Williams v. Dunn

• Decision Date: 06 February 2017
• Docket Number: 2:13-cv-01105-VEH-JEO
• Parties: DONDERRIOUS WILLIAMS, Petitioner, v. JEFFERSON S. DUNN, Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Alabama

DONDERRIOUS WILLIAMS, Petitioner, v. JEFFERSON S. DUNN¹, Commissioner,Alabama Department of Corrections, Respondent.

2:13-cv-01105-VEH-JEO

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA SOUTHERN DIVISION

February 6, 2017

MEMORANDUM OPINION

This is a habeas corpus case filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 by Petitioner Donderrious Williams, an Alabama state prisoner. (Doc.² 1). Williams is serving a sentence of life without parole following his conviction for capital murder. Represented by counsel, Williams has raised habeas claims alleging that his FifthAmendment right against self-incrimination was violated and that his appointed trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance, in violation of the Sixth Amendment. (Doc. 3). On November 7, 2016, the magistrate judge to whom the case was referred entered a report and recommendation pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b), recommending that Williams's habeas petition be denied. (Doc. 12 ("R&R")). On December 29, 2016, Williams filed objections to the R&R. (Doc. 20).

Williams's objections to the R&R relate specifically to the magistrate judge's recommendation to reject his Fifth Amendment claim, which is founded on Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477 (1981). In Edwards, the United States Supreme Court recognized that once "an accused has invoked his right [under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966),] to have counsel present during custodial interrogation ... [he] is not subject to further interrogation by the authorities until counsel has been made available to him unless the accused himself reinitiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with police." 451 U.S. at 484-85. On direct appeal, Williams claimed that an incriminating statement he made to police had been admitted at trial in violation of Edwards because it was elicited some two weeks after an initial interrogation in which he had allegedly asked for a lawyer. However, the Alabama Supreme Court rejected that claim, concluding that, assuming that Williams had unequivocally asked for a lawyer in his initial interrogation, he had reinitiated contactwith police, based on findings by the trial judge that, while in custody, Williams had told members of his family he wanted to talk further with police and that those family members then relayed that message to the detective in charge. See Ex parte Williams, 31 So. 3d 670, 683 (Ala. 2009) (per curiam plurality opinion joined by Woodall, Stuart, Smith, and Parker, JJ.); id. (Cobb, C.J., and Lyons, J., concurring in the result without opinion); id. at 684-85 (Bolin, J., concurring specially). In so holding, the Alabama Supreme Court expressly acknowledged that Edwards did not specifically address whether a defendant might reinitiate communication with police through a third party, as the trial court had found to have occurred in Williams's case. Id. at 679-80 (per curiam plurality opinion). Nevertheless, the Court concluded that such indirect reinitiation may render a defendant's subsequent statement constitutionally admissible, relying primarily upon the Sixth Circuit's decision in Van Hook v. Anderson, 488 F.3d 411 (6th Cir. 2007) (en banc), as well as a host of other lower federal appellate decisions also holding to that effect. See Ex parte Edwards, 31 So. 3d at 679-83 (per curiam plurality opinion) (citing and discussing Van Hook, supra, and citing Owens v. Bowersox, 290 F.3d 960 (8th Cir. 2002); United States v. Michaud, 268 F.3d 728 (9th Cir. 2001); Whitehead v. Cowan, 263 F.3d 708 (7th Cir. 2001); Holman v. Kemna, 212 F.3d 413 (8th Cir. 2000); United States v. Gonzalez, 183 F.3d 1315 (11th Cir. 1999), overruled on other grounds, United States v. Farese,248 F.3d 1056 (11th Cir. 2001); United States v. Rodriguez, 993 F.2d 1170 (5th Cir. 1993); United States v. Gaddy, 894 F.2d 1307 (11th Cir. 1990); and Harvell v. State, 275 Ga. 562 S.E.2d 180 (Ga. 2002)); see also Ex parte Edwards, 31 So. 3d at 684-85 (Bolin, J.) (agreeing that Van Hook lays out the proper standard for evaluating whether the accused has validly reinitiated contact with police).

Having lost on his Edwards claim in the Alabama state courts, Williams pressed it again in this court as a ground for federal habeas relief. In recommending that the claim should be denied, the magistrate judge relied upon 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), which provides in relevant part that a state prisoner's habeas petition "shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in the State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim ... resulted in a decision that 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). (R&R at 17-19, 21). That is, the magistrate judge found that the Alabama Supreme Court's conclusion that an accused may initiate further interrogation with police through a third party was neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, clearly established Supreme Court precedent, including Edwards. (R&R at 21-22). That is "plain," the magistrate judge explained, insofar as (1) the Supreme Court has never faced an Edwards claim in a factual setting raising the third-party reinitiationissue and (2) numerous other courts, including the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, have read Edwards as authorizing the admission of statements following renewed contact with the police by the accused through communications with a third party. (Id.)

The thrust of Williams's objections to the R&R is that the magistrate judge erred in concluding that § 2254(d)(1) precludes habeas relief on his Edwards claim. Williams insists that because the Edwards opinion itself states that, once an accused has requested counsel, questioning must cease "unless the accused himself initiates further communication, exchanges, or conversations with the police," 451 U.S. at 485 (emphasis added), its "holding is very clear" that it "forecloses ... an indirect reinitiation of questioning." (Doc. 20 at 2). This court disagrees.

"[C]learly established Federal law under § 2254(d)(1) is the governing legal principle or principles set forth by the Supreme Court at the time the state court renders its decision." Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 71-72 (2003) (quotation omitted). "It includes only 'the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme] Court's decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision.'" Jones v. Secretary, Fla. Dep't of Corr., 834 F.3d 1299, 1311 (11th Cir. 2016) (quoting Lockyer, 538 U.S. at 71 (quotation omitted)). "A state-court decision is contrary to [the Supreme] Court's clearly established precedents if it applies a rule thatcontradicts the governing law set forth in our cases, or if it confronts a set of facts that is materially indistinguishable from a decision of this Court but reaches a different result." Brown v. Payton, 544 U.S. 133, 141 (2005) (citing Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405 (2000); Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8 (2002) (per curiam)). "A state-court decision involves an unreasonable application of [the Supreme] Court's clearly established precedents if the state court applies [the Supreme] Court's precedents to the facts in an objectively unreasonable manner." Id. (citing Williams, 529 U.S. at 405; Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24-25 (2002)). In other words, "a state prisoner must show that the challenged state-court ruling rested on 'an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.'" Netrish v. Lancaster, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 133 S. Ct. 1781, 1787 (2013) (quoting Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 103 (2011)); see also Loggins v. Thomas, 654 F.3d 1204, 1220 (11th Cir. 2011) ("[I]f some fairminded jurists could agree with the state court's decision, although others might disagree, federal habeas relief must be denied.").

It is undisputed that neither Edwards nor any other United States Supreme Court case decided to this point has involved a claim that the accused might have initiated further questioning by expressing to a third party that he desired to talk again with the police. Thus, no Supreme Court decision holds that only directcommunications between a suspect and a law enforcement official may be deemed to reinitiate questioning for purposes of Edwards. And despite Williams's insistence that "the Edwards jurisprudence" is "very clear" that it "forecloses an indirect reinitiation of questioning" (Doc. 20 at 2), conspicuously absent from his objections is a citation to any case so holding. On the other hand, as noted by both the Alabama Supreme Court and the magistrate judge, numerous federal courts of appeals have held that an accused's communications conveyed to police through a third party may authorize renewed questioning under Edwards so as to render a subsequent statement admissible. (R&R at 22); Ex parte Williams, 31 So. 3d at 680 (citing cases). And significantly, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is among that group. See Gonzalez, 183 F.3d at 1324; United States v. Gaddy, 894 F.2d at 1310-12; and United States v. Valdes-Fiallo, 213 F. App'x 957, 962 (11th Cir. 2007).

Williams responds by maintaining that it is "beside the point" that those courts have held that Edwards does not preclude reinitiated contact through a third party "because none of those cases have obtained the imprimatur of or any endorsement from the Supreme Court." (Doc. 20 at 4). "For purposes of § 2254(d)(1)," Williams maintains, "Van Hook and the other third-party initiation cases cannot extend or modify Edwards." (Id. at 5 (footnote omitted)). Rather, he says, "[o]nly a Supreme Court opinion can do that for purposes of the AEDPA inquiry." (Id.) Williams furthercontends that all of these non-Supreme Court decisions "have taken liberties with Edwards" and "have extended [it] in improvident" and "ill-advised" ways....