Woods v. Cockrell

• Decision Date: 24 September 2002
• Docket Number: No. 02-50193.,02-50193.
• Citation: 307 F.3d 353
• Parties: Bobby Wayne WOODS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Janie COCKRELL, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

307 F.3d 353

Bobby Wayne WOODS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Janie COCKRELL, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 02-50193.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

September 24, 2002.

Richard Alley, Robert Franklin Ford, Fort Worth, TX, for Petitioner-Appellant.

John Andrew Hutton, Austin, TX, for Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.

Before DeMOSS, PARKER and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

ROBERT M. PARKER, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner Woods, a Texas state death penalty inmate, requests a certificate of appealability ("COA") under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2253-2254 on two issues. First, whether the standard of review used by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals when reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence relating to the jury's determination of the special issue of future dangerousness, and whether its refusal to review the trial jury's determination of the sufficiency of mitigating evidence at all, violates constitutional due process and equal protection. Second, whether the Texas trial court, upheld by the appellate court, erred in refusing to instruct the jury pursuant to Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154, 114 S.Ct. 2187, 129 L.Ed.2d 133 (1994). We deny Woods's request on each issue.

I. Background.

In the early morning hours of April 30, 1997, Woods went to the house of his former girlfriend, Schwana Patterson, in Granbury, Texas. Though they had previously lived together, the two had split up. Woods later admitted to having used drugs before going to the house, including "crank" and PCP. Schwana was not at home when Woods arrived, but he found an open window into the bedroom where Schwana's two children, Sarah, 11, and Cody, nine, were sleeping. He grabbed Sarah by the foot; Cody awoke to Sarah's screams as Woods beat her chest.

He forced the two children to leave through the window in their nightclothes. Later investigation found Woods's semen on Sarah's bedcover, indicating that he had had sexual contact with her. This was borne out in other evidence, including statements by Woods himself, Sarah's friends, notes she had left in her diary indicating that she hated Woods and wanted him gone, and that she had contracted the sexually-transmitted disease Human Papilloma Virus ("HPV"). Woods was also infected with HPV. When Sarah's body was later found, forensic evidence including larvae development in her traumatized genitals also indicated that she had been sexually molested.

Woods took the children in his car to a cemetery. Enroute, Cody, in the back seat, noticed a black-handled knife in the back of the car. At the cemetery, Woods took Cody out of the car and asked him if his mother was seeing anyone else. He hit Cody and commenced strangling him in front of the car. Cody later testified that he thought he was going to die. He awoke later, crawled over a fence, and attracted the attention of a horseback rider who called the police.

The police later found Woods and told him that they had the "whole story" from Cody. They asked him to tell them where to find Sarah, hoping that she was still alive. Woods told them, "You will not find her alive. I cut her throat." He then led the police to Sarah's body and gave them two written statements. In the statements, he admitted to having had sexual contact with Sarah before leaving the house, that he had taken drugs, and that after Cody fell unconscious in the cemetery, Sarah had started screaming. He left with her in the car toward a bridge on highway 144. She continued to yell that she would tell the police that he had hit Cody. He attempted to quiet her by holding a knife to her throat. According to his statement, Sarah jerked and the knife cut her throat.

Her body was clothed in an inside-out shirt, a sports bra, and a pair of shorts, without panties. Her throat had been deeply cut, severing her larynx and several major arteries and veins, causing massive external bleeding that was the cause of her death.

In addition to finding Woods's semen on Sarah's blanket, investigators found a large butcher knife, stained with Sarah's blood, inside a trash bag that Woods had borrowed from a neighbor the morning after he abducted Sarah and Cody. The bag also contained a pawn ticket bearing Woods's signature and address for items he admitted stealing from the Patterson home. Sarah's blood was on Woods's jersey, which was in the back of his car; her panties were on the car's floorboard. There was evidence that Woods had scratches on his face and arms on the day after the murder that were not there the day before.

Woods was arrested and charged with, inter alia, capital murder and was so indicted on June 4, 1997, in Hood County, Texas. The indictment charged him with the murder of Sarah Patterson in the course of committing or attempting to commit the kidnaping of Sarah and Cody Patterson, or in the alternative, the murder of Sarah in the course of committing or attempting to commit the aggravated sexual assault of Sarah. He was also indicted for the attempted capital murder of Cody, arising out of the same criminal transaction.

On Woods's motion, venue was changed to Llano County, where he pleaded not guilty. At trial, Woods testified on his own behalf and admitted to the general contours of that morning's events, including the abductions, but not to the murder. Instead, he offered a version which tended to implicate his cousin. He was found guilty by the jury on May 21, 1998. Following a punishment hearing, the jury returned affirmative answers on May 28 on the issues relating to Woods's future dangerousness and intent to commit murder, and a negative answer on the existence of mitigating circumstances to justify a life sentence. The Llano County trial court sentenced Woods to death.

Woods appealed the conviction and sentence to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and concurrently filed a state application for writ of habeas corpus. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed in an unpublished opinion. Woods v. State, No. 73,136 (Tex.Crim.App. June 14, 2000). His motion for rehearing was denied and the court entered a mandate on September 13, 2000. The Court of Criminal Appeals also denied Woods's habeas petition in an unpublished opinion based on the findings of the trial court. Ex parte Woods, No. 44,856-01 (Tex.Crim.App. Sept. 13, 2000). The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari on February 21, 2001. Woods v. Texas, 531 U.S. 1155, 121 S.Ct. 1105, 148 L.Ed.2d 975 (2001). Woods petitioned for federal habeas relief in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas on December 11, 2000. That court transferred the case to the Western District of Texas, which entered its ruling on summary judgment on February 8, 2002. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c), which provides that a prisoner may not appeal the denial of a petition for habeas corpus under § 2254 without first obtaining a COA from a circuit judge, Woods now seeks a COA on these issues from us in a petition filed April 25, 2002.

II. Standard of Review.

Woods's federal habeas petition was filed after the effective date of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA"). Thus, the AEDPA applies to his COA application. Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 335-36, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997); Nobles v. Johnson, 127 F.3d 409, 412-13 (5th Cir.1997). To prevail on an application for a COA, a petitioner must make a "substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right, a demonstration that ... includes showing that reasonable jurists could debate whether ... the petition should have been resolved in a different manner or that the issues presented were adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further." Moore v. Johnson, 225 F.3d 495, 500 (5th Cir.2000), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 949, 121 S.Ct. 1420, 149 L.Ed.2d 360 (2001), quoting Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 483, 120 S.Ct. 1595, 146 L.Ed.2d 542 (2000).

In assessing whether a petitioner has demonstrated a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right, we must keep in mind the deference scheme laid out in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). See Moore, 225 F.3d at 501.

An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim —

(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). "Section 2254(d)(1) provides the standard of review for questions of law and mixed questions of law and fact." Caldwell v. Johnson, 226 F.3d 367, 372 (5th Cir.2000). The court may grant habeas relief under the "unreasonable application" clause "if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle but applies it incorrectly, or expands a legal principle to an area outside the scope intended by the Supreme Court." Id. Furthermore, the state court's application "must be `unreasonable' in addition to being merely `incorrect.'" Id. In other words, the appropriate inquiry is "`whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable.'" Id. (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 409, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000)). With respect to the "contrary to" clause of § 2254(d)(1), "a federal court may grant the writ if the state court has arrived at a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Supreme Court on a question of law, or if the state court decides the case differently than the Supreme Court on a set of materially indistinguishable facts." Id.

We r...