Woods v. Quarterman

• Decision Date: 23 July 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-70025.,06-70025.
• Citation: 493 F.3d 580
• Parties: Bobby Wayne WOODS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Nathaniel QUARTERMAN, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

493 F.3d 580

Bobby Wayne WOODS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Nathaniel QUARTERMAN, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 06-70025.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

July 23, 2007.

Richard Alley, Fort Worth, TX, for Woods.

Ellen Stewart-Klein, Austin, TX, for Quarterman.

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

Before BARKSDALE, DeMOSS and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

DeMOSS, Circuit Judge:

In this successive habeas corpus appeal we must decide whether Petitioner Bobby Wayne Woods is ineligible for execution because he is mentally retarded. See Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002). For the reasons set forth below, we agree with the district court that Woods has failed to show he is entitled to relief under the deferential standards set forth in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254.

I.

In 1998, a Texas state jury convicted Woods and sentenced him to death for the murder of eleven-year-old Sarah Patterson during the course of a kidnaping. The facts of Woods' crime have been set forth previously by this Court:¹

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 v. Cockrell, 307 F.3d 353, 354-55 (5th Cir.2002).

Woods appealed his conviction and sentence to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA), and the TCCA affirmed. Concurrent with his direct appeal to the TCCA, Woods also filed a state application for habeas corpus relief, which the state habeas court denied.

Woods then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the U.S. District Court, which it denied. Woods sought a certificate of appealability (COA) from this Court, and we denied his request in a published order. Woods v. Cockrell, 307 F.3d 353 (5th Cir.2002). On April 8, 2003 Woods filed a successor petition for habeas corpus relief in Texas state court raising two issues for review, including his Atkins claim. The TCCA remanded the Atkins claim to the state trial court and dismissed the second claim as an abuse of the writ. On remand, the state trial court conducted a full evidentiary hearing before entering findings of fact and conclusions of law recommending relief be denied. The TCCA adopted those findings and conclusions and denied relief.

Thereafter, Woods received permission from this Court to file a successive federal habeas petition—although this Court only authorized the petition on the issue "whether Woods is mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for the death penalty according to Atkins." In re Woods, 155 Fed.Appx. 132, 136 (5th Cir.2005). Woods filed the successive habeas petition with the district court, and the district court (1) refused, for lack of jurisdiction, to consider all claims not associated with Woods' Atkins claim, and (2) denied relief on Woods's Atkins claim.

In reaching its conclusion, the district court first considered whether Woods made a prima facie showing of an Atkins claim. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(C) (requiring a petitioner to make a prima facie showing that he has met the requirements for filing a successive habeas petition). Finding that Woods had presented more than "minimally sufficient evidence" of mental retardation, the district court agreed with this Court that Woods' petition was proper and warranted fuller examination. The district court then turned to the merits of Woods' Atkins claim and denied the petition because Woods failed to meet his "burden of proving, by clear and convincing evidence, that the state court's finding is incorrect." However, after denying relief, the district court granted Woods a COA on his claim, concluding "the state court record contained evidence on which some jurists would be willing to conclude Woods is in fact mentally retarded." See Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 336, 123 S.Ct. 1029, 154 L.Ed.2d 931 (2003) (discussing the requirements for a COA to issue).

II.

In a habeas corpus appeal we review the federal district court's findings of fact for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo. Panetti v. Dretke, 448 F.3d 815, 817 (5th Cir.2006). Further, we apply "the same standard of review to the state court's decision as the district court." Coble v. Dretke, 444 F.3d 345, 349 (5th Cir. 2006). Woods filed his federal habeas petition after the effective date of AEDPA, and consequently we apply the standards set forth therein.

AEDPA provides that federal courts may only grant habeas relief to a state prisoner if the state court's adjudication on the merits either: 1) "resulted in a decision contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States" or 2) "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)(1)-(2).

A state court's decision is "contrary to" clearly established federal law under § 2254(d)(1) if "the state court applies a rule that contradicts the governing law announced in Supreme Court cases, or . . . the state court decides a case differently than the Supreme Court did on a set of materially indistinguishable facts." Nelson v. Quarterman, 472 F.3d 287, 292 (5th Cir.2006) (en banc) (internal quotation marks omitted). A state court decision constitutes an "unreasonable application" of clearly established federal law under the same section if the court "identifies the correct...