Sanchez-Ramirez v. Mercado-Figueroa
| Decision Date | 31 July 2013 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL NO. 12-1748 (SEC),CIVIL NO. 12-1651 (SEC) |
| Parties | RAMIRO SANCHEZ-RAMIREZ, Petitioner, v. NELSON MERCADO-FIGUEROA, ET AL., Respondents. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico |
Before the Court is the respondents' unopposed motion to dismiss the petitioner's 28 U.S.C. § 2254 motion. Docket # 23. After reviewing the filings and the applicable law, the respondents' motion is GRANTED, and the petition for writ of habeas corpus is DENIED
In 2006, a Puerto Rico jury convicted Ramiro Sánchez-Ramírez of, inter alia, first degree murder, for which he was sentenced to 148 years of imprisonment. See Docket # 23-1, p. 2. His sentence was subsequently affirmed in a thorough, well-reasoned decision by the Puerto Rico Court of Appeals, see Pueblo v. Sánchez Ramírez, KLAN20060368, 2008 WL 3200193 (P.R. Cir. June 30, 2008) (), and the Puerto Rico Supreme Court denied certiorari. Docket # 23-1, p. 3.
Sánchez-Ramírez then filed a motion under Puerto Rico Criminal Procedure Rule 192.1, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 34, App. II, R. 192.1, collaterally attacking his conviction.1 He alleged that "he had a sworn statement by Guillermina Roque, which exonerated him from the crimes for which he was serving a sentence." Docket # 23-1, p. 3. Specifically, he argued that "this witness testified against him under the influence of drugs and that she was coerced into lying by the police officers." Id., p. 3.
The state court then held an evidentiary hearing, where it "observed, listened and pondered Guillermina Roque's testimony, among other evidence." Id. Unpersuaded by the petitioner's contention, the court "decided that the evidence presented by the petitioner did not lessen the probative value of the evidence presented by the Prosecution during trial." Id. So in February 2010, the court denied the petitioner's Rule 192.1 motion, concluding "that there was no evidence that proved a violation of constitutional rights, federal or state . . . ." Id. The petitioner neither appealed nor filed a writ of certiori before the Puerto Rico Court of Appeals.
Instead, in June 2011, Sánchez-Ramírez filed a second Rule 192.1 motion, whose "pleadings were the same as in the first motion." Pueblo v. Sánchez Ramírez, KLAN201101187, 2012 WL 1835258 (P.R. Cir. Apr. 24, 2012) (). In his second motion, notably, Sánchez-Ramírez "argued that he did not have adequate legal representation." Id. This time, the trial court summarily denied his Rule 192.1 motion, see Docket # 23-2, and the Puerto Rico Court of Appeals denied certiorari. Docket # 23-1. As relevant here, the appellate court jettisoned Sánchez-Ramírez's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims, dismissing them as "frivolous." Id., p. 10. Ultimately, the court concluded, "the sentences were imposed in compliance with thelaws and constitutional principles of . . . Puerto Rico and United States . . . ." Id. On June 15, 2012, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court denied certiorari. Docket # 23-3.
This habeas petition ensued on August 9, 2012. Docket # 1. After several procedural nuances, including a consolidation under Fed. R. Civ. P. 42(a), Sánchez-Ramírez filed an amended English translation of his § 2254 motion. Docket # 13. His claims, which are otherwise scumbled, can be summed up in three arguments. His first claim is ineffective assistance of counsel "during the trial stages" and "on a[ ] first appeal proceeding." Docket # 13, pp. 11-12. Sánchez-Ramírez then claims that his rights under the Due Process and Equal Protections Clauses of the U.S. Constitution were violated when he "was convicted by the lies of two witnesses . . . ." Id., p. 13. And his third claim: Due process violations "during [the] preliminary hearing," and when the police violated his Miranda rights. Id.
The respondents move to dismiss the petition, arguing, essentially, that Sánchez-Ramírez failed to (1) exhaust state administrative remedies as to his third claim, Docket # 23, p. 7; (2) establish that he received ineffective assistance of counsel during the trial and appeal proceedings, id., p. 11; and (3) establish any other federal constitutional violation. As of today, the respondents' motion stands unopposed. See D.P.R. Civ. R. 7(b).2
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) authorizes federal courts to grant relief to a prisoner whose state court conviction "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); García v. Murphy, 229 F.3d 1133 (1st Cir. 2000) (per curiam). To obtain a writ of habeas corpus from a federal court, a state prisoner "must show thatthe 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." Harrington v. Richter, 131 S.Ct. 770, 786-87 (2011).
This is a "difficult to meet . . . and highly deferential standard," Cullen v. Pinholster,131 S.Ct. 1388, 1398 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted), as "a state court's factual findings are presumed to be correct unless the petitioner rebuts the presumption with clear and convincing evidence." Companonio v. O'Brien, 672 F.3d 101, 109 (1st Cir. 2012), cert. denied, 133 S. Ct. 197 (2012) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1); Torres v. Dennehy, 615 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.2010), cert. denied, 131 S.Ct. 1038 (2011)). The AEDPA proscribes "using federal habeas corpus review as a vehicle to second-guess the reasonable decisions of state courts." Renico v. Lett, 130 S.Ct. 1855, 1866 (2010).
On June 10, 2013, the Court entered the following order: Docket # 28, p. 1. And, following the First Circuit's recent reminder that, when faced with a mixed petition, "the best practice is for the district court to give the petitioner an opportunity to dismiss the unexhausted claims," DeLong v. Dickhaut, 715 F.3d 382, 387 (1st Cir. 2013); see also Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269 (2005), the Court gave the petitioner until June 28 to voluntarily dismiss the unexhausted claims. Docket # 28, p. 2.
Sánchez-Ramírez timely complied: He "will abandon any unexhausted claims made by petitioner and not presented or raise[d] before the state courts." Docket # 30, p. 1. Specifically,the petitioner reiterates, "[t]he claims to be abandon[ed] are the violation of due process of law at preliminary hearing and the [M]iranda rights because such claims were not presented before state courts," id., p. 1, — i.e., the third claim. This claim is thus DISMISSED without prejudice for lack of exhaustion. See DeLong, 715 F.3d at 387; Rhines, 544 U.S. at 278.
This does not end this aspect of the matter, however. According to Sánchez-Ramírez, he "will go forward with his . . . claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and with the rest of the claims exhausted before the state courts." Docket # 30, p. 1 (emphasis added). The truth of the matter is that the "rest" of the (unspecified) "exhausted" claims boil down to Sánchez-Ramírez's second claim: The alleged violations under the Due Process and Equal Protections Clauses as a result of being convicted "by the lies of two witnesses of [the] prosecutor." Docket # 13, p. 13. It is unclear from the record whether (1) the petitioner properly exhausted this claim; (2) he procedurally defaulted on it; and (3) this claim is time barred.3 To further complicate matters, the respondents have ignored — but have not expressly waived, see 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(3) — these threshold issues. And although courts may sometimes consider these procedural matters sua sponte, see, e.g., Wood v. Milyard, 132 S. Ct. 1826, 1834 (2012), they not are not obliged to do so.
But the Court need not tarry long here. Procedural-bar issues need not be resolved first in a habeas case when, as here, '[j]udicial economy might counsel' "going directly to the merits if the merits were easily resolvable against the petitioner." Ramos-Martínez v. United States,638 F.3d 315, 324 (1st Cir. 2011) (quoting Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 525 (1997); see also Brown v. Ruane, 630 F.3d 62, 66 n. 6 (1st Cir. 2011) (); 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(2) (). The Court follows this principle here.
As noted above, Sánchez-Ramírez argues that his right to due process was violated when he "was convicted by the lies of two witnesses of the prosecutor . . . ." Docket # 13, p. 13. But the petitioner neglects to even mention the identities of "two witnesses" who allegedly gave perjured testimony.4 From the record, however, it can be inferred (favorably, to a pro se petitioner like Sánchez-Ramírez) that one of these witnesses is Guillermina Roque, whose testimony Sánchez-Ramírez impugned in the first Rule 192.1 motion. The state courts already rejected this argument, concluding that "the evidence presented by the petitioner did not lessen the probative value of the evidence presented by the Prosecution during trial." Docket # 23-1, p. 4. And Sánchez-Ramírez falls way short of demonstrating that this conclusion was objectively unreasonable.
Although the...
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