Stewart v. Winn

• Decision Date: 27 July 2020
• Docket Number: No. 18-1204,18-1204
• Citation: 967 F.3d 534
• Parties: Douglas Harrie STEWART, Petitioner-Appellant, v. O'Bell "Tom" WINN, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

967 F.3d 534

Douglas Harrie STEWART, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.O'Bell "Tom" WINN, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 18-1204

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Decided and Filed: July 27, 2020

MURPHY, Circuit Judge.

A Michigan jury convicted Douglas Harrie Stewart of the premeditated murder of his estranged wife, Venus Stewart. At trial Stewart's accomplice testified that Stewart persuaded him to help in the murder by claiming that Venus was harming the couple's children and that, if she ended up killing them, Stewart would go on a "rampage" and "go after her family and the lawyers and prosecutors and jury[.]" Stewart moved for a mistrial based on his accomplice's testimony about what he had said, arguing that its inflammatory nature prejudiced him in the eyes of the jury. A state appellate court rejected Stewart's due-process challenge to the accomplice's testimony. This case asks: Was the state court's decision contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) ? We answer no and affirm the denial of habeas relief.

I

Venus Stewart vanished on the morning of April 26, 2010. Venus's mother last saw her around 6:00 a.m. while leaving for work from their Michigan home. About two hours later, Venus's father was awakened by Venus's two young daughters playing in the home unsupervised. Venus's phone, keys, and purse were still in the home. Venus was not. No one saw her alive again.

An investigation quickly led the police to Stewart, Venus's estranged husband. Recently separated, the couple had what Venus's mother described as a "volatile" relationship. At the time of Venus's disappearance, Stewart was living in Virginia and Venus and their two daughters were living with Venus's parents in Michigan. When a Michigan police officer arrived at her parent's home, he encountered Venus's panicked mother saying "[h]e took her, he took her, he took her." In the backyard, police found the discarded packaging to an "Ozark Trail" tarp from Walmart. They identified Stewart's fingerprint on this packaging. They also later found a receipt from an Ohio Walmart on the floor of Stewart's truck. Video at this Walmart showed Stewart purchasing the tarp and a shovel on the evening before Venus's disappearance. A Walmart employee even recalled seeing Stewart in this store because of his "odd" outfit: Hawaiian-flowered swim trunks with an unmatching shirt.

The state charged Stewart with first-degree premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The evidence at his trial showed that he had concocted an elaborate scheme to travel to Michigan and kill Venus. A man named Ricky Spencer, Stewart's accomplice, was a key witness. Spencer was (according to his father) an "impressionable" 20-year-old living in Delaware. He befriended Stewart in 2008 while playing X-Box Live, a video-game system that connects gamers over the internet. The pair did not meet in person until April 2010, the month of Venus's murder, when Spencer visited Stewart's Virginia apartment.

Spencer gave detailed testimony describing the murder plan. Spencer would stay at Stewart's apartment—using Stewart's credit card and key fob and wearing Stewart's clothes—to make it appear as though Stewart had never left Virginia. In the meantime, Stewart would drive to Michigan. He would avoid toll roads, pay in cash at gas stations, and communicate with Spencer using prepaid cell phones. Spencer also conveyed that Stewart planned to choke Venus and bury her at a preplanned spot. Stewart's first attempt to execute this plan failed when an Ohio trooper pulled him over while en route to Michigan. His second attempt succeeded. According to Spencer, at around 8:20 a.m. on April 26, Stewart called him to say that he had lured Venus out of her parents’ home and killed her.

Why would Spencer participate in this murder? He testified that, during their initial meeting, Stewart convinced him that Venus had been abusing the couple's two daughters. (Trial testimony showed that Venus was, in fact, a loving mother.) Spencer initially rebuffed Stewart's requests for help, but Stewart eventually convinced him that the children were at risk. Spencer recounted for the jury:

He was telling me like, ‘I talked to my dad already about this, and, you know, my wife is physically and mentally hurting my kids. And, you know, if I wasn't – like if I wasn't a hundred-percent sure that my kids were going to be injured or, you know, killed by my wife, and if I don't do anything and I find out one day that they're injured or, you know, or dead, that I would go on a rampage.’

And it wouldn't be like rampage like meaning like killing people, and it wouldn't be a, you know, just an instant thing. He'd plan it out and go after her family and the lawyers and prosecutors and jury until like they stopped and figured out what – what was going on.

Allegedly convinced that Stewart's children were in danger, Spencer agreed to help Stewart create this false alibi.

Stewart did not immediately object to Spencer's "rampage" testimony, but he moved for a mistrial soon thereafter on the ground that the jurors might have understood Spencer's testimony as suggesting that Stewart was threatening them. The trial court denied this motion. The court interpreted Stewart's statements to Spencer to mean "that if something were to happen to his children by his wife that he would then go on a rampage against the Prosecutor and the jury that dealt with that issue, not in this case." In any event, the trial court added that the statement was offered not for its truth, but to provide context for how Stewart convinced Spencer to join the conspiracy. The court offered to instruct the jury to disregard the statement "if there's any confusion in that." Stewart's counsel never requested this kind of limiting instruction concerning Spencer's testimony.

After 12 days of evidence and three hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Stewart on both counts. He received a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

On appeal Stewart argued that the trial court should have granted a mistrial. With a lone citation to the Fourteenth Amendment, he invoked his due-process right to a "fair trial." The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected his argument based on state rules and authorities. People v. Stewart , 2012 WL 3966300, at *2 (Mich. Ct. App. Sept. 11, 2012) (per curiam). It agreed with the trial court that "[n]o reasonable person could construe [Stewart's] statement to Spencer about going on a rampage as a threat against [Stewart's] jury." Id. It thus found that the statement was not unduly prejudicial because any "danger that the jury would unfairly infer a threat directed at them was slight or nonexistent." Id. The testimony also "provided the context for highly relevant evidence of motive for murder." Id.

After the Michigan Supreme Court declined review, Stewart filed a federal habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Stewart's petition alleged in perfunctory fashion that he had been denied a fair trial "after the jury heard inflammatory testimony" about the threatened rampage. A magistrate judge recommended that the district court deny relief. The judge "indulgently addressed" this claim even though Stewart presented no supporting arguments, and rejected it on its merits. The district court adopted the judge's recommendation. We granted a certificate of appealability to consider this claim.

II

The parties agree on two points. They agree that the state appellate court decided Stewart's due-process claim "on the merits," so Stewart must meet the standards in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). See Johnson v. Williams , 568 U.S. 289, 298–301, 133 S.Ct. 1088, 185 L.Ed.2d 105 (2013). They also agree that this case presents a legal question for § 2254(d)(1), not a factual question for § 2254(d)(2). Stewart thus must show that the state court's decision was "contrary to, or 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).

Before a habeas petitioner can show that a state decision was "contrary to" or an "unreasonable application of" an asserted principle, the petitioner must identify the Supreme Court decision that "clearly established" the principle. This " ‘clearly established’ language" requires a petitioner to rely "only on ‘the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme] Court's decisions.’ " Atkins v. Crowell , 945 F.3d 476, 477 (6th Cir. 2019) (quoting White v. Woodall , 572 U.S. 415, 419, 134 S.Ct. 1697, 188 L.Ed.2d 698 (2014) ). When identifying what a Supreme Court decision actually holds, the Supreme Court has told us not to frame the decision "at too high a level of generality." Woods v. Donald , 575 U.S. 312, 318, 135 S.Ct. 1372, 191 L.Ed.2d 464 (2015) (per curiam). Take the Court's Confrontation Clause caselaw as an example. See Nevada v. Jackson , 569 U.S. 505, 511–12, 133 S.Ct. 1990, 186 L.Ed.2d 62 (2013) (per curiam). The Court's decisions holding that the Confrontation Clause regulates state "restrictions on a defendant's ability to cross-examine witnesses" do not also clearly establish that the clause "entitles a criminal defendant to introduce extrinsic evidence " to impeach witnesses. Id. And petitioners cannot turn the cross-examination holding into an extrinsic-evidence holding merely by arguing that the Court's decisions create "a broad right to present ‘evidence bearing on [a witness's] credibility.’ " Id. at 512, 133 S.Ct. 1990 (citation omitted). Such an overly broad reading of the Court's holdings would allow federal courts to "transform even the most imaginative extension of existing case law into ‘clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court.’ " Id. (citation omitted).

Spencer's claim fails because he has not identified a Supreme Court holding that clearly establishes his...