Ramirez v. Vannoy

• Decision Date: 11 March 2021
• Docket Number: CIVIL ACTION 19-13187
• Parties: JOSE DEL CARMEN L. RAMIREZ v. DARRELVANNOY, WARDEN
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana

JOSE DEL CARMEN L. RAMIREZ v. DARRELVANNOY, WARDEN

CIVIL ACTION No. 19-13187

United States District Court, E.D. Louisiana

March 11, 2021

SECTION "G" (5)

REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION

MICHAEL B. NORTH, JUDGE.

This matter was referred to the undersigned United States Magistrate Judge to conduct a hearing including an evidentiary hearing if necessary, and to submit proposed findings and recommendations for disposition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) and (C), and as applicable, Rule 8(b) of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts. Upon review of the entire record, the Court has determined that this matter can be disposed of without an evidentiary hearing See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2). For the following reasons, IT IS RECOMMENDED that the petition for habeas corpus relief be DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE.

Procedural History

Petitioner Jose Del Carmen L. Ramirez, is a convicted inmate currently incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola Louisiana. In July 2009, Ramirez and co-defendant, Jose Maldonado, were charged by grand jury indictment with one count of second-degree murder.^[1] Subsequently, Ramirez's motion to sever his trial from that of his co-defendant was granted. On October 6, 2011, a jury found Ramirez guilty as charged.^[2]On November 22, 2011, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence.^[3]

On direct appeal, his appointed counsel raised several assignments of error, including: (1) the evidence presented was insufficient to support his conviction for second-degree murder; (2) the trial court erred in allowing the State to introduce inadmissible hearsay through police officers thereby denying him the right to confront the witnesses who identified him; and (3) the trial court erroneously denied his motion to record simultaneous interpretations in English and Spanish versions at trial. On November 12, 2014, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed his conviction and sentence.^[4]On October 9, 2015, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied his application for writ of certiorari.^[5]

On or about August 1, 2016, Ramirez submitted an application for post-conviction relief to the state district court.^[6] In that application, he raised four claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel in the following respects: (1) failing to challenge a prospective juror; (2) failing to compel the appearance of several witnesses at trial; (3) stipulating to a ballistics report; and (4) failing to object to the scope of the coroner's testimony. On September 6, 2018, the state district court denied relief on the merits.^[7] On November 2, 2018, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal denied his supervisory writ application.^[8] On September 6, 2019, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied his application for supervisory writ of review.^[9]

On or about October 18, 2019, Ramirez filed the instant federal application for habeas corpus relief.^[10] In that application, he asserted the three grounds raised on direct appeal and the four grounds of ineffective assistance of trial counsel raised during post-conviction proceedings in the state courts. On September 3, 2020, the State filed a response.^[11] The State concedes that the instant application is timely and that the claims were exhausted in the state courts. The State argues that the claims should be denied on the merits.^[12] No reply was filed.

Facts

On direct appeal, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit briefly summarized the facts adduced at trial:

On the evening of May 1, 2009, the victim, Irma Sanchez, and her husband and two children were having a picnic with friends outside of the Pick and Go convenience store on Elysian Fields Avenue. Upon arriving at the gas station, the defendant, Jose Del Carmen Ramirez, recognized one of the people at this picnic as someone with whom his brother had recently had an altercation. The defendant approached the group inquiring about the incident and ultimately retrieved a machete from the trunk of his car because the other individual was armed with a bat. After the defendant swung the machete at the other individual multiple times, he fled the scene in a red Pontiac. This fight was captured on the gas station's surveillance system.

About twenty minutes later, the red Pontiac returned to the gas station; and the passenger began shooting at the group at the picnic while the vehicle drove slowly away. This incident was not captured on any surveillance system. Three eyewitnesses independently identified the defendant as the shooter to the responding officer, Officer Janssen Valencia ("OfficerValencia"), and informed her as to where the defendant lived.

Thereafter, the three eyewitnesses and Officer Valencia proceeded to locate the shooter's residence, as the individuals did not know his physical address. Upon passing the anticipated location, the three eyewitnesses identified the man exiting the red Pontiac, the defendant, as the person they had seen shoot the victim. The defendant was then arrested and charged with second-degree murder. After a three-day trial, a jury found the defendant guilty as charged. The defendant was sentenced to serve life in prison, without any benefits.^[13]

General Standards of Review

Title 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) and (2), as amended by The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penally Act of 1996 (AEDPA), provides the applicable standards of review for pure questions of fact, pure questions of law, and mixed questions of both. A state court's purely factual determinations are presumed to be correct and a federal court will give deference to the state court's decision unless it "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)(2); see also 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1) ("In a proceeding instituted by an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court, a determination of a factual issue made by a State court shall be presumed to be correct. The applicant shall have the burden of rebutting the presumption of correctness by clear and convincing evidence."). With respect to a state court's determination of pure questions of law or mixed questions of law and fact, a federal court must defer to the decision on the merits of such a claim unless that decision "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).

The "'contrary to' and 'unreasonable application' clauses [of § 2254(d)(1)] have independent meaning." Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685, 694 (2002). A state-court decision is "contrary to" clearly established precedent if the state court applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in the United States Supreme Court's cases or if the state court confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of the United States Supreme Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from United States Supreme Court precedent. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06 (2000); Wooten v. Thaler, 598 F.3d 215, 218 (5th Cir.), cert, denied, 131 S.Ct. 294 (2010). An "unreasonable application" of [United States Supreme Court] precedent occurs when a state court "identifies the correct governing legal rule... but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular state prisoner's case." Williams, 529 U.S. at 407-08; White v. Woodall, 572 U.S. 415,426 (2014).

It is well-established that "an unreasonable application is different from an incorrect one." Bell, 535 U.S. at 694. A state court's merely incorrect application of Supreme Court precedent simply does not warrant habeas relief. Puckett v. Epps, 641 F.3d 657, 663 (5th Cir. 2011) ("Importantly, 'unreasonable' is not the same as 'erroneous' or 'incorrect'; an incorrect application of the law by a state court will nonetheless be affirmed if it is not simultaneously unreasonable."). "[E]ven a strong case for relief does not mean the state court's contrary conclusion was unreasonable" under the AEDPA. Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 102 (2011). Section 2254(d) preserves authority to issue the writ in cases where there is "no possibility fairminded jurists could disagree that the state court's decision conflicts with [United States Supreme Court] precedents." Id. (emphasis added); see also Renico v. Lett, 559 U.S. 766, 779 (2010) ("AEDPA prevents defendants-and federal courts-from using federal habeas corpus review as a vehicle to second-guess the reasonable decisions of state courts.").

Analysis

A. Sufficiency of the Evidence

Ramirez contends that the evidence was insufficient to convict him of second-degree murder because the State did not prove his identity as the perpetrator. He argues that "there is no physical evidence connecting him to the crime scene, no witnesses testified at trial identifying him as the shooter and that his confession was coerced."^[14]

The sufficiency claim was considered and denied on direct appeal. The Louisiana Fourth Circuit rejected his sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim, holding:

Instate v. Huckabay, 2000-1082 (La. App. 4Cir. 2/6/02), 809 So.2d 1093, this Court identified the standard for reviewing a sufficiency of the evidence challenge:

In evaluating whether evidence is constitutionally sufficient to support a conviction, an appellate court must determine whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Jacksonv Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979); State v. Green, 588 So.2d 757 (La. App. 4

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