Wise v. Johnson
| Decision Date | 22 December 2021 |
| Docket Number | Civ. Action 18-16130 (JXN) |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
| Parties | JEROD K. WISE, Petitioner, v. STEVEN JOHNSON, et al., Respondents. |
JEROD K. WISE, Petitioner,
v.
STEVEN JOHNSON, et al., Respondents.
Civ. Action No. 18-16130 (JXN)
United States District Court, D. New Jersey
December 22, 2021
OPINION
JULIEN XAVIER NEALS, United States District Judge
Petitioner Jerod K. Wise (“Petitioner”), an individual currently confined at East Jersey State Prison in Rahway, New Jersey, filed the instant petition for a writ of habeas corpus (“Petition”) pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. (ECF No. 1, (“Petition” or “Pet.”)). For the reasons expressed below, the Court denies the Petition and also denies a certificate of appealability.
I. BACKGROUND[1]
Petitioner was convicted in state court of first-degree murder. The New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division provided the following factual summary of the proofs of trial:
At approximately 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. on September 7, 2009 Brian Mitchell was with Johnson when both encountered [Petitioner] at the intersection of Market and Broad Streets in downtown Newark. All three men had been drinking. An argument erupted, Mitchell claimed, because [Petitioner] ripped Johnson's pants, and the men began to push and shove each other. According to Mitchell, no punches were actually thrown, and the incident ended within approximately fifteen seconds when the trio saw a police car
At approximately 3:00 p.m. the next day, Mitchell and Johnson again encountered [Petitioner] near the same intersection Mitchell testified that he and Johnson avoided [Petitioner] as they walked past him on the street, but as Johnson stopped to put on his iPod earphones, Mitchell heard Johnson's “body hit the side of the bus stop gate ....” Mitchell turned and saw Johnson clutching the side of his neck with [Petitioner] holding a knife. [Petitioner] tried to “poke” Mitchell with the knife.
Bleeding profusely, Johnson ran across Market Street and passed out. Mitchell asked people to call 911, as he took off his shirt off and tried to staunch Johnson's bleeding. When Newark police detective Tywoo Thomas responded to the scene, he saw Johnson bleeding “from the upper part of his torso, ” and Mitchell “holding him, trying to comfort him.” Johnson was later pronounced dead at University Hospital. The autopsy revealed that he had suffered a stab wound to his neck that severed his external jugular vein and carotid artery.
Further police investigation led to two other witnesses, Leon Smith and Deborah Steele. Smith testified that he saw [Petitioner] come up from behind Johnson and stab him. Smith picked [Petitioner's] photograph out of a photo array, and also identified him at trial.
Steele also picked defendant's photo from an array and indicated he was the man she saw running from the scene as Johnson collapsed. [Petitioner's] flight was recorded on surveillance video that was played for the jury.
From garbage bags in the area where [Petitioner] fled, police found a silver-colored folding knife that contained blood matching Johnson's DNA profile. They secured an arrest warrant for [Petitioner] defendant and a search warrant for his residence. Upon executing the search warrant, police recovered a pair of bloodstained blue jeans, but testing revealed the stains did not match Johnson's DNA.
After waiving his Miranda[2] rights, [Petitioner] gave a statement to police admitting that he stabbed Johnson. [Petitioner] claimed that he overheard Mitchell and Johnson saying they were “gonna get” him as they walked past him on the street. [Petitioner] told police he feared for his life when he stabbed Johnson.
[Petitioner] reiterated his self-defense claim in his testimony before the jury. He admitted knowing Johnson and Mitchell prior to the incident of September 7, and acknowledged that all three were
members of the Bloods street gang, although [Petitioner] belonged to a different “set” of the gang. According to [Petitioner], that night, Mitchell and Johnson approached him and demanded money so they could purchase more alcohol. [Petitioner] refused, and the pair then grabbed [Petitioner's] pockets and pushed him against a wall. Mitchell punched [Petitioner] in the face.
The next day, [Petitioner] was at a newsstand on Market and Broad Streets purchasing water as Mitchell and Johnson walked in his direction. [Petitioner] stated that he saw their reflection in the newsstand window, and heard the pair say “there goes the ass right there ... [l]et's get him.”
[Petitioner] stated that Johnson approached with “his hands up ... like he was about to attack [him].” [Petitioner] saw no weapon, but, fearing for his life, he described what happened next:
I had my blade in my back pocket. I pulled it out. The blade is easy, like when you pull it out, it could just flip out by itself .... So, when I did that, . . . naturally, in my head, I'm sayin[g], you know, if you pull out a knife on a person, the natural reaction the[y're] gonna do is to get back and try to move away from you. Nobody is gonna keep comin[g] towards somebody with a knife. But as he's doin[g] that, he [is] about five feet from me. So, I'm like, alright, you know, I'm just gonna swing a knife just to try to, you know, scare the guys off. Once I swung the knife, I never knew that the knife connected with the guy at all. Never knew the knife touched him. When I swung at him, he backed up. The guy hit me with like two [ ] punches at the back of my head.
Mitchell and Curtis began “back-pedaling, ” and [Petitioner] fled immediately from the scene.
State v. Wise, No. A-1673-11T4, 2013 WL 6122574, at * 1-3 (N.J.Super.Ct.App.Div. Nov. 22, 2013.)
Petitioner was charged with first-degree murder, N.J.S.A. § 2C: 11-3a (count one); possession of weapon for unlawful purpose, N.J.S.A. § 2C: 39-5d (count two); and unlawful
possession of weapon, N.J.S.A. 2§ C: 39-4d (count three). (See ECF No. 7-1, at 41-44.)[3] A jury convicted Petitioner of first-degree murder and acquitted him of the remaining charges. Wise, 2013 WL 6122574 at *1. The court sentenced Petitioner to imprisonment for life, with a thirty-five-year period of parole ineligibility. Id.
Petitioner filed a Notice of Appeal with the Appellate Division. On November 22, 2013, the Appellate Division affirmed Petitioner's conviction, but vacated his sentence and remanded for resentencing, finding “the judge mistakenly found aggravating factor two applied.” Id. at *9. The Appellate Division further found Petitioner's thirty-five-year period of parole ineligibility did not comply with the requirements of the No Early Release Act (“NERA”), N.J.S.A. § 2C: 43-7.2 and instructed the sentencing court to impose a period of parole ineligibility consistent with the requirements of NERA. Wise, 2013 WL 6122574 at 9.
On February 28, 2014, the court resentenced Petitioner to a term of life in prison, with a sixty-three-year and nine-month parole ineligibility period as required by NERA. (See ECF No. 7-23.) On June 23, 2014, the New Jersey Supreme Court denied Petitioner's petition for certification. State v. Wise, 94 A.3d 910 (N.J. 2014).
Petitioner filed a pro se post-conviction relief (“PCR”) petition on July 16, 2014. (ECF No. 7-9, at 3-11.) Counsel was appointed and subsequently filed an amended PCR petition. (Id., at 12-41.) On August 5, 2016, the PCR court denied his petition. (See ECF No. 7-7; see also ECF No. 7-26, PCR Decision Transcript.) Petitioner appealed, and the Appellate Division affirmed the denial. State v. Wise, No. A-0426-16T2, 2018 WL 1321817 (N.J.Super.Ct.App.Div. March 15, 2018.) The New Jersey Supreme Court then denied his petition for certification. State v. Wise, 194 A.3d 984 (2018).
Petitioner filed his instant habeas petition on November 9, 2018. (ECF No. 1.) Petitioner asserts four grounds for relief. Respondents filed an answer (ECF No. 7.) Petitioner did not file a reply.
II. STANDARDS OF REVIEW
Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), 28 U.S.C. § 2254 provides, the district court “shall entertain an application for writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court only on the ground that he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.” Habeas petitioners bear the burden of establishing their entitlement to relief for each claim presented in a petition based upon the record that was before the state court. See Eley v. Erickson, 712 F.3d 837, 846 (3d Cir. 2013). District courts are required to give great deference to the determinations of the state trial and appellate courts. Renico v. Lett, 559 U.S. 766, 772-73 (2010).
Where a claim has been adjudicated on the merits by the state courts, the district court shall not grant an application for writ of habeas corpus unless the state court adjudication:
(1) 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: or
(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.
28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).
“Contrary to clearly established Federal law” means the state court applied a rule that contradicted the governing law set forth in U.S. Supreme Court precedent or that the state court confronted a set of facts that were materially indistinguishable from U.S. Supreme Court precedent and arrived at a different result than the Supreme Court. Eley, 712 F.3d at 846 (citing
Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06 (2000)). Federal law is clearly established for these purposes where it is clearly expressed in “only the holdings, as opposed to the dicta” of the opinions of the United States Supreme Court. See Woods v. Donald, 575 U.S. 312, 316...
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