Taylor v. Withrow

• Decision Date: 28 March 2002
• Docket Number: No. 01-1908.,01-1908.
• Citation: 288 F.3d 846
• Parties: Eric W. TAYLOR, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Pamela WITHROW, Respondent-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

288 F.3d 846

Eric W. TAYLOR, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Pamela WITHROW, Respondent-Appellant.

No. 01-1908.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued January 24, 2002.

Decided and Filed March 28, 2002.

Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc Denied June 5, 2002.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Eric W. Taylor, Jackson, MI, pro se.

Stuart G. Friedman (argued and briefed), Plymouth, MI, for Petitioner-Appellee.

William C. Campbell (argued and briefed), Office of the Attorney General, Habeas Corpus Division, Lansing, MI, for Respondent-Appellant.

Before MERRITT, BOGGS, and MOORE, Circuit Judges.

MERRITT, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which MOORE, J., joined. BOGGS, J., (pp. 854-855), delivered a separate opinion concurring in the judgment of the court as expressed in Part II.D.

OPINION

MERRITT, Circuit Judge.

In this case the respondent, warden Pamela Withrow (hereafter "State"), appeals the district court's grant of a writ of habeas corpus to petitioner Eric Taylor, who was convicted of second-degree murder in Michigan in 1995. The district court issued the writ after finding that the trial court had deprived Taylor of his right to due process when it refused to instruct the jury on the defenses of self-defense and imperfect self-defense. For reasons set out below, we REVERSE the district court's grant of the writ.

I. Facts

The facts of the case are set out in the district court's decision, and we repeat only those necessary to sketch the relevant events. See Taylor v. Withrow, 154 F.Supp.2d 1037, 1039-41 (E.D.Mich.2001).

Early in the morning of December 4, 1993, Eric Taylor went to a party at a private home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. At the party were a number of his acquaintances, including Shalonda Jones, who was the mother of his child, Steven Horgrow, and Michael Franklin. All present were drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana. Taylor brought a gun to the party. While accounts of exactly what occurred at the party differ, all the witnesses agree that Taylor was angry at Jones and accused her of "messing around with" Horgrow. After leaving the party for a few minutes, Taylor returned and quarreled with Horgrow. Following a brief exchange, Horgrow challenged Taylor to a fight, and several of the men at the party attempted either to separate the two (their story) or join Horgrow's challenge to Taylor (Taylor's story). Taylor then pulled out his gun. The gun went off, firing one shot. Horgrow was killed by the shot, and after the bullet passed through him, it struck and severely injured Michael Franklin. Following the shooting all partygoers fled except for Taylor, who stayed and performed CPR on Horgrow.

At trial, Taylor was charged with (1) "open murder," a Michigan charge allowing the jury to find either first- or second-degree murder, (2) assault with intent to commit murder, (3) carrying a concealed weapon, and (4) possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He testified in his own defense that he brought the gun to the party because he believed Horgrow was armed, that he pulled the weapon only when he believed he was about to be attacked, and that he had not intended to fire the gun but that it accidentally went off in a scuffle. During trial Taylor's counsel stated that Taylor shot Horgrow by accident, and introduced evidence in an attempt to show that the gun could have accidentally discharged when grabbed. He also told the jury that Taylor had pulled the weapon to defend himself, and at voir dire counsel asked potential jurors whether they had a problem with self-defense as a defense.

At the close of trial the judge refused a defense request to instruct the jury on the defenses of self-defense and of imperfect self-defense, pointing out that Taylor had testified that he shot Horgrow accidentally and not in self-defense. It did not matter, the trial judge held, why Taylor initially pulled the gun; his testimony made it impossible for him to claim the shooting itself was done in self-defense. The trial judge did, however, instruct the jury on accident as a defense. The jury instructions also included the judge's admonition to disregard the trial lawyers' comments if they differed from the jury instructions. J.A. at 832-33. At closing Taylor's counsel chiefly argued accident as a defense for his client.

The jury convicted Taylor of second-degree murder, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, carrying a concealed weapon, and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Taylor appealed, claiming inter alia that he had been deprived of his rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments when the trial court refused to instruct the jury on self-defense and attempted self-defense. His conviction and sentence were affirmed by the Michigan Court of Appeals and his appeal was denied by the Michigan Supreme Court. See People v. Taylor, 1997 WL 33344401, No. 187231 (Mich.Ct.App. July 18, 1997), leave den. 459 Mich. 878, 586 N.W.2d 743 (Mich.1998), reconsideration den. 459 Mich. 878, 590 N.W.2d 65 (Mich. 1999).

Taylor then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the district court, asserting four different claims for relief, including that he was denied his right to a fair trial when the trial judge refused to instruct the jury on self-defense and on imperfect self-defense. See Taylor, 154 F.Supp.2d at 1039. The district court found that refusing to give the instructions on both defenses had violated Taylor's rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and further found that this error was not harmless. See id. at 1043-45. The court granted the writ, and the state timely appealed.¹

II. Analysis

A. Standard of Review

In an appeal of a habeas proceeding, we customarily review the district court's legal conclusions de novo, and its factual findings for clear error. See Miller v. Francis, 269 F.3d 609, 613 (6th Cir.2001). When the district court relies on a transcript from the petitioner's state trial and makes no independent determinations of fact, we review the district court's factual findings de novo, as well. See id.

B. Habeas Standards and The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act

Under rules set down in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (the "Antiterrorism Act" or "Act"), a federal court may not grant a writ of habeas to a petitioner in state custody with respect to any claim adjudicated on the merits in state court unless (1) the state court's decision "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) (1994 & Supp. VII), or (2) the state court's decision "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceedings." Id. § 2254(d)(2).

The Act sets a higher hurdle for those seeking habeas than before, but it does not require that the Supreme Court must have previously decided the very case that a lower court has before it. In Williams v. Taylor, the Supreme Court warned that "clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court" refers to Supreme Court decisions, not those of lower federal courts, and "refers to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the] Court's decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision." 529 U.S. 362, 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000); see also Brumley v. Wingard, 269 F.3d 629, 637-38 (6th Cir.2001). At the same time, clearly established law under the Act encompasses more than just bright-line rules laid down by the Court. It also clearly includes legal principles and standards enunciated in the Court's decisions. As the Court stated, a state court decision makes "an unreasonable application of this Court's precedent" when the court "unreasonably extends a legal principle from our precedent to a new context where it should not apply ..." but, it is important to emphasize, the Court said at the same time that a lower court also errs when it "unreasonably refuses to extend that principle to a new context where it should apply." Williams, 529 U.S. at 407, 120 S.Ct. 1495 (emphasis added).

The Supreme Court has warned lower federal court to be cautious in finding that a state court has decided "contrary to, or made an unreasonable application of" clearly established federal law. Under the Act, a state court's decision will be contrary to Supreme Court precedent only "if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by [the Supreme] Court on a question of law," or if the state court "confronts facts that are materially indistinguishable from a relevant Supreme Court precedent" and arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Court. Id. at 405, 120 S.Ct. 1495. Similarly restrictive is the Court's guidance on what constitutes an "unreasonable application" of federal law. It is not enough that a state court correctly identified a governing legal principle, but mistakenly applied it; a federal court should only issue a writ if the state court's application was "objectively unreasonable." Id. at 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495.

C. The right to jury instructions on self-defense

A threshold question in any habeas appeal is whether the petitioner makes his or her claim under a rule of law that was clearly established at the time the conviction became final in state court. See Miller, 269 F.3d at 614-15. To examine Taylor's claim, then, we must first determine whether he makes his claim under a valid rule of law, and only then turn to decide whether in his particular case that rule was violated.

Within broad limits the federal courts defer to states on most matters concerning how they regulate criminal trials. As the Supreme Court has noted, "preventing and dealing with crime is much more the business of the States than it is of the Federal Government," and federal courts should be reluctant to meddle in criminal procedures established for valid reasons by states....