Taylor v. Huffman

• Decision Date: 17 February 2023
• Docket Number: 4:22-CV-78-DMB-RP
• Parties: KELVIN TAYLOR PETITIONER v. BRAND HUFFMAN RESPONDENT
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Mississippi

KELVIN TAYLOR PETITIONER v. BRAND HUFFMAN RESPONDENT

No. 4:22-CV-78-DMB-RP

United States District Court, N.D. Mississippi, Greenville Division

February 17, 2023

OPINION AND ORDER

DEBRA M. BROWN, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Kelvin Taylor requests that his federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus be held in abeyance so that he may exhaust his unexhausted claims in state court. The State seeks dismissal without prejudice based on Taylor's failure to exhaust. Because the time for Taylor to refile a federal habeas petition has expired, dismissal is not warranted. But because Taylor has not shown a stay is warranted, Taylor will be given an opportunity to amend his petition to remove the unexhausted claims and proceed only on the exhausted grounds for relief.

I Relevant State Court Proceedings

On February 14, 2018, a jury in the Circuit Court of Coahoma County, Mississippi, convicted Kelvin Taylor of two counts of murder and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Doc. #11-4 at PageID 616. The relevant facts leading up to his trial and conviction were summarized by the Mississippi Supreme Court on certiorari review:

After responding to a call on September 7, 2011, Officer Royneshia Turner found Willie Bass and Flora Watkins shot dead in their home in Clarksdale, Mississippi. On November 9 2012, after the case went cold for more than a year Lieutenant Marena Jones and Captain Mario Magsby of the Coahoma County Sheriffs Department traveled to the Bolivar County jail to interview Kelvin Taylor, where he was in custody awaiting trial for an unrelated capital murder. After Lieutenant Jones and Captain Magsby informed Taylor of the reason for their visit-to investigate the murder of Charlina Miller-Taylor told Lieutenant Jones that he wanted to talk to Coahoma County Sheriff Charles Jones. Later that evening Lieutenant Jones and Sheriff Jones returned to interview Taylor, and, after informing Taylor of his Fifth Amendment rights per Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), Lieutenant Jones obtained a waiver of those rights from Taylor. Lieutenant Jones left the room to allow Sheriff Jones and Taylor to talk alone. The conversation on November 9, 2012, did not provide Sheriff Jones with any information regarding the murders of Bass and Watkins. When Sheriff Jones and Lieutenant Jones returned to the Bolivar County jail for a second interview on November 15, 2012, Taylor indirectly implicated himself in the murders.

On May 27, 2015, Taylor was indicted for the murders of Bass and Watkins and for possession of a firearm by a felon. Taylor filed two motions to suppress-one authored by his defense counsel and one pro se. Taylor's pro se motion to suppress challenged the validity of the waiver of his Fifth Amendment right to counsel obtained by the Coahoma County Sheriffs Department because, according to Taylor, he had already invoked his Fifth Amendment right to counsel.

A week prior to Taylor's first trial, on July 11, 2016, the circuit court held a suppression hearing in which Sheriff Jones and Lieutenant Jones testified about their two interviews with Taylor. Neither Taylor nor his defense counsel presented evidence to substantiate Taylor's claim that he invoked his right to counsel before November 9, 2012. The circuit court denied Taylor's motions to suppress. Since the jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict at Taylor's first trial in 2016, the circuit court declared a mistrial.

Taylor's second trial began on February 14, 2018. Though Taylor renewed his motions to suppress, he presented no evidence of the February 6, 2012 invocation of the Fifth Amendment right to counsel before his case-in-chief-after the circuit court had ruled on Taylor's motions to suppress and his renewed motions to suppress, the State had rested and Taylor's motion for directed verdict had been denied. Taylor's statement implicating him in the Bass and Watkins murders was introduced at trial along with the testimony of Sheriff Jones and Lieutenant Jones regarding their interviews with Taylor. After Taylor's statement was introduced at trial and the State rested, Taylor proffered the testimony of Bolivar County Sheriff's Department Chief Deputy Gerald Wesley, Jr., that Taylor invoked his Fifth Amendment right to counsel on February 6, 2012. The court allowed the proffer so that the testimony of Chief Deputy Wesley, Jr., would appear in the record. But the court ruled that Chief Deputy Wesley, Jr., could not testify at trial since it already dealt with Taylor's argument necessitating the testimony of Chief Deputy Wesley, Jr., in the court's denial of Taylor's motions to suppress and found his testimony irrelevant to the merits of the case. Taylor was convicted on all three counts and was sentenced to life in prison for each murder count and ten years for possession of a firearm by a felon.

Taylor v. State, 330 So.3d 758, 760-61 (Miss. 2021) (cleaned up).

Taylor, through counsel, appealed his conviction, asserting the trial court erred (1) “in denying [his] motion for directed verdict[ because t]he evidence [was] insufficient to sustain a conviction on any count of the indictment,” and (2) by instructing the jury regarding “accessory before the fact” because there was “no evidence in the record to support the instruction and [it] improperly suggest[ed] a theory of the case to the jury.” Doc. #11-11 at PageID 1560. Taylor filed a pro se supplemental brief raising three issues: (1) “the trial court committed ‘plain error' by admitting a statement obtained in violation of [his] Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Const., Art 3 Sec 26 of the Miss. Const. rights;” (2) “[t]he trial court erred in denying [his] motion for a directed verdict[ because t]he evidence [was] insufficient to sustain a conviction on any count of the indictment;” and (3) “[t]he trial court committed ‘plain error' by constructively amending the indictment by granting jury instruction C-16.”^[1] Id. at PageID 1617. Taylor subsequently filed an “amended” pro se supplemental brief raising three similar issues: (1) his conviction and sentence are “void and ‘illegal' because the State knowing [sic] presented perjured testimony, the testimony was material, and the State knew the testimony was false” and the State omitted and destroyed evidence; (2) “the trial court committed ‘plain error' when he admitted his statement obtained illegally at his trial after he had invoked his right to counsel during custodial interrogation” without a finding that the “waiver of rights was knowing, intelligent and voluntary as required by law;” and (3) “[t]he trial court committed ‘plain error' by constructively amending the indictment by granting jury instruction C-16.” Id. at PageID 1767, 1771-72.

After considering all of Taylor's appeal arguments and finding them without merit, the Mississippi Court of Appeals affirmed Taylor's convictions and sentences on May 12, 2020. Taylor v. State, __ So.3d __, 2020 WL 2394027 at *1 (Miss. Ct. App. 2020). Taylor filed a motion for rehearing, Doc. #11-13 at PageID 2197, which the Mississippi Court of Appeals denied on September 15, 2020, Id. at PageID 2151. Taylor filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Mississippi Supreme Court. Doc. #11-14 at PageID 2488. The Mississippi Supreme Court granted his petition on January 14, 2021. Id. at PageID 2483.

Before the Mississippi Supreme Court, Taylor argued (1) “the circuit court erred by denying his motions to suppress,” “applied an incorrect legal standard[,] and misapplied the law;” (2) “the Court of Appeals erred by applying an incorrect legal standard;” and (3) “he received ineffective assistance of counsel due to his trial counsel's failure to subpoena Chief Deputy Wesley, Jr., or to introduce as evidence the transcript of his interview with Chief Deputy Wesley, Jr., on February 6, 2012.” Taylor, 330 So.3d at 762, 769. The Mississippi Supreme Court found “no reversible error” and affirmed. Id. at 760. As to the ineffective assistance of counsel claim, that court noted:

Since Taylor did not raise his ineffective-assistance argument on direct appeal before the Court of Appeals but, rather, in a petition for certiorari, he is barred from asserting this particular argument now. Though today we recognize and enforce the procedural bar to Taylor's ineffective-assistance claim raised in his petition for certiorari and therefore dismiss the same, we do so without prejudice to allow Taylor to raise this claim ... in a post-conviction relief proceeding.

Id. at 770.

II Federal Procedural History

On May 26, 2022, Taylor filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. Doc. #1. Taylor asserts two grounds for relief: (1) he “was denied a fundamental fair trial because the trial court admitted his statement obtained illegally after he requested counsel during custodial on [sic]” “Feb-6-2012.

The trial court failed to find as a fact that a waiver of rights was knowing, intelligent, and voluntary;” and (2) “[w]hether the state of Mississippi denied [him] a fair trial and due process because the state knowingly presented false testimony” “at his suppression hearing and trial in violation of the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Const.” Id. at PageID 5, 7, 16, 26. Although not listed as a separate ground, in explaining why he “did not exhaust [his] state remedies on Ground One,” Taylor asserts he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his counsel failed to “(1) investigate whether [he] requested an attorney during custodial interrogation” on February 6, 2012; (2) “interview critical witnesses;” (3) “develope [sic] the factual and legal bases of his...