Reid v. Mobley
| Decision Date | 29 September 2014 |
| Docket Number | 1:14CV29 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of North Carolina |
| Parties | JIMMY REID, Petitioner, v. DONALD MOBLEY, Administrator, Warren Correctional Institution, Respondent. |
Pro se Petitioner Jimmy Reid is serving two consecutive prison sentences in a North Carolina prison following convictions for second-degree rape and incest. (Doc. 7-3 at 41-43.) Before the court is Reid's petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. (Doc. 2.) Respondent Donald Mobley, the Administrator for Warren Correctional Institution, first moved to dismiss Reid's petition (Doc. 6) and now moves for summary judgment on the petition (Doc. 15). With his response to Mobley's motion for summary judgment, Reid attached a "Motion for Leave to Conduct Discovery" (Doc. 18-1) and also filed a motion for change of venue (Doc. 22).
For the reasons set forth below, the court will deny Reid's motions for discovery and change of venue, grant Mobley's motion for summary judgment, and dismiss Mobley's motion to dismiss as moot. Accordingly, the petition will be denied.
On January 26, 2009, a jury in Guilford County Superior Court convicted Reid of second-degree rape and incest. (Doc. 2 at 1; Doc. 7-3 at 41-43.) Reid waived his right to counsel, but the trial court appointed stand-by counsel for trial and sentencing. (Doc. 7-3 at 25, 29-31, 44-46.) On January 30, 2009, the trial court sentenced Reid to the aggravated range of 125 to 159 months of imprisonment for the rape conviction and to the presumptive range of 19 to 23 months imprisonment for the incest conviction, to be served consecutively. (Doc. 2 at 1; Doc. 7-3 at 50-55.) The trial court further ordered Reid to submit to lifetime sex offender registration and satellite-based monitoring upon his release from prison. (Doc. 7-3 at 56-59.) With the aid of court-appointed appellate counsel, Reid appealed his convictions to the North Carolina Court of Appeals (Doc. 7-3 at 60-62), and that court filed a published opinion on May 18, 2010, finding no error (Doc. 7-2).1
Reid then filed a pro se motion for change of venue and a motion for appropriate relief ("MAR") with the Guilford County Superior Court on April 8, 2011. (Doc. 16-2.) On February 21, 2013, theState court denied both motions. (Doc. 11-1.)2 Reid subsequently sought review of this order by filing a pro se certiorari petition in the North Carolina Court of Appeals on April 15, 2013 (Doc. 11-2), which was denied on April 25, 2013 (Doc. 11-4).
Reid thereafter dated his federal habeas petition December 18, 2013, and filed it in this court on January 15, 2014, alleging four grounds for relief. (Doc. 2.) In response to Reid's petition, Mobley moved to dismiss, arguing that Reid's claims were time-barred by the one-year statute of limitations of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). (Docs. 6-7, 9-11.) Reid responds that his petition was entitled to a belated commencement of the statute of limitations under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1)(B) due to a State impediment that prevented him from filing his petition. (Docs. 12-13.) Mobley did not file a reply to Reid's timeliness arguments, but instead moved for summary judgment, contending that Reid's claims should be denied on their merits. (Docs. 15-16.) Reid has filed multiple documents following Mobley's motion for summary judgment: a response (Doc.18);3 a "Supplemental Response" (Doc. 20); an "Amended Supplemental" response to Mobley's "full answer" (Doc. 21); and a motion seeking a change of venue (Doc. 22).
The motions are now ready for consideration.
Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which allows a party to move for summary judgment, applies to habeas proceedings. See Blackledge v. Allison, 431 U.S. 63, 80 (1977); Maynard v. Dixon, 943 F.2d 407, 412 (4th Cir. 1991). Summary judgment is appropriate when there exists no genuine dispute of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56; Brandt v. Gooding, 636 F.3d 124, 132 (4th Cir. 2011). The moving party bears the burden of initially coming forward and demonstrating the absence of a genuine dispute of material fact. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986). Once that burden is met, the non-moving party must then affirmatively demonstrate that there isa genuine dispute of material fact that requires trial. Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 586-87 (1986). There is no issue for trial unless there is sufficient evidence favoring the non-moving party for a fact-finder to return a verdict for that party. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 250 (1986); Sylvia Dev. Corp. v. Calvert Cnty., Md., 48 F.3d 810, 817 (4th Cir. 1995). When making the summary judgment determination, the court must view the evidence, and all justifiable inferences from it, in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. Zahodnick v. Int'l Bus. Machines Corp., 135 F.3d 911, 913 (4th Cir. 1997); Halperin v. Abacus Tech. Corp., 128 F.3d 191, 196 (4th Cir. 1997).
The court construes pro se petitions, including habeas petitions, liberally. Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 (1972); Hill v. Braxton, 277 F.3d 701, 707 (4th Cir. 2002). However, this liberal construction has its limits and does not require the court to become an advocate for a petitioner. Gordon v. Leeke, 574 F.2d 1147, 1152-53 (4th Cir. 1978).
This court must apply a highly deferential standard of review in connection with habeas claims "adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d); see also Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24 (2002). More specifically, the court maynot grant relief unless a State court decision on the merits "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). To qualify as "contrary to" United States Supreme Court precedent, a State court decision must either arrive at "a conclusion opposite to that reached by Court on a question of law" or "confront[] facts that are materially indistinguishable from a relevant [United States] Supreme Court precedent and arrive[] at a result opposite" of that reached by the Supreme Court. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06 (2000). A State court decision "involves an unreasonable application" of United States Supreme Court case law "if the state court identifies the correct governing legal rule from Court's cases but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular state prisoner's case." Id. at 407; see also id. at 409-11 (). Finally, this court must presume that State court findings of fact are correct unless rebutted by clear and convincing evidence. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1).
In Reid's first ground for relief, he contends that the prosecution failed to disclose a lab report from the State Bureau of Investigation ("SBI"), until "it was to[o] late for [him] to mount a proper defense using it." (Doc. 2 at 5.) Reid alleges that the withheld report is exculpatory because it confirmed that the DNA of the sperm recovered from the victim did not match his DNA profile. (Id. at 6, 8.) Reid argues that the prosecution's alleged withholding of this evidence violated his due process rights under the U.S. Constitution. (Id. at 9.) This argument provides no basis for habeas relief.4
Reid raised the substance of this ground for relief in his MAR, and the state trial court denied that claim on the merits as follows:
[Reid] further alleges denial of due process upon allegations of noncompliance with procedural discovery requirements and the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), specifically as related to the DNA testing results from the N.C. SBI Crime Lab. This contention is wholly without merit in that [Reid]'s identity as the perpetrator was not in issue as he conceded he had had sexual intercourse with the complaining witness, the lab results and report in fact implicate [Reid] and are not exculpatory, and they were never introduced into evidence.
(Doc. 11-1 at 3-4.) When analyzed under the deferential standard of review, the State trial court's ruling on this claim was not contrary to, nor involved an unreasonable application of, Brady v. Maryland and was not based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the state court proceeding.
In Brady, the United States Supreme Court held that "suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused . . . violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or topunishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution." Brady, 373 U.S. at 87. The prosecutor's duty to disclose such exculpatory evidence is applicable even in the absence of a request for the information by the accused. United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 110-11 (1976). To successfully demonstrate a Brady violation, a petitioner must satisfy three requirements. First, "[t]he evidence at issue must be favorable to the accused, either because it is exculpatory, or because it is impeaching." Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 281-82 (1999). Second, the evidence must have been willfully or inadvertently suppressed by the State (i.e., the State had the materials and failed to disclose them). Id.; see also United States v. Stokes, 261 F.3d 496, 502 (4th Cir. 2001). Finally, prejudice against a petitioner must have resulted (i.e., the evidence...
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