Santana v. Cowen

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 19-1270
CÉSAR SANTANA,
Petitioner,
v.
BRAD COWEN, Superintendent, MCI Norfolk,
Respondent.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Howard, Chief Judge,
Selya and Thompson, Circuit Judges.
Elizabeth Caddick on brief for petitioner.
Maura Healey, Attorney General of Massachusetts, and Susanne
G. Reardon, Assistant Attorney General, on brief for respondent.
July 7, 2021
SELYA, Circuit Judge. This case, which pits a state
prisoner seeking federal habeas relief against the superintendent
of the state correctional institution in which he is confined,
turns on the narrow contours of federal habeas review and the
deference due to the state court's findings of fact. Staying
within those guardrails and reviewing the district court's denial
of the habeas petition de novo, we affirm.
The essential facts may be succinctly summarized. The
reader who thirsts for a more detailed description of the facts
should consult the opinion of the court below, see Santana v. Cowen
(Santana II), 361 F. Supp. 3d 115, 119-23 (D. Mass. 2019), and the
opinion of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC)
rejecting Santana's direct appeal, see Commonwealth v. Santana
(Santana I), 82 N.E.3d 986, 990-91 (Mass. 2017).
On August 25, 2004, Rafael Castro (Castro) and his
stepdaughter, Norma Cedeno, were attacked by four men upon their
return to Castro's apartment in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Castro
was killed by a gunshot wound to his head. During the following
week, petitioner-appellant César Santana (Santana), who was on
probation in connection with an unrelated offense, contacted his
probation officer and said that he was willing to disclose
information about a shooting in Lawrence in exchange for money.
The probation officer reported this contact to the Boston police.
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The record sheds no light on what response (if any) the call
elicited.
Seven months later, Santana — then incarcerated on
unrelated charges — again contacted his probation officer about
the shooting in Lawrence. Nothing happened. Eventually, however,
the authorities decided to question Santana about the shooting.
On March 4, 2005, a Massachusetts state trooper, Robert
LaBarge (LaBarge), interviewed Santana. LaBarge was accompanied
by a bilingual member of the Lawrence police force, Detective
Carlos Cueva (Cueva). Although Santana stated that he spoke and
understood English, Detective Cueva was meant to serve as a
translator, if needed, because Santana's primary language was
Spanish. Santana consented to the recording of the interview "as
long as it is not used in court."
Following a brief discussion of Santana's educational
level, English and Spanish language proficiency, and the like,
Trooper LaBarge, with Detective Cueva's assistance, gave Santana
Miranda warnings. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444
(1966). At Trooper LaBarge's request, Santana read each warning
out loud in Spanish and confirmed that he understood it. He then
signed a copy of the written warnings.
When Trooper LaBarge began questioning Santana about the
Lawrence shooting, Santana stated, early on, that he was "willing
to help" but "want[ed] to talk with [Trooper LaBarge] without the
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pressure of the tape recorder." Santana agreed to continue the
interview with the officers taking notes. When the session
concluded, though, Santana refused to sign the notes.
On December 12, 2008, an Essex County grand jury returned
an indictment charging Santana with first-degree murder, home
invasion, two counts of armed assault during a burglary, and two
counts of kidnapping while armed with a firearm. Santana thrice
moved to suppress the statements that he had made to Trooper
LaBarge, but all three motions were denied. Following an eight-
day trial, a jury found Santana guilty on all six counts, and the
presiding judge sentenced him to life imprisonment. On August 17,
2017, the SJC affirmed the denial of Santana's third motion to
suppress and affirmed his convictions and sentence. See Santana
I, 82 N.E.3d at 992-95, 1002.
Santana repaired to the federal district court, seeking
habeas relief. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He argued — as relevant
here — that the SJC not only unreasonably determined that he had
voluntarily made incriminating statements to Trooper LaBarge but
also unreasonably applied clearly established federal law in
finding those statements voluntary. He stressed his initial
insistence that his statements "not [be] used in court."
In a thoughtful rescript, the district court denied
Santana's habeas petition. See Santana II, 361 F. Supp. 3d at
131. It concluded that the SJC had not misapplied clearly
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established federal law and that the SJC's determination that any
promise of confidentiality had been wiped away by Santana's consent
to the Miranda protocol withstood review under the deferential
habeas standard. See id. This timely appeal followed.
We need not linger. We often have said that when a
district court has "supportably found the facts, applied the
appropriate legal standards, articulated [its] reasoning clearly,
and reached a correct result, a reviewing court ought not to write
at length merely to hear its own words resonate." deBenedictis v.
Brady-Zell (In re Brady-Zell), 756 F.3d 69, 71 (1st Cir. 2014);
accord De La Cruz-Candela v. JetBlue Airways Corp., 829 F. App'x
531, 532 (1st Cir. 2020); United States v. Wetmore, 812 F.3d 245,
248 (1st Cir. 2016); Moses v. Mele, 711 F.3d 213, 215-16 (1st Cir.
2013); Eaton v. Penn-Am. Ins. Co., 626 F.3d 113, 114 (1st Cir.
2010); Vargas-Ruiz v. Golden Arch Dev., Inc., 368 F.3d 1, 2 (1st
Cir. 2004); Seaco Ins. Co. v. Davis-Irish, 300 F.3d 84, 86 (1st
Cir. 2002); Ayala v. Union de Tronquistas de P.R., Local 901, 74
F.3d 344, 345 (1st Cir. 1996); Holders Cap. Corp. v. Cal. Union
Ins. Co. (In re San Juan Dupont Plaza Hotel Fire Litig.), 989 F.2d
36, 38 (1st Cir. 1993). So it is here. We add only three sets of
comments.
1. To begin, it is important to recognize that the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), see
Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214, provides the beacon by which
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we must steer, see Cronin v. Comm'r of Prob., 783 F.3d 47, 50 (1st
Cir. 2015). AEDPA only "permits federal courts to grant habeas
relief after a final state-court adjudication of a federal
constitutional claim if that adjudication can be shown to be
'contrary to,' or to have involved, 'an unreasonable application
of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme
Court of the United States' or in the alternative, to have been
'based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of
the evidence presented in the State court proceedings.'" Foxworth
v. St. Amand, 570 F.3d 414, 424 (1st Cir. 2009) (quoting 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(d)). A state-court "decision is contrary to clearly
established federal law either if it announces a rule of law that
directly contradicts existing Supreme Court precedent or if the
state court has reached a different result than the Supreme Court
on materially indistinguishable facts." Cronin, 783 F.3d at 50.
In conducting this tamisage, "the state court's factual findings
are presumed to be correct, and they can be overcome only by clear
and convincing evidence." Foxworth, 570 F.3d at 424 (citing 28
U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1)). Here, the district court faithfully applied
these standards to conclude that Santana was not entitled to habeas
relief.
2. In this court — as in the court below — Santana
proffers a trio of factual determinations that he asserts were
unreasonably made by the SJC. We review the district court's
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evaluation of those proffers de novo, see id. at 425, and like
that court, we conclude that each determination is amply supported
by the record.
a. Santana asserts that the SJC unreasonably determined
that he could "speak and understand a fair amount of English" and
that he "fully understood what was going on" in the interview with
Trooper LaBarge. Santana I, 82 N.E.3d at 992-93. But the recorded
portion of the interview clearly demonstrated that Santana did
understand some English, and the SJC's determination that Santana
"understood what was going on" was supported by facts such as his
seeking out of the police, his receipt of Miranda warnings in his
native language, his avowed understanding of those warnings, and
his knowledge that Trooper LaBarge planned to report the
information Santana provided to the prosecutor.1 See id. at 994-
95.
1Santana makes much of his claim that "[t]he SJC ignored the
expert evidence that [Santana] spoke at a beginner's level of
English and was only capable of conversing in English on a
superficial level, such as a standard greeting." But even though
the SJC did not specifically mention this expert testimony, we
cannot conclude that the SJC — which took pains to note that it
had "conducted a complete review of the record," Santana I, 82
N.E.3d at 1002 — did not consider it. After all, the SJC, relying
heavily on the motion judge's decision (issued three days after
presiding over a suppression hearing at which Santana's expert
testified), drew the conclusion that Santana could speak and
understand a "fair amount of English." On this record, it seems
quite likely that the SJC simply found the evidence unpersuasive.
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b. Santana asserts that the SJC unreasonably determined
that he understood that his statements to Trooper LaBarge could be
used against him because he asked the police to stop the recording.
See id. at 995. The SJC, however, put the shoe on the other foot:
it reasonably concluded that Santana's request was an additional
circumstance supporting its determination that Santana knew that
his statements could be used against him. See id. Where, as here,
the record permits two plausible but competing interpretations of
the significance of a fact, the state court's choice between those
competing interpretations cannot be set aside on habeas review.
See Torres v. Dennehy, 615 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2010); Desrosier v.
Bissonnette, 502 F.3d 38, 43 (1st Cir. 2007).
c. Santana asserts that the SJC unreasonably determined
that he spoke with the officers based upon self-interest and fear
of another. See Santana I, 82 N.E.3d at 995. The SJC's
determination, though, was solidly supported by the transcript of
the interview, in which Santana stated, "I'm not worried for
telling [Trooper LaBarge] and the police what I got to say,
understand?, the thing is . . . that young nineteen-year-old guy,
that little guy has about four deaths under his belt. That young
guy has me . . . under a lot of pressure and terrified." Santana
II, 361 F. Supp. 3d at 123.
3. Santana also claims that "the SJC's decision was
contrary to and involved an unreasonable application of clearly
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established federal law." That claim lacks force. As the district
court correctly concluded, the SJC's determination was in
conformity with clearly established federal law pertaining to
voluntariness. See id. at 131. "In Miranda, the Supreme Court
determined that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-
incrimination requires law enforcement personnel to warn a person
subjected to custodial interrogation of certain constitutional
rights." Id. at 129 (citing Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444). "The
individual undergoing interrogation may elect to waive his rights,
but such waiver must be 'made voluntarily, knowingly, and
intelligently.'" Id. at 129-30 (quoting Miranda, 384 U.S. at 444).
The district court recognized that the waiver "must be 'the product
of free and deliberate choice'" to be "voluntary." Id. at 130
(quoting Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 421 (1986)). It similarly
recognized that to assess voluntariness, "courts may consider
factors such as the defendant's age, education level,
intelligence, whether they were informed of their constitutional
rights, detention duration, whether questioning was lengthy and
repetitious, and any use of corporal punishment." Id. (citing
Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 226 (1973)). The district
court then supportably concluded that the SJC appreciated this
clearly established federal law and applied it in a reasonable
way. No more was exigible.
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We need go no further. Santana has failed to carry his
burden of showing, by clear and convincing evidence, that the SJC's
factfinding was unreasonable. Similarly, he has failed to carry
his burden of showing that the SJC either misapplied or failed to
follow clearly established federal law. Hence, we summarily affirm
the district court's denial of habeas relief for substantially the
reasons elucidated in the district court's thoughtful rescript.
Affirmed. See 1st Cir. R. 27.0(c).
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