Cramer v. State of Utah

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
July 29, 2011
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
TENTH CIRCUIT
ALBERT CRAMER,
Petitioner - Appellant,
v. No. 11-4036
(D.C. No. 2:07-CV-00681-DAK)
STATE OF UTAH, (D. Utah)
Respondent - Appellee.
ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY
Before KELLY, HARTZ, and HOLMES, Circuit Judges.
Albert Cramer, appearing pro se, requests a certificate of appealability
(COA) to appeal the district court’s denial of his application for relief under
28 U.S.C. § 2254. See 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1)(A) (requiring COA to appeal
denial of § 2254 application). The court denied the application on the ground that
the claims were procedurally defaulted because Mr. Cramer had failed to exhaust
his state remedies and his claims would now be procedurally barred if pursued in
state court. No reasonable jurist could debate the correctness of the district
court’s decision. Therefore, we deny Mr. Cramer’s request for a COA and
dismiss this appeal.
I. BACKGROUND
Mr. Cramer was convicted on September 22, 1999, on two counts of
aggravated sexual abuse of a child. On January 25, 2002, the Utah Supreme
Court affirmed his conviction on appeal. See State v. Cramer, 44 P.3d 690, 692
(Utah 2002) (Cramer I). That August he filed a petition for postconviction relief
in Utah state district court; it was denied in July 2005. The Utah Court of
Appeals affirmed the denial in December 2006, see Cramer v. State, 153 P.3d
782, 784 (Utah Ct. App. 2006) (Cramer II); and the Utah Supreme Court denied
his petition for certiorari in April 2007, see Cramer v. State, 168 P.3d 339 (Utah
2007) (unpublished table decision) (Cramer III).
On October 19, 2007, Mr. Cramer’s § 2254 application was filed in the
United State District Court for the District of Utah. The application claimed that
(1) he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his trial counsel failed to
call witnesses requested by Mr. Cramer, did not inform him of his right to testify
on his own behalf, and failed to impeach the alleged victim’s testimony; (2) he
was denied access to the alleged victim’s records; and (3) the Utah State Division
of Child and Family Services denied him due process by delaying its hearing on
child abuse. The district court ruled that Mr. Cramer had not exhausted any of
these claims by properly pursuing them, on direct appeal or in postconviction
proceedings, all the way to the Utah Supreme Court. The court noted that
Mr. Cramer had raised two similar claims in the Utah Supreme Court—(1) denial
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of his purported right to review (without prior vetting by the trial court in camera)
the alleged victim’s medical records, see Cramer I, 44 P.3d at 694–95, and (2)
denial of the right to be informed that he could testify on his own behalf, see
Cramer III, 168 P.3d at 339—but both claims were expressly based solely on the
Utah Constitution. And it pointed out that the one federal constitutional issue
raised in the § 2254 application that had been presented to the Utah Supreme
Court—the trial court’s alleged error in not disclosing to Mr. Cramer the material
medical records reviewed by the trial court in camera—was disposed of by the
state court on the procedural ground that Mr. Cramer had not included the
documents in the appellate record. See Cramer I, 44 P.3d at 696–97.
The district court then determined that the issues raised by Mr. Cramer in
his § 2254 application could no longer be reviewed in state court because they
could have been raised in his prior state-court proceedings. See Utah Code Ann.
§ 78B-9-106(1)(c), (d) (West 2010) (“A person is not eligible for relief under [the
Utah Post-Conviction Remedies Act] upon any ground that . . . could have been
but was not raised at trial or on appeal . . . or could have been, but was not, raised
in a previous request for post-conviction relief.”) And because Mr. Cramer had
established neither cause for the default nor a fundamental miscarriage of justice
based on actual innocense, it held that his claims were barred from review under
§ 2254. See McCraken v. Gibson, 268 F.3d 970, 976 (10th Cir. 2001) (claims
defaulted in state court on “an independent and adequate state procedural ground”
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are procedurally barred for purposes of federal habeas review unless the petitioner
“can demonstrate cause and prejudice or a fundamental miscarriage of justice.”
(internal quotation marks omitted)).
II. DISCUSSION
“A certificate of appealability may issue . . . only if the applicant has made
a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right.” 28 U.S.C.
§ 2253(c)(2); see Sellers v. Ward, 135 F.3d 1333, 1339 (the right allegedly
violated must be a federal, not a state, right). This standard requires “a
demonstration that . . . includes showing that reasonable jurists could debate
whether (or, for that matter, agree that) the petition should have been resolved in
a different manner or that the issues presented were adequate to deserve
encouragement to proceed further.” Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000)
(internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, an applicant must show that
the district court’s resolution of the constitutional claim was either “debatable or
wrong.” Id. Where the application was denied on procedural grounds, the
applicant faces a double hurdle. Not only must the applicant make a substantial
showing of the denial of a constitutional right, but he must also show “that jurists
of reason would find it debatable whether the district court was correct in its
procedural ruling.” Id. “Where a plain procedural bar is present and the district
court is correct to invoke it to dispose of the case, a reasonable jurist could not
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conclude either that the district court erred in dismissing the petition or that the
petitioner should be allowed to proceed further.” Id.In order to obtain federal habeas relief, a state prisoner must “exhaust[] the
remedies available in the courts of the State.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(A). “The
exhaustion requirement is satisfied if the issues have been properly presented to
the highest state court, either by direct review of the conviction or in a
postconviction attack.” Brown v. Shanks, 185 F.3d 1122, 1124 (10th Cir. 1999)
(internal quotation marks omitted); see Olson v. McKune, 9 F.3d 95, 95 (10th Cir.
1993) (“A state prisoner bringing a federal habeas corpus action bears the burden
of showing that he has exhausted available state remedies.” (brackets and internal
quotation marks omitted)). If an applicant fails to exhaust state remedies and
state courts “would now find the claims procedurally barred[,] the claims are
considered exhausted and procedurally defaulted for purposes of federal habeas
relief.” Thomas v. Gibson, 218 F.3d 1213, 1221 (10th Cir. 2000) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
Because Mr. Cramer has proceeded pro se, we construe his pleadings
liberally. See Straley v. Utah Bd. of Pardons, 582 F.3d 1208, 1210 n.1 (10th Cir.
2009). Mr. Cramer’s brief in this court recites four issues: (1) that the district
court erred by failing to address any of his constitutional claims on the merits; (2)
that his trial attorneys violated his right to have witnesses, including himself,
testify on his behalf; (3) that he received ineffective assistance of counsel when
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his trial attorneys failed to obtain and use records to impeach the alleged victim’s
testimony; and (4) that workers in the Utah Division of Child and Family Services
violated the law and his due-process rights. Nowhere, however, does he
challenge the grounds of the district court’s rulings on exhaustion and procedural
bar. Nor do we discern any error in these rulings. Even if we treat Mr. Cramer’s
assertions of innocence in his brief to us as a claim that his procedural default
should be excused because of his actual innocence, we could not grant him a
COA. Although actual innocence can overcome a procedural default, see Schlup
v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 321 (1995), the district court correctly observed that actual
innocence must be shown by newly available evidence and that Mr. Cramer’s
showing is wholly inadequate. See id. at 324 (petitioner must “support his
allegations of constitutional error with new reliable evidence—whether it be
exculpatory scientific evidence, trustworthy eyewitness accounts, or critical
physical evidence—that was not presented at trial”); id. at 327 (petitioner must
“show that it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have
convicted him in the light of the new evidence.”).
In short, no reasonable jurist could find it debatable whether the district
court was correct in its procedural ruling.
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III. CONCLUSION
We DENY Mr. Cramer’s application for a COA and DISMISS the appeal.
We GRANT Mr. Cramer’s motion to proceed in forma pauperis.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Harris L Hartz
Circuit Judge
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