Ricardo Crews v. Harold Clarke , 457 F. App'x 277 ( 2011 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 10-6529
RICARDO ANTONIO CREWS,
Petitioner - Appellant,
v.
HAROLD W. CLARKE, Director for the Virginia Dept. of
Corrections,
Respondent - Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western
District of Virginia, at Roanoke. James C. Turk, Senior
District Judge. (7:09-cv-00115-jct-mfu)
Submitted: October 21, 2011 Decided: December 7, 2011
Before NIEMEYER and GREGORY, Circuit Judges, and John A. GIBNEY,
Jr., United States District Judge for the Eastern District of
Virginia, sitting by designation.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Neal L. Walters, Daniel Gocek, Third Year Law Student,
Phillip Brown, Third Year Law Student, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
SCHOOL OF LAW, Appellate Litigation Clinic, Charlottesville,
Virginia, for Appellant. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II, Attorney
General, Matthew P. Dullaghan, Senior Assistant Attorney
General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Richmond, Virginia, for
Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
On June 1, 2005, Ricardo Antonio Crews was found guilty of
abduction with intent to defile; statutory burglary with intent
to commit murder, rape, or robbery while armed with a deadly
weapon; attempted robbery; rape; and three counts of use of a
firearm in the commission of a felony. The court sentenced
Crews to 601 months’ imprisonment.
Crews timely appealed, but the state appellate court denied
the appeal, relying on Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51(1988). Crews’s petition to the Virginia Supreme Court was
denied. J.A. 166.
Crews’s state petitions for a writ of habeas corpus were
denied. J.A. 167, 194. Crews then filed timely a 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254 (2006) petition in the District Court for the Western
District of Virginia alleging the state court violated his due
process rights by denying his motion to suppress DNA evidence
that had been destroyed by the police prior to trial, that the
state failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and
that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance. The
court granted the state’s motion to dismiss, again relying on
Youngblood, finding that the state court’s reliance on the same
was not contrary to or an unreasonable application of law. J.A.
202.
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In its dismissal, the district court noted differences
between the present case and Youngblood and granted a
certificate of appealability. J.A. 239. Crews timely filed his
appeal. J.A. 242.
This Court reviews de novo a district court’s denial of
§ 2254 relief. Conaway v. Polk, 453 F.3d 567, 581 (4th Cir.
2006). “[O]nce a certificate of appealability has issued, [this
Court] may only grant habeas corpus relief if [the Court]
find[s] that the state court’s decision was ‘contrary to, or
involved an unreasonable application of clearly established
Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United
States.’” Allen v. Lee, 366 F.3d 319, 323 (4th Cir. 2004) (en
banc) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) (2006); Williams v.
Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412-13 (2000)).
A decision is “contrary to” clearly established federal law
if it either applies a legal rule that contradicts prior Supreme
Court holdings or reaches a conclusion different from that of
the Supreme Court “on a set of materially indistinguishable
facts.” Buckner v. Polk, 453 F.3d 195, 198 (4th Cir. 2006)
(quoting Williams, 529 U.S. at 412-13). The “unreasonable
application” clause of § 2254(d)(1) applies if the “decision
correctly identifies the governing legal rule but applies it
unreasonably to the facts of a particular prisoner’s case, or is
unreasonable in refusing to extend the governing legal principle
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to a context in which the principle should have controlled.”
Conaway, 453 F.3d at 581-82 (internal quotation marks and
citations omitted). “[A] federal habeas court may not issue the
writ simply because that court concludes in its independent
judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly
established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Rather,
that application must also be unreasonable.” Williams, 529 U.S.
at 411.
We have reviewed the record and cannot say that the state
court unreasonably applied the rule from Youngblood.
Accordingly, we affirm.
Crews also argued on appeal that he did not receive
effective assistance of counsel. He argues that this
ineffective assistance of counsel led him to not raise the claim
in state court that there was insufficient evidence for a
reasonable factfinder to convict him. We assume without
deciding that the district court’s certificate of appealability
covered this claim. Even assuming deficient performance of
counsel, we cannot say that under the “doubly deferential”
Strickland standard in the § 2254 context, Cullen v. Pinholster,
131 S. Ct. 1388, 1403 (2011) (quoting Knowles v. Mirzayance, 129
S. Ct. 1411, 1420 (2009)), that Crews has met his burden that he
was prejudiced by any such deficiency. We therefore affirm the
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district court’s rejection of Crews’s ineffective assistance of
counsel claim.
We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions are adequately presented in the materials before the
court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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