Montanez v. Mitchell

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-1298
HECTOR MONTANEZ,
Petitioner, Appellant,
v.
LISA A. MITCHELL, Superintendent, and
MARTHA COAKLEY, Attorney General,
Respondents, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. F. Dennis Saylor IV, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Selya, Circuit Judge,
Souter,* Associate Justice,
and Lipez, Circuit Judge.
Karen Elizabeth Morth for appellant.
Thomas E. Bocian, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Martha
Coakley, Attorney General of Massachusetts, was on brief, for
appellees.
April 8, 2015
*
Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
SOUTER, Associate Justice. Hector Montanez appeals the
district court's denial of federal habeas relief from Massachusetts
convictions for unarmed burglary in the nighttime and possession of
"burglarious" instruments. He claims that the trial court's
limitation of his cross-examination of the victim violated his
Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses, and that the
prosecution's belated production of the victim's 911 call record
(supplied only after the motion for a new trial) infringed his
Fifth Amendment right to the disclosure of favorable evidence in
the state's hands, as recognized in Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83(1963), and its progeny. On de novo review, we affirm.
Montanez's convictions turned on the testimony of Nick
Nichols, the victim and sole eyewitness. After going to bed one
night, Nichols heard a noise in his house, which led him to grab an
unlicensed handgun and confront an intruder, who fled. Nichols
followed and fired in the fleeing burglar's general vicinity, to no
avail. He then called 911 and described the culprit's height,
facial hair, and jacket. Relying on this description, the police
picked up Montanez, whom Nichols identified as the intruder in a
"show up" later that night, and again at trial. A jury convicted
Montanez on both counts, and the Massachusetts Appeals Court
affirmed the convictions as well as a post-conviction court's
denial of a motion for new trial. Commonwealth v. Montanez, 958
N.E.2d 535 (Mass. 2011). After the Supreme Judicial Court denied
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review, 961 N.E.2d 590 (Mass. 2012), Montanez filed this
unsuccessful federal habeas petition, as to which the district
court granted a certificate of appealability (COA) on the two
issues just mentioned.
I.
The Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause claim arises from the
trial court's refusal to allow Montanez to cross-examine Nichols as
to bias, which Montanez attacks as legal error, not as a product of
erroneous fact-finding. According to Montanez, Nichols would have
been conscious of a risk of being charged with possessing and
firing an unregistered firearm if he failed to support the police's
choice to charge Montanez with the crime. The ensuing bias is said
to have induced Nichols to identify Montanez (incorrectly,
according to Montanez) as the burglar.
Because the Massachusetts Appeals Court considered this claim
and rejected it, see Montanez, 958 N.E.2d at 535 n.3 (observing
that the jury heard evidence on Nichols's alleged bias and defense
counsel argued it to the jury), the Antiterrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) bars habeas relief for legal
error unless the state court's adjudication of the claim "was
contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly
established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the
United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). In the absence of a flat-
out mistake (a "contrary to" violation), Montanez must demonstrate
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"that the state court's ruling on the claim . . . was so lacking in
justification that there was an error well understood and
comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded
disagreement." Harrington v. Richter, 131 S. Ct. 770, 787-88
(2011).
This highly deferential standard of review, see id. at 788,
defeats his claim. While the trial judge limited cross-examination
of Nichols about his unlicensed gun, the court did allow testimony
from the police witnesses on this point and the defense freely
argued the bias theory to the jury at closing. These facts
distinguish this case from the clearly established Supreme Court
precedent on which Montanez relies, Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475
U.S. 673, 679 (1986) (holding it a Sixth Amendment violation to cut
off all inquiry into the alleged bias of a key witness). Given a
difference this great, we are not persuaded that no fairminded
jurist could have rejected Montanez's Sixth Amendment claim. On
the contrary, in light of the police testimony and closing
argument, a fairminded state judge could very well conclude that
the limitation on cross-examining Nichols did not amount to a Sixth
Amendment violation because the jury would not "have received a
significantly different impression of [Nichols's] credibility had
[Montanez's] counsel been permitted to pursue his proposed line of
cross-examination." Id. at 680.
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II.
Montanez's second claim, that the dilatory production of the
911 recording violated Brady, centers on the credibility of
Nichols's description of the burglar at trial, which was at odds
with some details in his 911 description. On the phone, Nichols
called the intruder short, whereas Montanez was of medium height;
he said the man had a mustache, which Montanez lacked; and he noted
the burglar was wearing a dark, bulky jacket but said nothing about
a fur collar such as the one on the jacket Montanez wore. At
trial, however, Nichols testified that the burglar's height was
medium, there was no mustache, and the collar was unforgettable.
Montanez contends that a timely disclosure of the 911 record would
have supported his argument that Nichols tailored his trial
identification of the culprit to fit Montanez's appearance at the
"show up," and would have lent plausibility to the defense theory
of mistaken identification.
Much of the parties' briefing is devoted to whether AEDPA's
deferential standard of review is applicable here, but we need not
delve into this issue because we hold that even a de novo review
would conclude that there was no Brady violation. The
prosecution's failure to produce the 911 record violates Brady only
if the suppressed evidence is material, in the sense that "a
reasonable probability exists that the result of the trial would
have been different if the suppressed documents had been disclosed
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to the defense. A reasonable probability exists if the
Government's evidentiary suppression undermines confidence in the
verdict." Conley v. United States, 415 F.3d 183, 188 (1st Cir.
2005) (citations omitted).
By that standard, the recording and any transcript of it are
patently immaterial. The inconsistencies between Nichols's 911
description and his trial testimony about the culprit's facial hair
and jacket were placed before the jury1 through the testimony of
the responding police officers about Nichols's initial description
of the burglar and the official police report, and defense counsel
cross-examined Nichols on the variations. There is virtually no
chance that disclosure of the 911 recording would have led to
altering the jury's assessment of Nichols's testimony, and no
reason to consider the verdict questionable to any degree. Indeed,
although pressed at oral argument, Montanez's counsel could not
identify any salient difference between the description that
Nichols provided on the 911 tape and the police officers' testimony
about what he had said. See United States v. Paladin, 748 F.3d
438, 446 (1st Cir. 2014) ("Suppressed evidence that is cumulative
of evidence presented at trial is immaterial."). In sum, the
prosecution's failure to disclose the content of the 911 recording
1
The only inconsistency not presented to the jury was that of
height. Nichols described the culprit as short on the 911 call,
but the officers testified that his initial description of the
burglar was of medium height. This inconsistency on its own,
however, is minor to the point of insignificance.
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does not undermine confidence in the jury's verdict, and there was
no Brady violation.2
III.
One final issue merits only brief mention. Montanez also
seeks review of the district court's denial of an evidentiary
hearing on his Brady claim. The district court, though, did not
issue a COA on this point, nor did Montanez seek one from us. The
Commonwealth argues the necessity for a COA, which Montanez
disputes. But we have no need to resolve the question of whether
a COA is explicitly required to appeal the denial of an evidentiary
hearing on a substantive claim for which a COA was granted. See
Gonzalez v. Thaler, 132 S. Ct. 641, 649-51 (2012) (holding that a
defective COA is a nonjurisdictional error); see also United States
v. Howard, 381 F.3d 873, 877 n.3 (9th Cir. 2004) (assuming that a
COA granted on the merits of a claim encompasses the denial of an
evidentiary hearing related to the same claim). Rather, we
pretermit that issue for the reason already stated: even assuming
an adequate COA, we would find that Montanez deserved no
evidentiary hearing on a Brady claim so empty as to lack merit as
2
We also reject as far too speculative Montanez's suggestion
that the 911 tape would have assisted his defense by pointing to
two other individuals in the area whom the police might have
contacted on the night of the crime. See United States v. Hansen,
434 F.3d 92, 102 (1st Cir. 2006) ("It is not enough for [the
defendant] to show the mere possibility that an item of undisclosed
information might have helped his defense, or might have affected
the outcome of the trial.").
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a matter of law. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e); see also Teti v. Bender,
507 F.3d 50, 62-63 (1st Cir. 2007); Forsyth v. Spencer, 595 F.3d
81, 85 (1st Cir. 2010).
Affirmed.
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