Tackett v. Trierweiler
| Decision Date | 15 April 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-1037,19-1037 |
| Citation | 956 F.3d 358 |
| Parties | Joshua Joseph TACKETT, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Tony TRIERWEILER, Warden, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ARGUED: Laura Kathleen Sutton, Manchester, Michigan, for Appellant. Rebecca A. Berels, OFFICE OF THE MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Laura Kathleen Sutton, Manchester, Michigan, for Appellant. Rebecca A. Berels, OFFICE OF THE MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellee.
Before: GILMAN, McKEAGUE, and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges.
In July 2006, a drive-by shooting took place in Ypsilanti, Michigan, during which two people inside a trailer were killed. Four individuals, including Joshua Joseph Tackett, were charged with murder in connection with the killings. Tackett was tried before a Michigan state-court jury and was found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder and on two counts of possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for the first-degree murder convictions.
After going through various state-court proceedings and being denied relief at each stage, Tackett filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court. He raised a number of claims, including, most notably, that the evidence in his case was insufficient to support his first-degree murder convictions. The district court denied Tackett's petition. On appeal, five claims are before us, including the sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
The shooting in this case occurred at a mobile-home trailer belonging to Clint Ousley at approximately 11:30 p.m. on the night of July 9, 2006. Two teenagers were killed: Scott Bonar, who was 17 years old at the time, and Krilissa Feldman, who was 14.
On the day of the shooting, there were two confrontations at Ousley's trailer. The first incident took place that afternoon when one of Tackett's codefendants, Sarah Sykes, along with a group of individuals including the two other codefendants (Paul Copas and Tony Tard), drove in Copas's van to Ousley's trailer. Tackett was not present for this incident. The district court summarized what happened there as follows:
Copas confronted Ousley outside Ousley's trailer and called Ousley a bitch; he also made a motion like he was cocking a gun. Ousley picked up a baseball bat and called for help from two of his friends who were inside his trailer. Ousley and his friends then argued with Copas and Tard for a few minutes. Copas and Tard retreated soon afterward and jumped back in their van. As they drove away, Ousley threw a crowbar into the rear side window of the van and knocked out the window.
This confrontation was apparently triggered by the fact that Ousley had previously dated Sykes.
After the initial altercation at Ousley's trailer, Tackett joined Copas and Tard. The Michigan Court of Appeals described what happened next during the second incident that took place later that night:
The group left the house with two assault rifles, picked up codefendant Sykes and others, and traveled from Ecorse to Ousley's trailer home in Ypsilanti. When they were near Ousley's trailer, codefendant Tard stopped at a gas station and covered the license plate, and defendant Tackett moved from the passenger seat to the rear of the van near the broken window. Defendant Tackett put on gloves and supplied gloves or socks for the others. Codefendant Sykes continued to the trailer park. The van pulled over and waited until a patrol car left the area. As they waited, codefendant Tard said, "let's shoot up the trailer," and defendant Tackett "[went] along with him." After the patrol car left the area, the van continued to Ousley's trailer and the three men put on hooded sweatshirts. There was evidence that defendant Tackett shot or attempted to shoot a handgun while his codefendants fired assault rifles into Ousley's trailer. After the shooting, the group drove back to Ecorse where defendant Tackett attempted to hide the assault rifles in his father's garage.
People v. Copas , Nos. 277240 & 277549, 2008 WL 4149002, at *9 (Mich. Ct. App. Sept. 9, 2008) (per curiam).
Tackett and Copas were tried jointly, but before separate juries, in the Washtenaw County Circuit Court. In January 2007, both Tackett and Copas were found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder and on two counts of possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony. Tackett moved for a new trial and for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict. The trial court denied both motions. Afterwards, he and Copas were each sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for the first-degree murder convictions, to be served consecutive to two concurrent two-year terms of imprisonment for the felony-firearm convictions.
The other two defendants, Sykes and Tard, pleaded guilty to two counts of "open murder" and to two counts of possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony. Michigan's "open murder" statute, Mich. Comp. Laws § 750.318, "establishes a procedure for determining the degree of murder when the information does not charge the defendant with a specific degree of murder." People v. Watkins , 247 Mich.App. 14, 634 N.W.2d 370, 376 (2001).
When a person charged with murder in Michigan is convicted by a jury, the jury is required to determine whether it is first-degree or second-degree murder. In contrast, "when a defendant is ‘convicted by confession,’ the court must ‘proceed by examination of witnesses to determine the degree of the crime’ and ‘render judgment accordingly.’ " Id. (quoting Mich. Comp. Laws § 750.318 ). The trial judge in Sykes's and Tard's cases, who was the same state-court judge who presided over Tackett's trial, held a "degree hearing" for Sykes and Tard and found both of them guilty of second-degree murder. They were each sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole for the murder convictions, plus two years for the felony-firearm offenses.
Tackett appealed his convictions to the Michigan Court of Appeals. That court consolidated Tackett's and Copas's appeals and affirmed the trial court's judgment. Copas , 2008 WL 4149002, at *1. Tackett next filed an application for leave to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court. That Court, in turn, denied his motion, writing that it was "not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court." People v. Tackett , 483 Mich. 878, 759 N.W.2d 207, 207 (2009) (mem.).
Tackett subsequently filed a motion for relief from judgment, raising a number of distinct claims. Of particular note, Tackett argued that his first-degree murder convictions violated his due-process and equal-protection rights because his codefendants, Sykes and Tard, were found guilty on the lesser charge of second-degree murder. The trial-court judge was sympathetic to Tackett's argument, stating that "it is unjust and a miscarriage of justice that Defendant Tackett be convicted and sentenced for First Degree Murder while codefendants Tard and Sykes were subsequently convicted and sentenced for Second Degree Murder." People v. Tackett , No. 06-1194 FC, slip op. at 5 (Washtenaw Cty. Cir. Ct. Nov. 5, 2010). Nevertheless, the court denied Tackett's motion for relief from judgment because the trial-court judge did not believe that he had the power under state law to grant the requested relief. He instead urged appellate review to provide "further guidance" to trial judges operating under these circumstances. Id. at 7. Tackett then filed an application for leave to appeal the Michigan trial court's decision, but both the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Michigan Supreme Court denied his application.
In December 2012, Tackett filed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. After the State filed an answer to the petition, Tackett moved for a stay until Michigan's appellate courts could decide, in an unrelated case, whether trial courts may correct unjust convictions and grant relief from judgment under Michigan state law. The district court granted Tackett's motion for a stay. Several years later, in May 2016, Tackett moved for the stay to be lifted on the ground that the Michigan courts were unlikely to resolve the relevant issue in the near future. The district court granted his motion and reopened the case.
In its decision, the district court reviewed Tackett's habeas petition and rejected all of his claims on the merits. It did, however, determine that reasonable jurists could conclude that three of Tackett's claims—regarding the sufficiency of the evidence, the disparate verdicts, and whether Tackett received ineffective assistance of appellate counsel—deserved to proceed further. The court accordingly granted a Certificate of Appealability (COA) with respect to those claims.
Tackett proceeded by filing a notice of appeal and a motion in this court to expand the COA. This court granted the motion to the extent of expanding the COA to include Tackett's claim that the trial court erred by failing to instruct the jurors that they had to agree on a single theory of murder, and by allowing argument on certain portions of his ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim. These claims, along with those previously certified by the district court, are now before us.
We review the district court's legal conclusions in habeas proceedings de novo and its findings of fact under the clear-error standard. Braxton v. Gansheimer , 561 F.3d 453, 457 (6th Cir. 2009). Federal courts may not provide relief on habeas claims that were previously adjudicated on the merits in state court unless the state-court adjudication either (1) "resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an...
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