Wofford v. Wainwright

• Decision Date: 17 December 1984
• Docket Number: No. 84-3253,84-3253
• Citation: 748 F.2d 1505
• Parties: Rodney E. WOFFORD, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Louie L. WAINWRIGHT, et al., Respondents-Appellees. Non-Argument Calendar.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1505

748 F.2d 1505

Rodney E. WOFFORD, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Louie L. WAINWRIGHT, et al., Respondents-Appellees.

No. 84-3253

Non-Argument Calendar.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Dec. 17, 1984.

Howard W. Skinner, Jacksonville, Fla., for petitioner-appellant.

Barbara A. Butler, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jacksonville, Fla., for respondents-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before VANCE, HENDERSON and CLARK, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Rodney Earl Wofford appeals from denial by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. We affirm.

Wofford pled guilty to second degree murder in the Circuit Court of Nassau County, Florida for the multiple stabbing of his girlfriend. He now seeks relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254 on the ground that he was denied effective assistance of counsel when he accepted the prosecution's offer of a thirty-year sentence. The district court referred the petition to the magistrate for a hearing and recommendation as provided in 28 U.S.C. Sec. 636(b)(1).

At the hearing before the magistrate, Wofford testified that he agreed to the plea bargain because his court-appointed lawyer threatened him and also promised that he would receive psychological counseling in prison. He claimed that the lawyer told him that he had no defense and that if he went to trial he would certainly receive a life sentence. Wofford further testified he was never advised that he could be convicted of the lesser offense of manslaughter.

Wofford's trial counsel, Granville Burgess, substantially contradicted this testimony. He explained that he was fully prepared to go to trial, but after the jury was impanelled Wofford suddenly decided to accept the prosecution's latest offer of a thirty-year prison term. ¹ Wofford told Burgess that he did not want to force his victim's young children, who witnessed the killing, to undergo the traumatic experience of testifying in court. Burgess insists that he then explained again the elements of the various applicable offenses and defenses, including manslaughter. He warned his client that the prosecutor and the judge had already indicated a severe sentence in the event Wofford were found guilty of second-degree murder. Burgess testified that he told Wofford that the State's chances of proving the greater offense were "somewhere in the neighborhood of 60/40." Transcript of Evidentiary Hearing, p. 69.

As the magistrate observed in his report and recommendation to the district court, "This case really boils down to a credibility choice between Petitioner and his trial defense counsel." R.Ex. p. 274. The magistrate credited the testimony of Burgess and recommended dismissal of the petition, finding that Wofford had voluntarily and knowingly decided to plead guilty and accept the thirty-year sentence proposed by the state. The district court made a de novo determination of the disputed parts of the magistrate's report and reviewed the entire record. The district court agreed with the magistrate's findings, adopted the report and recommendation and dismissed the petition. See, e.g., United States v. Lagrone, 727 F.2d 1037 (11th Cir.1984); Owens v. Wainwright, 698 F.2d 1111 (11th Cir.1983); Bradbury v. Wainwright, 658 F.2d 1083, 1087 (5th Cir. Unit B 1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 992, 102 S.Ct. 2275, 73 L.Ed.2d 1288 (1982). ²

Wofford does not contend that the district court misconstrued the legal standards for measuring Burgess' effectiveness. Instead, he urges that the district court denied him due process by adopting the magistrate's credibility findings without first hearing the conflicting testimony.

In United States v. Raddatz, 447 U.S. 667, 100 S.Ct. 2406, 65 L.Ed.2d 424 (1980), the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause does not require a district judge who has referred a suppression motion to a magistrate for an evidentiary hearing to hold a second hearing before adopting the magistrate's evaluations of the witnesses' credibility. Speaking for four members of the Court, the Chief Justice framed the question as "whether the nature of the issues presented and the interests implicated in a motion to suppress evidence require that the district judge must actually hear the challenged testimony." 447 U.S. at 677, 100 S.Ct. at 2413, 65 L.Ed.2d at 434. Applying the three-factor balancing test of Matthews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 96 S.Ct. 893, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976), the Court reasoned:

Of course, the resolution of a suppression motion can and often does determine the outcome of the case; this may be true of various pretrial motions. We have repeatedly pointed out, however, that the interests underlying a voluntariness hearing do not coincide with the criminal law objective of determining guilt or innocence.

* * *

While the district court judge alone acts as the ultimate decisionmaker, the statute grants the judge the broad discretion to accept, reject, or modify the magistrate's proposed findings. That broad discretion includes hearing the witnesses live to resolve conflicting credibility claims. Finally, we conclude that the statutory scheme includes sufficient procedures to alert the district court whether to exercise its discretion to conduct a hearing and view the witnesses itself.

447 U.S. at 677-78, 680-81, 100 S.Ct. at 2413, 2415, 65 L.Ed.2d at 434, 436 (footnotes omitted). In his concurrence Justice Blackmun noted, "In asking us to invalidate the magistrate program, [Raddatz] in effect requests removal of the second level of procedural protections afforded him and others like him. In my view, such a result would tend to undermine, rather than augment, accurate decision making." 447 U.S. at 685, 100 S.Ct. at 2417, 65 L.Ed.2d at 439 (footnote omitted). Both the Chief Justice and Justice Blackmun emphasized that Raddatz concerned only the adoption, not the rejection, of a magistrate's findings. See, e.g., Louis v. Blackburn, 630 F.2d 1105, 1109 (5th Cir.1980) ("[I]n a situation involving the constitutional rights of a criminal defendant, we hold that the district judge should not enter an order inconsistent with the credibility choices made by the magistrate without personally hearing the live testimony of the witnesses whose testimony is determinative.") (footnote omitted).

Applying the three factors enunciated in Matthews, and refined by Raddatz, we note that two of the conditions stressed in Raddatz are obviously present here. First, Sec. 636(b)(1) confers broad discretion to the district judge to hear or dispense with further testimony, and to accept, reject or modify the magistrate's report. Second, by complying with Congress' directive that any portion of the report to which objection is made be determined de novo by the district court, the judge here refrained from exercising her broad discretion until she fully appreciated the credibility issues raised and their importance to the resolution of Wofford's claim. Thus, in view of Raddatz' application of Matthews, unless the interest underlying Wofford's right to effective assistance of counsel in deciding to plead guilty is substantially more important than was Raddatz' interest in having an involuntary confession...