Ravelo v. Dixon

• Decision Date: 06 April 2023
• Docket Number: 21-22582-CIV-ALTMAN
• Parties: EDUARDO C. RAVELO, Petitioner, v. RICKY D. DIXON, SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida

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EDUARDO C. RAVELO, Petitioner, v. RICKY D. DIXON, SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Respondent.

No. 21-22582-CIV-ALTMAN

United States District Court, S.D. Florida

April 6, 2023

Eduardo C. Ravelo, pro se counsel of record

ORDER

ROY K ALTMIAN, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Our Petitioner, Eduardo C. Ravelo, was convicted and sentenced in state court on charges of defrauding an elderly victim. See Petition [ECF No. 1] at 1; Amended Information [ECF No. 25-1] at 300-07. He now challenges his conviction and sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. After careful review, we DISMISS in PART and DENY in PART Ravelo's Petition.

The Facts

The State of Florida charged Ravelo by Information with six crimes: first-degree grand theft (Count 1); theft of $50,000 or more from an elderly person (Count 2); fraudulent use of personal identification information (Count 3); abuse of an elderly person (Count 4); unlawful use of a two-way communications device (Count 5); and laundering $100,000 or more (Count 6). See Amended Information [ECF No 25-1] at 300-07. The State alleged that Ravelo, who was one of the victim's caretakers, “took advantage of the fact that [the victim, Irene Boyansky] became legally blind, took out an American Express card [in her name] . . . and cashed a large number of checks from her account, depositing some of the checks and using some of the cash.” Direct Appeal Initial Brief [ECF No. 25-1] at 86. On May 5, 2016, a jury found Ravelo guilty of Counts 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 of the Amended Information, but acquitted him on Count 4. See Verdict [ECF No. 25-1] at 59-62.

The trial court sentenced Ravelo to seventeen years in prison-with a mandatory minimum term of ten years. See Judgment and Sentencing Orders [ECF No. 25-1] at 64-72. Ravelo appealed to the Third DCA and raised the following four arguments: (1) “[t]he trial court erred when it allowed hearsay testimony through Detective Gonzale[s] that include[d] his opinion about the strength of the case, the completeness of the investigation, [and] mentioned information obtained from [a] nontestifying witness”; (2) “[t]he trial court erred when it denied the motion to strike the [venire] panel on the basis of the erroneous instruction or comment made by Judge Newman during his welcome speech to the prospective jurors”; (3) the trial court erred by “impermissibly shifting the burden when it asked the Detective whether he had ‘all the evidence from all sides'”; and (4) “[t]he trial court committed reversible error when it allowed the introduction of Mr. Ravelo's confession where there was insufficient proof of corpus delicti.” Direct Appeal Initial Brief [ECF No. 25-1] at 102-03. On July 5, 2018, the Third DCA summarily affirmed the trial court in an unwritten opinion. See Ravelo v. State, 251 So.3d 116, 116 (Fla. 3d DCA 2018).

On July 1, 2019, Ravelo, through counsel, filed a Motion for Postconviction Relief under FLA. R. CRIM. P. 3.850, advancing the following four claims of ineffective assistance of counsel: (1) counsel was ineffective for failing to “consult, show, or share with the defendant the discovery received prior to trial,” Postconviction Motion [ECF No. 25-1] at 186; (2) counsel was ineffective for “fail[ing] to enter a contemporaneous objection, and thus properly preserve for appeal,” certain “objectionable” portions of Detective Gonzales's testimony, id. at 187-88; (3) counsel was ineffective when he “failed to enter timely trial objections to the State's violation of Defendant's right to confront the witness against him,” id. at 189; and (4) Ravelo's “decision not to testify was not a knowing and intelligent waiver” because trial counsel failed to provide Ravelo with a complete account of the evidence against him, id. at 190-91. On November 8, 2019, the state postconviction court denied all four claims on their merits. See Order Denying Postconviction Motion [ECF No. 25-1] at 198-211.

Ravelo appealed the denial of his Postconviction Motion to the Third DCA, arguing that the state postconviction court “erred in summarily denying” the first, third, and fourth claims in his Postconviction Motion. See Postconviction Initial Brief [ECF No. 25-1] at 224. The Third DCA affirmed the state postconviction court in an unwritten decision on August 12, 2020, see Ravelo v. State, 303 So.3d 539, 539 (Fla. 3d DCA 2020), and issued its mandate on September 2, 2020, see Postconviction Appeal Docket [ECF No. 25-1] at 214.

Ravelo, now proceeding pro se, filed this Petition on July 15, 2021.^[1] See Petition at 18. On December 23, 2021, we sua sponte dismissed the Petition as untimely, finding that more than one year of untolled time had elapsed since Ravelo's conviction became final. See Order Dismissing Petition [ECF No. 5] at 6 (“Ravelo thus had 108 days from September 2, 2020 (or until December 21, 2020) to file this Petition. That's because 108 days is what was left of his 365-day window once we deduct the 257 un-tolled days that had already passed by the time he filed his 3.850 motion.”). Ravelo responded with a “Motion to Reopen this Action” under FED. R. CIV. P. 59(e), contending that he had “hand delivered [a Rule 3.800(a) motion^[2] to prison officials for mailing back on October 20, 2020,” which meant that his time to file a § 2254 petition had been tolled for longer than we had first calculated. See Motion to Reopen [ECF No. 7] at 3; see also Rule 3.800(a) Motion [ECF No. 25-1] at 288-89.

We referred the matter to U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisette M. Reid, see Magistrate Referral [ECF No. 14], who found that Ravelo had “mailed his 3.800(a) motion on October 20, 2020,” which “tolled the one-year statute of limitations” until the state postconviction court denied the motion on June 29, 2021, Ravelo v. Dep't of Corr., 2022 WL 1525425, at *3 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 28, 2022) (Reid, Mag. J.); see also Order Denying Rule 3.800(a) Motion [ECF No. 25-1] at 291-93. Because Magistrate Judge Reid found that “Petitioner had until August 30, 2021, to file his Petition,” she recommended that we grant his Motion to Reopen. Ravelo, 2022 WL 1525425, at *3 (footnote omitted). Agreeing with Magistrate Judge Reid's reasoning, we adopted in full her Report and Recommendation, found the Petition timely, and reopened the case. See Ravelo v. Dixon, 2022 WL 1522071, at *1 (S.D. Fla. May 13, 2022) (Altman, J.). This Order follows.

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...