see also Sentencing Hr'g Tr. [ECF No. 14-10] at 11 (“[The Court:] Seems like both sides are in agreement that the verdict in count one is a lesser included offense of count three[.]”).

With Count 1 out of the way, the judge sentenced Ramirez to fifteen years in the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections. See Sentencing Orders [ECF No. 13-1] at 73-82. Ramirez appealed his conviction to the Third DCA where he advanced only one argument: that the State had failed to “prove Quintana drove in a reckless manner.” Direct Appeal Initial Brief [ECF No. 13-1] at 97. On November 27, 2019, the Third DCA summarily affirmed Ramirez's conviction and sentence in an unwritten opinion. See Ramirez v. State, 289 So.3d 474, 474 (Fla. 3d DCA 2019).

On June 1, 2020,^[2] Ramirez filed a motion for postconviction relief under FLA. R. CRIM. P. 3.850. See Original Motion for Postconviction Relief [ECF No. 13-1] at 131-57. In that motion, Ramirez argued that his trial counsel had been ineffective because of his “failure to properly advise Petitioner that he could be convicted of [Count 3] based upon the State proving that .... [Ramirez] was driving under the influence and speeding” and that, had he been properly informed of the crime's elements, Ramirez would have accepted the State's seven-year plea offer. Id. at 132-33. The state postconviction court found Ramirez's motion “legally insufficient,” Order Denying Motion for Relief [ECF No. 13-1] at 159, but the Third DCA reversed, concluding that “summary denial of the motion, without permitting amendment, constituted an abuse of discretion,” Ramirez v. State, 324 So.3d 1025, 1025 (Fla. 3d DCA 2021).

Consistent with the Third DCA's opinion, Ramirez filed an amended Rule 3.850 motion on September 22, 2021. See Motion for Postconviction Relief with Incorporated Memorandum of Law (“Postconviction Motion”) [ECF No. 13-2] at 2-37. This new postconviction motion raised five grounds for relief: (1) that Ramirez's decision to reject the State's plea offer “was involuntary because his counsel erroneously informed him not to accept the plea offer . . . and [failed] to properly explain the facts, evidence and strength of the State's case,” id. at 5-6; (2) that “counsel was ineffective for failing to file a motion [to suppress] DNA blood samples” based on “a violation of the chain of custody,” id. at 12; (3) that “counsel was ineffective for failing to suppress the results of a warrantless blood draw,” id. at 21; (4) that “trial counsel was ineffective for failing to file a motion to suppress [f]irefighter Francisco De Paz['s] statements,” id. at 29; and (5) that “the cumulative effect of counsel's deficient performance prejudiced the Defendant,” id. at 36.

On February 25, 2022, the state postconviction court denied Ramirez's Postconviction Motion. See Order Denying Postconviction Motion [ECF No. 13-2] at 41-50. The postconviction court found that counsel's (alleged) errors during the plea-negotiation stage hadn't prejudiced Ramirez because Ramirez consistently “rejected any offer that included even a single day of incarceration.” Id. at 46. It also found that counsel's decision not to file a motion to suppress was part of a reasonable trial strategy. See id. at 50 (“There is a strong presumption that trial counsel's performance was not ineffective and that he rendered adequate assistance.”). Ramirez appealed this decision to the Third DCA, see Postconviction Initial Brief [ECF No. 13-3] at 76-128, which summarily affirmed the postconviction court on December 14, 2022, see Ramirez v. State, 356 So.3d 238, 238 (Fla. 3d DCA 2022). The Third DCA's mandate issued on January 27, 2023. See Postconviction Appeal Docket [ECF No. 13-3] at 74. Ramirez filed this Petition on March 9, 2023. See Petition at 15.

The Law

I. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”)

AEDPA instructs district courts to deny any claim that was “adjudicated on the merits” in a state-court proceeding unless that adjudication “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, or resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 97-98 (2011) (summarizing 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)-(e)). To have “adjudicated [the claim] on the merits,” the state court need not have issued any kind of formal opinion or even outlined its reasoning. Id. at 99 (“When a federal claim has been presented to a state court and the state court has denied relief, it may be presumed that the state court adjudicated the claim on the merits in the absence of any indication or state-law procedural principles to the contrary.”). Rather, when a state court doesn't articulate its reasons for the denial, the federal court must “‘look through' the unexplained decision to the last related state-court decision that does provide a rationale” and “then presume that the unexplained decision adopted the same reasoning.” Wilson v. Sellers, 138 S.Ct. 1188, 1192 (2018). “Clearly established Federal law” means “the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the United States Supreme Court's] decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision.” Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412 (2000). To be “contrary to clearly established federal law, the state court must either (1) apply a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth by Supreme Court case law, or (2) reach a different result from the Supreme Court when faced with materially indistinguishable facts.” Ward v. Hall, 592 F.3d 1144, 1155 (11th Cir. 2010) (cleaned up).

For “a state court's application of [Supreme Court] precedent” to be “‘unreasonable, the state court's decision must have been more than incorrect or erroneous. The state court's application must have been objectively unreasonable.” Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 520-21 (2003) (cleaned up). “[I]t is not an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law for a state court to decline to apply a specific legal rule that has not been squarely established by [the Supreme] Court.” Richter, 562 U.S. at 101. “And an unreasonable application of those holdings must be objectively unreasonable, not merely wrong; even clear error will not suffice. To satisfy this high bar, a habeas petitioner is required to show that the state court's ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Woods v. Donald, 575 U.S. 312, 316 (2015) (cleaned up).

Section 2254(d) similarly prohibits federal judges from reevaluating a state court's factual findings unless those findings were “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). To establish that a state court's factual findings were unreasonable, “the petitioner must rebut ‘the presumption of correctness [of a state court's factual findings] by clear and convincing evidence.'” War'd., 592 F.3d at 1155-56 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1)). “[E]ven if a petitioner successfully carries his burden under § 2254(e)(1)-showing by clear and convincing evidence that a particular state-court factual determination was wrong-he does not necessarily meet his burden under § 2254(d)(2): Even if the state court made a clearly erroneous factual determination, that doesn't necessarily mean the state court's ‘decision' was ‘based on' an ‘unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.'” Pye v. Warden, Ga. Diagnostic Prison, 50 F.4th 1025, 1035 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2)). Indeed, habeas relief is not warranted “even if some of the state court's individual factual findings were erroneous-so long as the decision, taken as a whole, doesn't constitute an unreasonable determination of the facts and isn't based on any such determination.” Ibid. (cleaned up).

“AEDPA's standard is intentionally difficult to meet.” Woods, 575 U.S. at 315 (cleaned up). When reviewing state criminal convictions on collateral review “federal judges are required to afford state courts due respect by overturning their...