Sharpe v. Bell

• Decision Date: 29 January 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-6206.,09-6206.
• Citation: 593 F.3d 372
• Parties: Montoyae Dontae SHARPE, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Michael T.W. BELL, Respondent-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

593 F.3d 372

Montoyae Dontae SHARPE, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Michael T.W. BELL, Respondent-Appellant.

No. 09-6206.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: December 4, 2009.

Decided: January 29, 2010.

ARGUED:

Clarence Joe DelForge, III, North Carolina Department of Justice, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant. William Gregory Duke, Greenville, North Carolina, for Appellee.

ON BRIEF:

Roy Cooper, Attorney General, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellant.

Before WILKINSON and KING, Circuit Judges, and HENRY E. HUDSON, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.

Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Judge WILKINSON wrote the opinion, in which Judge KING and Judge HUDSON joined.

OPINION

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

Montoyae Dontae Sharpe was convicted of first degree murder in North Carolina Superior Court and sentenced to life in prison. After exhausting state post-conviction remedies, Sharpe petitioned for habeas corpus in federal court, claiming that his conviction was unconstitutional because it resulted from ineffective assistance of counsel. Although he had procedurally defaulted on this claim, the district court held that Sharpe had come forward with new evidence of "actual innocence" sufficient to excuse his default. The district court then ruled in Sharpe's favor on the merits of his constitutional claim. Yet in reaching its conclusions, the district court ignored the several state post-conviction proceedings which had determined that the evidence Sharpe presented was not credible and that his constitutional claim was without merit.

Such a de novo do-over was impermissible under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"). Sharpe would have us substitute our own judgment for the state court's credibility determinations, disregard the fact that the state courts soundly assessed each of his contentions, and unfairly hindsight the performance of his own trial counsel. Such an approach undermines the principles of comity and federalism that the Supreme Court and Congress have set forth in the context of federal habeas review. We therefore reverse and remand with directions to dismiss the petition.

I.

Dontae Sharpe was charged with killing a man named George Radcliffe, who was shot to death on the night of February 11, 1994, in downtown Greenville, North Carolina. Radcliffe's body was found inside his pickup truck on a grassy lot, just off a downtown street. Inside the truck, police officers found Radcliffe's wallet, which contained fifty-three dollars, and a coat later identified as belonging to one Wilbur Mercer.

At trial, the state offered the testimony of two purported eyewitnesses to the killing. Beatrice Stokes, twenty-seven years old, and Charlene Johnson, fifteen years old, both testified that Sharpe sold drugs with a man named Mark Joyner and was a leading drug dealer in the neighborhood where Radcliffe's body was found. Both testified that on the night of the murder, they saw Sharpe, Joyner, and Radcliffe standing in the street next to Radcliffe's pickup truck, that an argument broke out, and that Sharpe shot Radcliffe. Both stated that Wilbur Mercer was also at the scene, and Stokes noted the presence of several others.

Stokes testified that she immediately fled and called the police when the shot went off. Johnson testified that she watched Sharpe and Joyner load Radcliffe's body into the truck and drive it into the lot where it was found. Johnson admitted that she had received a reward for coming forward. Stokes testified that she had not received a reward but admitted that she was probably using drugs at the time.

A third eyewitness, Alonzo Vines, lived in a house adjacent to the lot where Radcliffe's truck was found. He testified that he was in his house on the night of the murder when he heard a loud noise, looked out his window, and saw that a pickup truck had been driven into the lot. He stated that he saw the truck's door was open and that two or three people were standing next to it. He could not identify them, however, because his view was blocked by dust on his windows. Seven other witnesses testified for the state. The state's medical examiner testified as to the trajectory of the bullet and opined that Radcliffe could have remained conscious after the shooting for no more than 10 seconds. Police officers investigating the murder testified that local residents appeared to be afraid to get involved.

In his defense, Sharpe offered the testimony of his aunt and her neighbor, who offered partial alibis, and of two witnesses who testified that Stokes was untrustworthy. Sharpe also attempted to introduce further testimony from one of these witnesses, a woman named Tracy Highsmith. On voir dire, Highsmith stated that her boyfriend, Damien Smith, had come home on the night of the murder and confessed to shooting a man, presumed to be Radcliffe, whom he had attempted to rob. According to Highsmith, Smith repeated comments to this effect several times over the next three weeks. Smith committed suicide twenty-seven days after the murder, and while Highsmith asserted that he had become increasingly agitated after Radcliffe was killed, she also admitted that he had repeatedly threatened suicide before Radcliffe's death. Although Sharpe's attorney argued that Highsmith's testimony should be admitted under the dying declaration and state of mind exceptions to the bar on hearsay evidence, the court held that the testimony was inadmissible. A jury found Sharpe guilty on July 24, 1995, and the North Carolina Supreme Court sustained his conviction on appeal. State v. Sharpe, 344 N.C. 190, 473 S.E.2d 3 (1996).

On the day Sharpe was first arrested for the murder, Charlene Johnson had been beaten and stabbed by a group of women for being a "snitch." Sharpe's mother and aunt had followed behind the women as they set out for Johnson's home and rescued Johnson from the attack. In the course of taking her to the emergency room, they told her, in Johnson's words, that the "word on the street" was that Johnson was "the one that said something about Dontae murdering Mr. Radcliffe." For safety reasons, Johnson went to live outside of Greenville, but her mother could not come with her, and she returned after a few weeks. Johnson came to form a relationship with Sharpe's family, and eventually with Sharpe himself, visiting him in prison at least twice. Not long after his conviction, Johnson recanted her testimony.

In February 1997, Sharpe filed a motion for appropriate relief ("MAR") in North Carolina Superior Court, alleging that the recantation entitled him to a new trial and raising, for the first time, a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. The MAR court held an evidentiary hearing and determined that Johnson's recantation was not credible. It also held that the ineffective assistance of counsel claim had been defaulted.

Sharpe then filed for habeas corpus in federal court, and the district court scheduled an evidentiary hearing on his claims. Just prior to the hearing, a man named Dearl Powell came forward, claiming to have witnessed the shooting and identifying Smith as Radcliffe's killer. In Powell's account, Radcliffe was in the driver seat of the truck and Wilbur Mercer was in the passenger seat when Smith shot Radcliffe through the driver side window. According to Powell, after being shot, Radcliffe drove the truck off. Powell began to testify at the habeas hearing, but the district court cut him off before he could be cross-examined and ordered that his evidence be presented first in North Carolina court.

Sharpe filed another MAR in November 2001, seeking a new trial under North Carolina law on the basis of newly discovered evidence of actual innocence and renewing his ineffective assistance of counsel claim. A second evidentiary hearing was held before the same judge who had considered Sharpe's earlier MAR. After listening to Powell and considering the entire evidentiary record, the court concluded that his testimony was not credible and denied Sharpe's actual innocence claim. In addition, the court held that Sharpe's ineffective assistance of counsel claim was not only defaulted, as it had done previously, but also that it would fail on the merits.

Sharpe then returned to federal court. Without holding an evidentiary hearing the district court concluded that Sharpe had sufficiently made out a claim of "actual innocence" under Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 115 S.Ct. 851, 130 L.Ed.2d 808 (1995), to justify setting aside his procedural default under North Carolina law. Sharpe v. Bell, 571 F.Supp.2d 675, 681 (E.D.N.C. 2008). It also rejected the state's statute-of-limitations defense. Id. at 680. The district court then concluded that the failure of Sharpe's counsel to argue for the admission of Highsmith's testimony under the hearsay exceptions identified in Sharpe's habeas petition violated the Sixth Amendment. Sharpe v. Bell, 595 F.Supp.2d 636, 644-45 (E.D.N.C.2009). This appeal followed.

II.

A.

We begin with the district court's conclusion that Sharpe's procedural default in raising his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel should be excused.¹ In general, "a federal habeas court may not review constitutional claims when a state court has declined to consider their merits on the basis of an adequate and independent state procedural rule." Burket v. Angelone, 208 F.3d 172, 183 (4th Cir.2000); see also Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 87-91, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977). The MAR court held that Sharpe had procedurally defaulted under N.C.G.S. § 15A-1419(a)(3), a statute we have repeatedly held to be both adequate and independent. Lawrence v. Branker, 517 F.3d 700, 714 (4th Cir.2008) (citations omitted). A federal habeas court "does not have license to question a state court's finding of procedural default" or to question "whether the state court properly applied its own...