Taylor v. Medeiros

• Decision Date: 23 December 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-1552,19-1552
• Citation: 983 F.3d 566
• Parties: Roderick TAYLOR, Petitioner, Appellant, v. Sean MEDEIROS, Respondent, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

983 F.3d 566

Roderick TAYLOR, Petitioner, Appellant,

v.Sean MEDEIROS, Respondent, Appellee.

No. 19-1552

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

December 23, 2020

Dany Allan Curhan for appellant.

Anna Esther Lumelsky, Assistant Attorney General, Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, with whom Matthew P. Landry, Assistant Attorney General, Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, was on brief, for appellee.

Before Howard, Chief Judge, Lynch and Lipez, Circuit Judges

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

Following a nearly eight-week jury trial in Massachusetts state court, Roderick Taylor was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced to a mandatory term of life imprisonment. Taylor claims that his trial was fundamentally unfair in violation of his federal constitutional right to due process because the prosecutor made improper statements during his closing argument. Taylor now seeks a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ("SJC") unreasonably denied this federal constitutional claim.

As the SJC said, certain remarks by the prosecutor "should not have been made." Commonwealth v. Taylor, 469 Mass. 516, 14 N.E.3d 955, 966 (2014). Nonetheless, after a careful review of the record, and applying the standard prescribed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"), 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), we conclude that the SJC reasonably applied the clearly established law of the Supreme Court in holding that the improper statements by the prosecutor did not render the trial fundamentally unfair. Thus, we affirm the district court's decision denying the petition for habeas relief.

I.

A. Factual Background

In July 2006, Taylor was indicted by a grand jury for the murder of Dominique Samuels. He was tried in Suffolk County Superior Court from May 7 through July 3, 2008. We take from the district court the well-stated summary of the government's case:

The Commonwealth presented credible evidence at trial that Taylor had strangled the victim, Dominique Samuels ("Samuels" or "the victim"), and burned her body in a public park days later. Samuels resided in a multibedroom apartment with Martin McCray ("McCray"), McCray's brother, McCray's female cousin and a male friend of McCray. Taylor is McCray's cousin ....

On the night in question, April 27 into the early hours of April 28, 2006, Taylor and McCray were in McCray's room, drinking alcohol and playing video games. Around 10:00 P.M., McCray left his apartment to spend the night at his girlfriend's home. Taylor remained in McCray's room.

A number of witnesses recalled hearing screaming that night coming from the victim's apartment. The landlord's daughter testified that she heard two men laughing and dragging something after an altercation. McCray's cousin heard what she initially assumed was a sexual encounter but later believed it to be a woman in distress and then a loud boom. Despite those noises, no one residing inside the building notified law enforcement.

The following morning, Taylor went to the apartment of McCray's girlfriend to see McCray. McCray claimed that Taylor confessed to killing Samuels at that time and showed McCray scratches on his hands and neck inflicted by Samuels. During the next few days, McCray and Taylor spoke on the phone several times. McCray alleged that Taylor sought access to a vehicle to dispose of Samuels's body. McCray also claimed that Taylor told him that he intended to burn Samuels's fingertips because his skin was underneath her fingernails. McCray testified that at 5:30 A.M. on Sunday, April 30, 2006, Taylor called him to tell him "it's done." Samuels's body was discovered in Franklin Park 30 minutes later.

A search of McCray's room thereafter revealed two distinct bloodstains: one containing the DNA of the victim and one containing the DNA of Taylor.

Taylor v. Medeiros, 381 F. Supp. 3d 110, 113-114 (D. Mass. 2019).

Taylor's defense was that McCray had actually committed the murder. His counsel cross-examined McCray at length about inconsistencies in his testimony. When counsel confronted McCray with the charge that he had murdered Samuels, McCray appeared distraught, ran from the courtroom, and collapsed in the bathroom.

The prosecutor gave an approximately sixty-minute closing argument. In urging the jury to find Taylor guilty, the prosecutor characterized the defendant's theory of the case as a "bald-face lie" and told the jurors that if they credited the theory, "you will have violated the oath that you took as jurors." He described defense counsel's cross-examination of McCray as "accusatory, rude, ... disrespectful, and at times vulgar." In referencing the uncertainty concerning Taylor's whereabouts when he made certain incriminating phone calls, the prosecutor commented that only Taylor knew his own location. Toward the end of his closing argument, the prosecutor discussed the DNA evidence against Taylor and stated "[i]t doesn't get any better than that."

Defense counsel objected only to the "jury's oath" comment. The judge gave an immediate curative instruction, stating, "The jurors will make their decision, as has been stated, from the evidence and the evidence only. That's what controls." During the final jury charge, the judge gave additional instructions regarding the jury's duty to evaluate the evidence.

After the jury found Taylor guilty of murder in the second degree, the judge imposed the mandatory life sentence.

B. Procedural History

Following his conviction, Taylor filed a direct appeal. He also filed a motion for a new trial, arguing, among other things, that the prosecutor's closing argument was improper. The trial judge denied Taylor's motion, and Taylor appealed. The two appeals were consolidated. The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the denial of the new trial motion and the conviction.

See Commonwealth v. Taylor, 83 Mass.App.Ct. 1106, 981 N.E.2d 233 (2013) (Table). Taylor appealed to the SJC. On August 29, 2014, the SJC issued an opinion affirming Taylor's conviction. See Commonwealth v. Taylor, 469 Mass. 516, 14 N.E.3d 955 (2014).

In his appeal to the SJC, Taylor claimed that he should receive a new trial because the prosecutor made improper remarks in his closing argument: specifically, disparaging comments about defense counsel and the defense's theory of the case, the remark invoking the jurors' oaths, a statement commenting on Taylor's failure to testify, and an expression of personal opinion. The SJC disapproved of two statements: the characterization of the defense's theory as a "bald-face lie" and the statement that it would be a violation of the jurors' oaths if they believed that theory. Id. at 966. The court reasoned that these statements were improper because the former implied that defense counsel had fabricated evidence, and the latter suggested that the jurors were not permitted to take a different view of the evidence than the one proposed by the prosecution. Id.

Nonetheless, the SJC concluded that these two "unfortunate" remarks did not warrant a new trial. Id. Considering the trial as a whole, the judge's two curative instructions, and the strength of the evidence the Commonwealth presented against Taylor, the improper prosecutorial statements did not justify reversal. Id.

In August 2017, appellant filed a habeas petition in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The petition raised two claims: first, that the prosecutor's improper comments during his closing argument were so egregious that they deprived Taylor of a fair trial; second, that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his attorney failed to address an allegation that jurors were sleeping during portions of the trial.¹

The district court denied Taylor's petition. The court agreed with the SJC that the prosecutor had made the two improper remarks noted above. The court also agreed with the SJC that these remarks did not warrant a new trial because (1) "a court should not infer that the jury will draw the most damaging meaning from an isolated remark after sitting through a lengthy trial and jury instructions," (2) "much of the objectionable content was made in response to the opening argument of the defense," (3) the trial judge gave curative jury instructions, and (4) "the weight of the evidence against the petitioner was strong." 381 F. Supp. 3d at 118. The court also rejected Taylor's ineffective assistance of counsel claim regarding the sleeping jurors. Id. at 117.

The district court issued a certificate of appealability as to both claims. On appeal, Taylor dropped his claim regarding the sleeping jurors, and he thus proceeds solely on his claim that improper statements by the prosecutor denied him due process in violation of the federal Constitution. The Commonwealth argues that the SJC reasonably found that the challenged statements did not warrant habeas relief.

II.

A. Habeas Standard of Review

We review de novo a district court's denial of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

Linton v. Saba, 812 F.3d 112, 121 (1st Cir. 2016). Under AEDPA, habeas relief may be granted if a state court's adjudication of a claim on the merits "resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).

Here, the second prong, an unreasonable application of the law, is at issue. "An unreasonable application occurs when ‘the state court identifies the correct governing legal rule[,] ... but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular state prisoner's case.’ " Bebo v. Medeiros, 906 F.3d 129, 134 (1st Cir. 2018) (quoting White v. Woodall, 572 U.S. 415, 425, 134 S.Ct. 1697, 188 L.Ed.2d 698 (2014) (omission in original)). To meet this standard of unreasonableness, a state court's application of the law "must be ‘objectively unreasonable,’ not merely wrong; even ‘clear error’ will not suffice." White, 572 U.S. at 419, 134...