Housen v. Gelb

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 13-1642
CORINTHIAN C. HOUSEN, JR.,
Petitioner, Appellant,
v.
BRUCE GELB, SUPERINTENDENT,
Respondent, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. F. Dennis Saylor, IV, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Souter,* Associate Justice,
and Selya, Circuit Judge.
Stewart T. Graham, Jr., with whom Graham & Graham was on
brief, for appellant.
Todd M. Blume, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Bureau,
with whom Martha Coakley, Attorney General, was on brief, for
appellee.
February 24, 2014
*
Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the Supreme
Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
SELYA, Circuit Judge. This habeas appeal, brought by a
state prisoner against a Massachusetts correctional official for
relief from a conviction and life sentence for first-degree murder,
is governed by the provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254. In pertinent part,
the AEDPA instructs that a writ of habeas corpus may issue upon a
showing 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." Id. § 2254(d)(1). This provision lies at the epicenter
of the petitioner's appeal.
The petitioner's first claim of error involves what is
unarguably a clearly established constitutional rule: when
evaluating a claim of evidentiary insufficiency, "the relevant
question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most
favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have
found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable
doubt." Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979). The
petitioner asserts that, in his case, the state court recognized
this rule but applied it unreasonably.
The second claim of error involves an allegation of
prosecutorial inconsistency. At the petitioner's state-court
trial, the Commonwealth argued that he had shot and killed the
victim. At an earlier state-court trial, however, the Commonwealth
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argued that the defendant in that case (the petitioner's
accomplice) had shot and killed the victim. The petitioner asserts
that, under clearly established law, these inconsistent approaches
rendered his trial fundamentally unfair and deprived him of his
constitutional right to due process.
After careful consideration of this asseverational array
against the backdrop of an amplitudinous record, we affirm the
district court's denial of habeas relief.
I. BACKGROUND
We touch lightly upon the factual findings of the state
court, supplementing those findings when necessary with consistent
record evidence. See Tash v. Roden, 626 F.3d 15, 16 (1st Cir.
2010). The reader who hungers for more exegetic detail should
consult the underlying opinion of the Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court (SJC). See Commonwealth v. Housen (Housen I), 940
N.E.2d 437, 440-42 (Mass. 2011). "Because this appeal involves a
challenge to evidentiary sufficiency, we rehearse the facts in the
light most compatible with the jury's verdict . . . ." Leftwich v.
Maloney, 532 F.3d 20, 21 (1st Cir. 2008).
Near midnight on April 18, 2001, a Toyota Camry stopped
in front of an apartment house in Brockton, Massachusetts. Three
men got out of the car. Two of them entered the building while the
third pressed the front buzzer. The third man then entered the
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lobby, but the record is unclear as to whether he proceeded
further.
Fitzroy Hecker and his girlfriend, Kerry Murphy, shared
an apartment on the third floor of the building. Hecker sold
marijuana from the apartment. Murphy was in the bedroom when she
heard a voice (later identified as belonging to Damon Cannon)
saying "I don't know, an ounce." She then heard someone with a
deeper voice say either "[r]un him" or "[r]un it." According to
evidence adduced at trial, these phrases indicated that the men
were robbing Hecker.
Murphy soon heard three gunshots in rapid succession and,
after a brief pause, a fourth shot. She went to the living room
and saw a man sprinting into the common hallway while Cannon, with
a look of shock on his face, stood still. After noticing Murphy,
Cannon fled. He did not appear to be armed.
Hecker, who had been shot twice in the neck and once in
the wrist, was bleeding profusely. His gun lay on the floor near
his left hand.
A third-floor neighbor heard the gunshots and then heard
two people running down the stairs, saying "[l]et's go, let's go."
He next heard "a car screeching off." A second-floor tenant
likewise heard two people running down the stairs immediately after
hearing the gunshots.
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Although first responders arrived promptly, their efforts
failed to save Hecker. Uncontradicted medical evidence showed that
his death was caused by gunshots to the neck, fired at close range.
Other evidence (including a DNA match) placed petitioner-
appellant Corinthian Housen in the room and revealed that he had
sustained a gunshot wound to his left hand. Several hours after
the incident, the petitioner sought treatment at an emergency room.
He lied both about his identity and about the origin of his
injuries.
On January 10, 2003, a state grand jury indicted the
petitioner on charges of, inter alia, murder and attempted armed
robbery. The case was tried to a jury in Plymouth Superior Court.
The Commonwealth argued that the petitioner and Cannon attempted to
rob Hecker and that, when the robbery attempt soured, the
petitioner shot Hecker while Cannon stood frozen in time.
Testifying in his own defense, the petitioner admitted
that he went with Cannon and a third man, Leroy Drane, to purchase
marijuana from the victim. The petitioner asserted that Hecker was
standing in front of him when Hecker's facial expression changed
and he (Hecker) reached into the couch and retrieved a gun. At
that point, the petitioner turned to flee but Cannon, who was
standing behind him, began firing at Hecker. One of the bullets
struck the petitioner's hand, and he ran from the apartment.
Cannon and Drane followed.
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Drane did not testify. Although the petitioner placed
Drane in the room at the time of the murder, the neighbors'
accounts indicated that only two men, not three, fled from the
apartment after the shooting.
The trial justice instructed the jurors that they could
find the petitioner guilty of first-degree murder either as a
principal or as a joint venturer under a felony murder theory. The
jurors ultimately found the petitioner guilty of first-degree
murder, but they did so through a general verdict without
specifying whether the finding of guilt was as a principal or as a
joint venturer.1
Following the imposition of a life sentence and other
proceedings not relevant here, the SJC took up the petitioner's
appeal. He advanced several claims of error, including a claim of
evidentiary insufficiency and a due process claim based on the
Commonwealth's advocacy, albeit in different trials, of
inconsistent theories about the identity of the shooter. The SJC
turned a deaf ear to the petitioner's importunings. See Housen I,
940 N.E.2d at 447.
The petitioner repaired to the federal district court and
sought habeas relief. The district court denied the petition, see
1
The jury simultaneously convicted the petitioner on the
charge of attempted armed robbery. That conviction has not been
challenged in this habeas proceeding, and we do not refer to it
further.
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Housen v. Gelb (Housen II), No. 12-10623, 2013 WL 1694799, at *5
(D. Mass. Apr. 17, 2013), but granted a certificate of
appealability on the evidentiary sufficiency and due process
issues, see 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c).
II. ANALYSIS
In this instance, the district court did not conduct an
evidentiary hearing. Consequently, we review de novo its denial of
habeas relief. See Lynch v. Ficco, 438 F.3d 35, 44 (1st Cir.
2006). In conducting this appraisal, we examine the petitioner's
two claims of error sequentially.2
A. Sufficiency of the Evidence.
The Supreme Court's opinion in Jackson, 443 U.S. at 319,
supplies what is unarguably the clearly established federal law
anent the petitioner's first claim of error. The SJC implicitly
employed this standard; it cited one of its own prior opinions,
which had adopted the holding in Jackson. See Housen I, 940 N.E.2d
at 442 (citing Commonwealth v. Latimore, 393 N.E.2d 370, 374-75
(Mass. 1979)). Thus, "we can securely reason that in scouring the
record for Latimore error and finding none the SJC effectively
2
There is a considerable cacophony in the briefs about
whether the district court improperly applied 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(e)(1) to the petitioner's evidentiary insufficiency claim.
See Housen II, 2013 WL 1694799, at *4-5. This is a tempest in a
teapot and we need not resolve it. The determination of
evidentiary insufficiency presents a quintessentially legal
question, and our review of the district court's judgment is de
novo. See Leftwich, 532 F.3d at 23. In conducting that review, we
rely upon our independent assessment of the state-court record.
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answered the federal constitutional question." Leftwich, 532 F.3d
at 24.
The petitioner does not dispute this point but, rather,
challenges the SJC's application of the Jackson standard. He
contends that the evidence was insufficient to sustain a conviction
on a theory of principal liability or, put another way, to show
that he shot Hecker.3
The petitioner's evidentiary sufficiency argument pivots
on his assertion that the evidence did not show that only two men,
rather than three, entered Hecker's apartment before the murder.
This is important, he says, because there was no direct evidence
that the petitioner pulled the trigger, and the Commonwealth's case
for principal liability depended in material part on two facts:
that only the petitioner and Cannon were with Hecker and that
3
It may be that we do not have to resolve this contention.
In Commonwealth v. Zanetti, 910 N.E.2d 869 (Mass. 2009), the SJC
departed from its prior precedents and held that where, as here, a
defendant is tried on theories of principal and joint venture
liability and the jury returns a general verdict, it would no
longer "examine the sufficiency of the evidence separately as to
principal and joint venture liability." Id. at 884. In the
petitioner's subsequent appeal, the SJC, citing Zanetti, stated
that it did not need to determine whether there was sufficient
evidence that the petitioner was the shooter; but it nonetheless
proceeded to decide that question and found the evidence adequate
to ground a finding of principal liability. See Housen I, 940
N.E.2d at 442.
Zanetti was decided some years after Hecker's murder and the
petitioner's trial, but before the SJC heard the petitioner's
direct appeal. Because the SJC's suggested application of Zanetti
may be retroactive and therefore may evoke due process concerns, we
think it best to meet the petitioner's sufficiency of the evidence
argument head-on.
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Cannon did not have a gun. If a third man (Drane) was present,
Cannon's lack of a weapon would have much less significance.
The petitioner's reading of the record is overly
optimistic. The record contains ample evidence to support an
inference that only the petitioner and Cannon were in the room with
Hecker at the time of the murder. Murphy heard only two voices in
the living room and, within a matter of seconds after hearing the
shots, saw only Cannon and one other man in the living room.
Although Murphy could not identify the second man, the petitioner's
blood was found in the room and, in any event, the petitioner
admitted that he was there. The conclusion that Cannon and the
petitioner were alone with Hecker is bolstered by the fact that the
neighbors heard only two voices and two sets of footsteps running
down the stairs. A rational trier of fact could easily conclude
from this evidence that only two men had visited the apartment —
and that those two men were Cannon and the petitioner.
Our holding that there was sufficient evidence to support
the inference that only two visitors were in the living room is
fatal to the petitioner's more general claim that the evidence was
insufficient to prove that he was the shooter. Murphy testified
that, immediately after the shooting, Cannon did not appear to have
a gun. The jury could reasonably infer from this evidence that
Cannon was not the shooter and, therefore, the petitioner must have
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fired the shots.4 Cf. Leftwich, 532 F.3d at 26 ("This lack of any
evidence pointing elsewhere bolstered the inference that it was the
petitioner who slew the [victim].").
In an effort to blunt the force of this reasoning, the
petitioner asserts that the SJC misstated the record when reviewing
the evidence. This assertion is fruitless: the facts that we have
described, virtually all of which are uncontradicted, demonstrate
the sufficiency of the evidence. The supposed misstatements do not
undermine that conclusion.
The petitioner makes a related argument. Pointing to the
uncertainty about how many people were in the apartment, he insists
that where "the evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the
verdict gives equal or nearly equal circumstantial support to a
theory of guilt and a theory of innocence of the crime charged,
this court must reverse the conviction." O'Laughlin v. O'Brien,
568 F.3d 287, 301 (1st Cir. 2009). This is true as far as it goes
— but it does not take the petitioner where he wants to go. While
the evidence may have permitted an inference that there were three
visitors in the apartment, it was not equally supportive of that
inference. Moreover, the petitioner's argument blithely overlooks
4
The petitioner castigates the SJC for what he deems to be an
overly speculative account of how the murder occurred. See
Petitioner's Br. at 26. We do not need to enter this debate. A
blow-by-blow account of the murder is not necessary to conclude
that there was sufficient evidence that the petitioner was the
shooter.
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the fact that we consider whether the evidence is in equipoise only
after we have drawn reasonable inferences in favor of the verdict.
See, e.g., Magraw v. Roden, ___ F.3d ___, ___ (1st Cir. 2014) [No.
13-1483, slip op. at 7]; Morgan v. Dickhaut, 677 F.3d 39, 53-54
(1st Cir.), cert. denied, 133 S. Ct. 449 (2012).
Let us be perfectly clear. Measuring the sufficiency of
the evidence in a circumstantial case is not an exact science. And
in this case, the conclusion that the petitioner was the shooter is
not ironclad. On review for evidentiary sufficiency, though, "a
habeas court may not freely reweigh competing inferences but must
accept those reasonable inferences that are most compatible with
the jury's verdict." Magraw, ___ F.3d at ___ [slip op. at 11].
In a last-ditch endeavor to turn the tables, the
petitioner directs our attention to the SJC's treatment of Cannon's
direct appeal. See Commonwealth v. Cannon, 869 N.E.2d 594 (Mass.
2007). There, the SJC found the evidence insufficient to warrant
a conclusion that Cannon was the shooter. See id. at 599. The
court rested this finding in part on the likelihood that three men
(other than Hecker) may have been in the apartment at the time of
the murder. See id. at 599-600.
The decision in Cannon is of limited utility here. The
petitioner and Cannon were tried separately, and the evidence
introduced in the two trials was not identical. The proof that
there were only two men running down the stairs after the shooting
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appears to have been stronger in the petitioner's trial. See id.at 598 & n.10. Perhaps more important, the petitioner did not
testify at Cannon's trial. At his own trial, however, he not only
testified but also identified Cannon as the shooter. In light of
that testimony, it strains credulity for him to argue, on this
record, that the jury's finding is infirm because of the
possibility that a third man might have wielded the weapon.
To say more about the Cannon opinion would be pointless.
The sufficiency of the evidence in any given case must be tested
against the record in that case. In performing that analysis, "the
minimum amount of evidence that the Due Process Clause requires
. . . is purely a matter of federal law." Coleman v. Johnson, 132
S. Ct. 2060, 2064 (2012) (per curiam). That law is exemplified by
Jackson and, reasonably applied, Jackson leads inexorably to the
conclusion that the evidence presented in the petitioner's state-
court trial was adequate to ground his conviction.
B. Prosecutorial Inconsistency.
The petitioner's second claim of error posits that the
Commonwealth's inconsistent positions as to who shot the victim and
the SJC's approval of the Commonwealth's tactics were "contrary to,
or an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law
as determined by the Supreme Court." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). The
petitioner asserts — and we agree — that, under clearly established
law, a criminal defendant has a due process right to a fair trial.
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See, e.g., Lisenba v. California, 314 U.S. 219, 236 (1941). The
Supreme Court has held that certain specific kinds of prosecutorial
misconduct may abridge this fair-trial right. See, e.g., Brady v.
Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963) (holding that the prosecution's
suppression of material evidence favorable to the accused,
following defendant's request, violates due process); Napue v.
Illinois, 360 U.S. 264, 272 (1959) (reversing when state used false
testimony to secure conviction). The petitioner invites us to
glean from these precedents a general principle that "a defendant's
due process right to a fair trial is violated when the prosecution
engages in conduct that deceives or misleads a court and jury, or
unfairly disadvantages the defendant in his defense." Petitioner's
Br. at 40. Reminding us that "a federal court may grant relief
when a state court has misapplied a governing legal principle to a
set of facts different from those of the case in which the
principle was announced," Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 520
(2003) (internal quotation marks omitted), he suggests that the
SJC's application of the fair-trial principle to the Commonwealth's
prosecutorial tactic was objectively unreasonable.5
5
The petitioner's brief is ambiguous as to whether his
argument is that the SJC's decision was "contrary to" or "an
unreasonable application of" federal law. We think it plain,
however, that the SJC's decision cannot be deemed contrary to
federal law. The SJC did not "appl[y] a rule that contradicts the
governing law set forth" by the Supreme Court. Williams v. Taylor,
529 U.S. 362, 405 (2000). Nor did it "confront[] a set of facts
that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of [the
Supreme] Court and nevertheless arrive[] at a result different from
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The district court dismissed this suggestion, holding
that the petitioner could not meet the "clearly established"
element of the section 2254(d)(1) test. See Housen II, 2013 WL
1694799, at *5. The court based its holding, in part, on the
Supreme Court's decision in Bradshaw v. Stumpf, 545 U.S. 175(2005), in which the Justices confronted a habeas petitioner's
remarkably similar "assertions of inconsistency relate[d] . . . to
the prosecutor's arguments about which of" two codefendants shot
the victim, id. at 187. There, the petitioner insisted that the
prosecution's argument to his sentencing panel was inconsistent
with its argument at his codefendant's trial and, therefore,
rendered his death sentence unconstitutional. See id. at 180-82.
In response, the Court found it "at least arguable" that the
prosecution's use of inconsistent theories was material to the
sentence imposed. Id. at 187. But because the import of the
alleged inconsistency was not clear, the Court reserved the hybrid
question of "whether the prosecutor's actions amounted to a due
process violation, or whether any such violation would have been
prejudicial." Id. Consequently, the Court remanded the case for
further consideration.6
[the Court's] precedent." Id. at 406.
6
On remand, the Sixth Circuit held, in a divided opinion,
that there was no due process violation. See Stumpf v. Robinson,
722 F.3d 739, 749 (6th Cir. 2013) (en banc).
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The district court concluded that Bradshaw "left open the
question of whether the prosecution's use of inconsistent theories
of responsibility for a crime may constitute a violation of due
process." Housen II, 2013 WL 1694799, at *5. This circumstance,
in the district court's view, foreclosed the petitioner's argument
that the applicable law was clearly established. See id.It is not transparently clear whether the Bradshaw Court
intended to leave open the precise question limned by the district
court. But we need not plunge into those murky waters. Consistent
with the de novo standard of review, we are not wed to the
reasoning of the court below but, rather, may affirm its decision
on any ground made manifest by the record. See Pike v. Guarino,
492 F.3d 61, 71 (1st Cir. 2007). We choose to exercise that
flexibility here.
We think that the simplest way to approach this claim of
error is by gauging the reasonableness of the SJC's application of
clearly established due process principles to the petitioner's
prosecutorial inconsistency claim. The SJC implicitly acknowledged
the viability of the petitioner's due process theory, see Housen I,
940 N.E.2d at 444 (reviewing and distinguishing cases addressing
the inconsistent prosecution issue); considered whether the theory
applied to the facts presented; and concluded that it did not, see
id.
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This multi-part determination was not unreasonable.
After all, the Supreme Court has never held that the prosecution of
different defendants in different trials on materially inconsistent
theories of guilt violates due process when, as in this case, state
law permits such a course of action. Here, moreover, two
additional considerations weigh heavily in favor of a finding of
reasonableness.
First, there is no indication that the prosecutorial
inconsistency of which the petitioner complains persisted through
the SJC's review of the petitioner's direct appeal. The SJC heard
that appeal after it had held in a separate case that there was
insufficient evidence to convict Cannon as the shooter, vacated
Cannon's conviction, and remanded for trial on a theory of joint
venture liability only. See Cannon, 869 N.E.2d at 605.
Accordingly, any potential inconsistency in result between the two
cases had been remedied by the time the SJC heard the petitioner's
appeal.
Second, we disagree with the petitioner that the
Commonwealth unfairly "manipulate[d] the evidence." Petitioner's
Br. at 43. To the exact contrary, the record is barren of any hint
of unfair manipulation. In this respect, the petitioner's case
stands in sharp contrast to cases such as Smith v. Groose, 205 F.3d
1045 (8th Cir. 2000), in which the court (applying pre-AEDPA
standards) ruled that the prosecution's "zeal to obtain multiple
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murder convictions on diametrically opposed testimony render[ed the
petitioner's] convictions infirm." Id. at 1052. Here — unlike in
Smith — the Commonwealth used mostly the same evidence in
prosecuting both Cannon and the petitioner. Thus, it did not make
use of "inherently factually contradictory theories." Id. Put
bluntly, the Commonwealth relied throughout on the same nucleus of
operative facts and merely argued for inconsistent inferences.
In upholding the SJC's determination, we stress that our
narrow focus is on the objective reasonableness of that
determination, given the factual record. This case does not
require us to decide broadly whether or in what circumstances a
state's prosecution of different individuals on inconsistent
theories of guilt may violate due process, and we express no
opinion on those questions.
III. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,
the judgment of the district court is
Affirmed.
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