Scoggins v. Hall

• Decision Date: 26 August 2014
• Docket Number: No. 12–2338.,12–2338.
• Citation: 765 F.3d 53
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit
• Parties: Allen SCOGGINS, Petitioner, Appellant, v. Timothy HALL, Respondent, Appellee.

765 F.3d 53

Allen SCOGGINS, Petitioner, Appellant,

v.Timothy HALL, Respondent, Appellee.

No. 12–2338.

United States Court of Appeals,First Circuit.

Aug. 26, 2014.

Alan D. Campbell, for appellant.

Annette C. Benedetto, Assistant Attorney General, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with whom Martha Coakley, Attorney General, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was on brief, for appellee.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, SELYA and KAYATTA, Circuit Judges.

KAYATTA, Circuit Judge.

Allen Scoggins was convicted of first-degree murder in 1998 and is currently serving a life sentence in a Massachusetts prison. He filed this petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, seeking to invalidate his conviction on the ground that his court-appointed attorney provided ineffective assistance by forgoing the opportunity to interview a prosecution witness, Barbara Holbrook, before trial, and declining to interview or to call at trial any of a number of witnesses who, he claims, could have rebutted her testimony. The district court denied the petition, reasoning that the state court's rejection of the ineffective-assistance claim did not constitute an unreasonable application of the standard set forth in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), for evaluating such claims. We agree, and thus affirm.

I. Background

We take the facts largely as recounted by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) decision affirming Scoggins's conviction, supplemented with other record facts consistent with the SJC's findings. See Yeboah–Sefah v. Ficco, 556 F.3d 53 (1st Cir.2009); see also Commonwealth v. Scoggins, 439 Mass. 571, 789 N.E.2d 1080 (2003).

At around 1:20 A.M. on May 16, 1997, a taxicab, its lights on and its engine running, rolled slowly onto a lawn near WymanStreet in Brockton, Massachusetts. Its meter read $3.00, but the fare would never be paid. Its driver, Ishmael Rivera, lay dead, mere feet away, after having been shot three times, including once in the face and once in the chest. A coroner would later report that each shot alone would have been sufficient to cause Rivera's death.

The man who fired the shots, petitioner Allen Scoggins, decamped to South Carolina shortly thereafter. While there, he spent time with his uncle, Vernon Campbell (“Campbell”), and Campbell's then-girlfriend, Barbara Holbrook. And although Scoggins was indicted for first-degree murder in June of 1997, he managed to evade detection until August of that year, when Holbrook went to the police to file a domestic-violence complaint against Campbell. Either while or soon after filing the domestic-violence complaint, Holbrook told police that she knew of Scoggins's whereabouts and that Scoggins told her that he murdered Rivera in an attempted armed robbery gone wrong. Scoggins was detained soon afterwards.

While in custody, Scoggins confessed that he was Rivera's final fare and that when he entered Rivera's taxicab, he carried with him a loaded, borrowed gun. He further admitted that he brandished the gun after Rivera made a wrong turn, and that the gun he carried and brandished was the same gun that killed Rivera. Though he claimed he was intoxicated at the time of the shooting and could not remember everything that transpired, he was adamant that he acted in self-defense. He also said that he was sorry for taking Rivera's life.

At trial, Holbrook testified that when Scoggins was in South Carolina, Scoggins lived with his cousin Annette Campbell, and would often play cards with Campbell and Holbrook. She further testified that over a game of cards between Holbrook, Scoggins, Campbell, and another cousin, Jermaine Campbell, at the home of a friend named Pam Price, Scoggins “talked about the murder,” saying “that he called a cab to go—he didn't say a [specific] destination. He was going to stick up the cab driver. The cab driver got scared, tried to call the police; but the cab driver was going to jump out the car. And [Scoggins] just got scared, and he jumped out the car and shot him.” She also said that Scoggins “[j]okingly” suggested that he “couldn't take cabs anymore.”

On cross, Holbrook fared poorly. She partially recanted portions of her statement to the police—and portions of her testimony. Specifically, she conceded that several statements by Scoggins that she previously testified had been said in her presence had instead been relayed to her by Campbell. ¹ Holbrook did not, however, recant all of her testimony. She also did not concede that everything she said Scoggins said had been reported to her by others.² In his closing argument, Scoggins's counsel exploited Holbrook's shaky performance, telling the jury, “Barbara Holbrook, I thought to put her before you as a credible witness is an insult to your intelligence. This girl had no ... idea of what was going on.... She adopted everything anybody said to her. I asked her, ‘Did you say that?’ ‘No. I heard it from Vernon Campbell.’ ‘Well, didn't you read the statement? You said he did, or he didn't.’ ... ‘Well, I did, but I didn't say that. Vernon Campbell said that.’ ” Ultimately, he asked the jury, “[w]ould you want to trust your future, and the fate of your family to Barbara Holbrook? Is that the kind of witness you want to rely on to convict somebody of first degree murder—because of Barbara Holbrook? I think not.”

The jury found Scoggins guilty of first-degree murder on theories of premeditation and felony murder, and Scoggins received a life sentence. Represented by new counsel, Scoggins appealed. In that appeal, he also filed a 50–page pro se brief in which he raised the argument, raised here, that trial counsel should have interviewed and brought to testify Campbell, Price, and Jermaine Campbell. However, neither Scoggins nor his appellate counsel advanced the argument, also raised here, that Scoggins's trial counsel should have interviewed Holbrook before trial. The appeal failed.

After filing a timely habeas petition and securing a stay, Scoggins commenced an effort to secure collateral review in state court by filing a second motion for new trial. In that motion, Scoggins first presented the argument that trial counsel was ineffective for having failed to interview Holbrook. In support of that argument, Scoggins included an affidavit from Holbrook claiming that, had she been interviewed prior to trial, she would have told Scoggins's attorney that she “did not hear Mr. Scoggins make any statements about this case.” Rejecting that argument, the Massachusetts Superior Court expressly found that “the doctrine of waiver bars the defendant's current claims.” Adding belt to suspenders, the court further found that counsel's decision not to interview Holbrook was not manifestly unreasonable, and thus could not support an ineffectiveness claim. Finally, the court found Holbrook's affidavit to be incredible, noting among other things that it directly contradicted the testimony that she gave at trial.

After unsuccessfully appealing the denial of his second motion for a new trial, Scoggins returned to his stayed action in the district court, pressing the arguments he now presses on appeal. The district court denied the petition, but issued a Certificate of Appealability on Scoggins's claim that trial counsel's failure to interview Holbrook, and failure to interview or call at trial Campbell, Price, and Jermaine Campbell, constituted ineffective assistance. See28 U.S.C. § 2253(c). Scoggins appealed. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2253(a).

II. Review of Strickland claims under AEDPA

Scoggins argues that the state court proceedings violated the Sixth Amendment both because his trial counsel neither interviewed Holbrook before she testified nor contacted Campbell, Price, or Jermaine Campbell to rebut her testimony. To prove a Sixth Amendment violation based on the failings of defense counsel, a petitioner must demonstrate both “(1) that ‘counsel's performance was deficient,’ meaning that ‘counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as the “counsel” guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment’; and (2) ‘that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense.’ ” United States v. Valerio, 676 F.3d 237, 246 (1st Cir.2012) (quoting Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984)). In assessing the adequacy of appointed counsel, we “indulge a strong presumption that counsel's conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance,” seeStrickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052, finding deficiency only “where, given the facts known [to counsel] at the time, counsel's choice was so patently unreasonable that no competent attorney would have made it.” Knight v. Spencer, 447 F.3d 6, 15 (1st Cir.2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). And, to establish prejudice, a defendant must demonstrate “a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052.

Adding more to Scoggins's burden in this case are the limitations on our review imposed by 28 U.S.C. § 2254, as amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), which governs the standards by which we review collateral attacks on state-court convictions. That provision, “designed to confirm that state courts are the principal forum for asserting constitutional challenges to state convictions,” see Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 131 S.Ct. 770, 787, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011), authorizes us to reverse a state court's adjudication of the merits of a petitioner's legal claim only where the state-court adjudication either:

(1) 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

(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the...