Fifth Circuit: USA v. Villarreal

 Where a Habeas petition claims that a prior offense wasn't a valid predicate because it wasn't limited to crimes involving a use of force, and subsequent to vacatur and remand, a certificate of appealability issues challenging the predicate on the ground that it includes reckless conduct, the fact that pro se prisoner Habeas petitions should be construed liberally allows the original petition to be decided on the latter grounds.

DISSENT:

The distinction between the act and the mental state isn't sophistry; the petition didn't originally intend to raise the recklessness challenge.

USA v. Villarreal

Ninth Circuit: Jaime Charboneau v. Tyrell Davis et al.

 In a second or successive Habeas petition, the clear and convincing proof of actual innocence must have a direct nexus to the facts underlying the claim of the constitutional violation, and it examines all of the evidence in the record available to the reviewing court, without regard to admissibility.  

The facts from the earlier findings that are to be taken to be true are not the ultimate determinations, but the evidentiary proffers underlying the claims; a presumption of correctness is attributed to findings of authenticity.  A letter held to be a copy of an unavailable original is sufficiently established as to authorship, but may be questioned for probity and reliability.  

Where the circumstances of the newly discovered evidence credibly suggest the petitioner's involvement in forgery, a rational factfinder might reasonably weigh the consciousness of guilt suggested by the events in determining the reliability and probity of the evidence.  

Jaime Charboneau v. Tyrell Davis et al.

Fifth Circuit: Robinson v. Lopinto

 Absent a showing as to an increased ability to afford the bail, Habeas is unavailable where at least one of the counts subject to retrial isn't affected by the claim seeking the writ; the pretrial detention would be justified under the single count.

Robinson v. Lopinto

Seventh Circuit: Marvin Carter v. Chris Buesgen

Where a federal court dismisses without prejudice in order to allow exhausion of pending direct and Habeas claims in the state system while determining that there has been inordinate delay in those claims, the futility of either amendment or recourse to the state system can make the dismissal without prejudice sufficiently final for appellate jurisdiction.

 Extreme delay in the state system can excuse the federal statutory requirement that state claims first be exhausted.

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2021/D08-18/C:20-3140:J:Scudder:aut:T:fnOp:N:2749770:S:0

Eighth Circuit: Scott McLaughlin v. Anne Precythe

 

Although a simple Google search would likely have revealed the impeachment evidence against the defense expert witness in a capital case, not investigating the witness beyond a reasoble reliance on the judgment of the professional commnity was not ineffective assistance of counsel.

Petitioner wasn't prejudiced by lack of replacement psychologist's testimony, a witness who would have provided evidence on an aggravating factor on which the jury ended up not being able to reach a decision, since from a legal point of view the testimony would have been duplicative of the overwhelming evidence on this point; there was therefore not a substantial likelihood of a different result.

AEDPA deference to state habeas finding to the contrary offers an independent ground for overruling the district court ruling that petitioner was prejudiced by the lack of testimony.

Since the ineffective assistance claim wasn't substantial, petitioner can't raise it in federal habeas after defaulting in state habeas, since excuse of default requires a substantial claim.

While jury instructions can't require that a jury be unanimous on any one mitigating factor, they can require that the jury be unanimous in its decision that the mitigating factors outweigh the aggravating factors.

District Court erred in holding that the weighing of mitigating and aggravating circumstances was a finding of fact upon which the legislature had conditioned an increased punishment and that therefore must be performed by the jury, since the supreme court of the state has held in this case that the same precedent referenced by the district court was inapplicable.

CONCURRENCE:

Although the investigation of the expert witness was insufficient, there was no prejudice, given the other evidence offered.  

State supreme court has held that only the existence of a single mitigating factor need be found by the jury under the statutue, as it constitutes eligibility for the increased sentence.

http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/21/08/183510P.pdf

Ninth Circuit: Guerier v. Garland

 

Since the due process rights of aliens who have not effected an entry into the US are coextensive with the statutory scheme and mechanisms for redress within that scheme devised by Congress, when Congress excludes that form of redress, Article III courts have no jurisdiction to hear even a colorable constitutional claim of deprivation of the due process accorded by statute.

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/08/16/20-70115.pdf

Tenth Circuit: Jackson v. Warden, USP-Leavenworth

 

Statutory Habeas is unavailable where an intial challenge to the conviction was made in the court of conviction according to statute, but there was a subsequent change in the law regarding the predicate offense that cannot be relitigated under AEDPA, since it would be second or successive.  The inital collateral challenge was adequate and effective.

https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opinions/010110561337.pdf

Ninth Circuit: Willian Rauda v. David Jennings

 

Statute proibits Article III challenges to the removal of a foreign citizen even where that removal happens in advance of statutorily guaranteed motion to reopen the case, since that remedy can be pursued abroad; this is true even where there is a showing of risk to the petitioner from removal.

Habeas jurisdiciton is similarly foreclosed, as petitioner is not seeking relief from executive detention, and as an alien in the process of being removed, has no proceedural rights other than those guaranteed by statute.

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/08/13/21-16062.pdf

Eight Circuit: Alvin Jackson v. Dexter Payne

 When assessing petitioner's mental capability, lack of detail on childhood tests is insufficient to establish that the childhood tests should not be relied upo, with the appropriate fixed margin of error.

Where the low end of the IQ scores is within the defined range, consideration of the second factor is the test is compulsory; a borderline test number can't be offset by other factors.

Court did not clearly err in considering childhood data, as petitioner has been incarcerated for most of his adult life.  Adaptive strengths, particularly within the controlled environent of prison, are not necessarily relevant to the consideration of adaptive deficits.

Supreme Court precedeent prohibits capital punishment where the intellectual disability exists at time of execution.

DISSENT

Adaptive strengths developed in prison are relevant to the inquiry.  Data insufficient to carry the petitioner's burden of proving disability; court shifted burden sub silentio.  State statute also has a presumption against petitioner, requiring him to prove unconstitutionality.

http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/21/08/201830P.pdf

Eleventh Circuit: Travis D. Turner v. Secretary, Department of Corrections, et al.

Habeas petitioner filing after the statutory cutoff on a form filing where the untimeliness was facially apparent had an opportunity to challenge the propriety of the court's taking judicial notice of the dates on the state's docket for their convictions by having leave to reopen at the district court level to argue error, equitable tolling, or actual innocence.  Court did not abuse its discretion in initially dismissing the petition as untimely without a reply brief or magistrate's review.

 

Travis D. Turner v. Secretary, Department of Corrections, et al.

Seventh Circuit: Cedric Cal v. Jason Garnett

 

Claim of actual innocence after a witness recantation that resulted in a perjury conviction for the witness was not adjudicated by state courts unreasonably.  Since a thorough review of the facts and the state record establish that no relief is warranted, the question of whether a freestanding claim of actual innocence is cognizable in non-capital federal Habeas proceedings need not be answered.

Cedric Cal v. Jason Garnett

Seventh Circuit: Jeffery Bridges v. USA

 

The statute is not a valid sentencing predicate, since it encompasses threats to property, and both the common law crime and the predicate option of extortion require threats against the person.

Since counsel had an obligation during plea negotiations to assess the potential sentence and communicate the potential sentence to the deft, impending challenges to sentencing practices, even if not generally being made at the time, can be sufficiently foreshadowed to require a hearing for a later Habeas petition for ineffective assistance.

Showing of prejudice not required, since the calculated sentence range serves as a lodestar for its subsequent modification.

Jeffery Bridges v.  USA

Fourth Circuit: US v. Daniel Harris

 

Physical presence in the courtroom is sufficient to give a criminal court jurisdiction over a deft.

Habeas grounds not raised at trial or on direct appeal and then raised for the first time on a collateral challenge are subject to de novo review on matters of law if the government doesn't argue the procedural default at the District Court.

If the conduct relative to the statute's focus, the object of the statute's solicitude, occurred in the US, it is a permissible domestic application of the statute, even if related conduct occurred abroad.  Since the protected victim was in the US while being coerced into the activity by means of the Internet, the present case is a permissible domestic application of the statute, even though the deft was abroad.

US v. Daniel Harris

First Circuit: In Re: Da Graca

 

In a Habeas class action seeking relief for immigration detainees in the current pandemic, supervisory Mandamus doesn't run because the lower court has not palpably erred; it has reduced the detainee population significantly.  Advisory Mandamus doesn't run, since the determination of pandemic severity is a factual question, not a legal question, and since the population has been lowered, the balance between extraordinary circumstances and likely success doesn't need to be corrected.

 In Re: Da Graca

Seventh Circuit: Ademus Saechao v. Cheryl Eplett

 

Federal collateral review can look past individual state court opinion to determine if the state judicial proceedings were consistent with the federal standard.

Judge's disqualification of criminal counsel unknowingly appointed to defend another defendant charged for the same occurrence, given deft's refusal to waive conflicts was a reasonable application of the Supreme Court's caselaw requiring a serious risk of conflict.  The subsequent appearance of the other defendant on the trial's witness list was independently sufficient, regardless of the probability that the witness would actually be called.

Ademus Saechao v. Cheryl Eplett

Ninth Circuit: Walden v. Shinn

 

As the state supreme court, in affirming a denial of severance on direct review, held in the alternative that the evidence of the crimes would be cross-admissible, and this ground wan't challenged on grounds of federal law during state post-conviction proceedings, the omission of the challenge from the federal Habeas petition to the District Court waived the claim.

State court determinations that post-identification police disclosures to witnesses at photo lineup that they had arrested the suspect was not contrary to clear federal law on the question.

State court reasonably declined to infer improper suggestion when photo lineup witness identified one candidate, and the police then momentarily turned off the recording device before the witness identified the defendant.

Since the state's highest court conducted an independent review of mitigation, a federal Habeas claim against the state trial court's holding of insufficient nexus needed to identify the constitutional error in the higher court's analysis.

District court properly denied amendment of federal Habeas ineffective assistance claims subsequent to independent exhaustion in state post-conviction review after federal Habeas had commenced, since the claims did not relate to the same transactions and occurrences; no plain error in the denial of equitable tolling.

State court's determination that admission of crime scene photos was not unduly prejudicial was not an unreasonable application of federal law, since contemporaneous circuit precedent held that there was no circumstance in which admission of irrelevant or prejudicial evidence could justify the writ.  Offered stipulation was not sufficient, since nothing in the Due Process Clause holds that the government can't introduce relevant evidence on an uncontested point. 

Walden v. Shinn

Seventh Circuit: John Mandacina v. Frederick Entzel

 

The tendency of undisclosed potential impeachment evidence to come into view years afterward isn't a structural flaw in statutory Habeas sufficient to justify an application under the traditional form; the statutory form clock restarts from the discovery of the evidence, and second or successive petitions merely limit the petitioner to a single claim.

Although there is not a one-year limit on the older statutory form of Habeas, in such a case, equitable principles restrict abuse of the Writ.

John Mandacina v.  Frederick Entzel

Seventh Circuit: Tyrus Coleman v. Ron Neal

 

As acquittals are to be read for the least that they establish, not the most, the retrial on an attempted murder charge after an acquittal from a murder charge as to the second victim does not offend Double Jeopardy; logically there might have been reasons for the jury's decision other than the theory offered by the defendant.

In considering an Ineffective Assistance claim, it is the full course of representation that matters; the lack of impeachment on a specific point in the second trial was insufficient to, on its own, justify reversal.

Tyrus Coleman v. Ron Neal

Fourth Circuit: US v. James Pressley

Deft's unmirandized statements were made in an apparent situation that, if taken as true, would have been considered sufficiently custodial.  Absent any evidence in the record of counsel's strategic considerations in not attempting to suppress the confession, an evidentiary hearing is warranted for the collateral challenge, especially since the deft was, as a matter of law, prejudiced by the admission.

US v. James Pressley

Seventh Circuit: Jesus Ruiz v. USA

 

Statutory Habeas is not available to challenge convictions for which a discrete sentence was imposed when that sentence runs consecutively with multiple terms of life imprisonment that are set to run concurrently and that would not change absent some extraordinary and unexpected change in the law, as the challenged conviction would be harmless error.

Jesus Ruiz v. USA