Ramon Lawrence Parker v. Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections

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[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 13-14914
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 8:10-cv-01576-JDW-TGW
RAMON LAWRENCE PARKER,
Petitioner-Appellant,
versus
SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT
OF CORRECTIONS,
Respondent-Appellee.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
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(October 20, 2014)
Before WILSON, WILLIAM PRYOR and ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
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Ramon Parker, a state prisoner, appeals pro se the denial of his petition for a
writ of habeas corpus. 28 U.S.C. § 2254. After his convictions for three counts of
lewd and lascivious acts on a child and one count of sexual battery on a victim who
was less than 12 years old, Parker sought postconviction relief on the ground that
his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to respond adequately to a motion in
limine to exclude evidence that his victims had recanted other allegations of abuse.
See Fla. R. Crim. P. 3.850. The Florida courts concluded that trial counsel
performed deficiently, but Parker was not prejudiced by the deficient performance.
Because the Florida courts reasonably applied clearly established federal law, we
affirm the denial of Parker’s petition.
I. BACKGROUND
When he collaterally attacked his convictions in state court, Parker argued
that, had his counsel responded effectively to the motion in limine, he could have
challenged the victims’ credibility with evidence that they had previously recanted
other accusations of abuse. Parker argued that he was convicted solely on the
testimony of the three victims and the exclusion of evidence regarding their
credibility was prejudicial.
A Florida court denied Parker’s motion, but the Second District Court of
Appeals reversed and remanded for further proceedings. The appellate court ruled
that trial counsel performed deficiently because she was not familiar with Jaggers
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v. State, 536 So. 2d 321 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1998), which held that a defendant
accused of sexual abuse could impeach minor victims with evidence that they had
recanted other allegations of sexual abuse. Id. at 326–27. The appellate court
remanded for an evidentiary hearing to determine whether Parker was prejudiced
by his counsel’s deficient performance.
On remand, the Florida court denied Parker’s motion summarily on the
ground that his proffered impeachment evidence was inadmissible hearsay, but the
appellate court reversed and remanded. The Second District Court of Appeals
concluded that the lower court could not ascertain the character of the evidence
without hearing any testimony from Parker’s witnesses. The appellate court
remanded with instructions for Parker to “present admissible evidence—if he
can—that had trial counsel effectively defended the State’s motion in limine, he
would have been able to properly impeach two of the victims with evidence that
they had previously made and recanted similar accusations.”
During the evidentiary hearing, members of Parker’s family testified about
prior accusations allegedly made by M.B. against Don Sports. Parker’s
stepdaughter, Helen Penniker Smith, testified that M.B., her stepdaughter, said that
she was “touched” by Don, Smith’s former stepfather; M.B. did not identify where
she had been touched but said that it made her uncomfortable; and M.B. repeated
her accusation to Don and Smith’s mother and then recanted. Smith acknowledged
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that she never mentioned the incident involving Don during previous hearings in
Parker’s case and that she believed the incident could have happened. Parker’s
wife, Jimmie, who formerly had been married to Don, testified that Don moved out
of their house for a few months after being accused by M.B., even though M.B.
had recanted the accusation. But Don testified that M.B. did not recant in Jimmie’s
presence. According to Don, M.B. apologized to him later and said she made up
the story because she was mad at him.
Smith also testified that M.B. had accused Parker of instructing her to run
around the house naked. Smith opined that Parker’s remark had been “blown out of
proportion,” but Smith acknowledged that M.B. had never recanted the accusation.
But Jimmie testified that M.B. had recanted. Jimmie explained that Parker made
the remark because M.B. needed a bath and did not have any clean clothes to wear.
Jimmie testified that another one of her husband’s victims, B.S., had falsely
accused her father, Lester Smith, of molestation. B.S. told her mother and Jimmie
that Smith “messed with her.” B.S.’s mother confronted Smith, but she did not
inform the authorities because she needed Smith’s assistance to pay for Christmas
presents. Smith admitted to Jimmie, his adoptive mother, “that he did it thinking it
was [his wife] in the bed with him,” but Jimmie also did not report the abuse to the
authorities.
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The Florida court denied Parker’s motion a third time on the grounds that the
evidence was inadmissible and, alternatively, the evidence would not have changed
the outcome of Parker’s trial. Parker could not use the evidence to impeach the
victims under Jaggers, the Florida court determined, because the testimony that
established M.B.’s accusation against Don was biased, “unreliable[,] and overly
vague,” which destroyed its “probative value” and its “impeachment value”;
M.S.’s accusation against Parker did not involve sexual abuse; and B.S.’s
accusation against her father was not false. In the alternative, the Florida court
ruled that the evidence would not have affected the outcome of Parker’s case. The
Florida court determined that “some of the testimony further substantiate[d] that
the allegations of [M.B. and B.S.] were in fact true”; the “very vague and
imprecise” testimony about Don touching M.B. would not have “materially
undermined” M.B.’s credibility; the evidence that Parker told M.B. to run around
naked “would not have impeached [M.B.’s] credibility (because it turned out to be
true), nor would it have materially harmed [Parker’s] case (because it was
essentially an innocent, non-abusive event that was somehow blown out of
proportion . . .)”; and the testimony that Smith abused B.S. without repercussion
from his family “greatly bolster[ed] [her] credibility.”
Parker filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which the district court
denied. The district court ruled that Parker could not prove he was prejudiced by
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counsel’s allegedly deficient performance because the victims’ earlier accusations
were not admissible under Florida law and that the exclusion of the evidence did
not violate Parker’s rights under the Confrontation Clause, U.S. Const. Amend. VI.
The district court issued a certificate of appealability to determine “whether trial
counsel’s deficient opposition to the State’s motion in limine [sic] requesting the
exclusion of any evidence regarding previous allegations of abuse made by the
victims prejudiced Petitioner.”
II. STANDARDS OF REVIEW
We review de novo the denial of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
Mason v. Allen, 605 F.3d 1114, 1118 (11th Cir. 2010). Our review is circumscribed
by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which “imposes a highly
deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings, and demands that state-court
decisions be given the benefit of the doubt.” Renico v. Lett, 559 U.S. 766, 773, 130
S. Ct. 1855, 1862 (2010) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Under
the Act, a petitioner is entitled to a writ of habeas corpus only if the state court
reached a decision that 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). We presume that the findings of fact by the
state court are correct unless rebutted by clear and convincing evidence. 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(e)(1).
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III. DISCUSSION
For Parker to prevail on his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, he
must prove that his counsel’s performance was deficient and that he was
prejudiced by the deficient performance. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668,
687, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 2064 (1984). It is not enough for Parker to prove that
counsel’s alleged errors had some conceivable effect on the outcome of the trial;
Parker must prove that the allegedly deficient performance “actually had an
adverse effect on the defense.” Id. at 693, 104 S. Ct. at 2067. In other words,
Parker cannot obtain a federal habeas relief unless “counsel’s conduct so
undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that the trial cannot
be relied on as having produced a just result.” Id. at 686, 104 S. Ct. at 2064.
The district court correctly denied Parker habeas relief. The Florida courts
concluded that the proffered impeachment evidence did not satisfy the standard for
admissibility delineated in Jaggers, and we defer to that conclusion. See Callahan
v. Campbell, 427 F.3d 897, 932 (11th Cir. 2005) (“It is a fundamental principle that
state courts are the final arbiters of state law, and federal habeas courts should not
second-guess them on such matters.” (quoting Herring v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr.,
397 F.3d 1338, 1355 (11th Cir. 2005))). And the Florida courts reasonably
concluded that Parker failed to prove that, even if the proffered impeachment
evidence had been admitted into evidence, the jury “would [not] have had a
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reasonable doubt respecting [his] guilt.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 695, 104 S. Ct. at
2068–69. The Florida courts found that Parker’s proffered impeachment evidence
as a whole tended to strengthen two of his victims’ credibility, and Parker did not
offer any evidence to impeach the credibility of his third victim. The Florida courts
reasonably concluded that Parker was not prejudiced by his counsel’s allegedly
deficient performance.
Parker argues that his counsel’s deficient performance denied him the
opportunity to confront the victims, but we cannot review that claim. Appellate
review is limited to the issues delineated in the certificate of appealability. Jordan
v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr., 485 F.3d 1351, 1356 (11th Cir. 2007). Because Parker’s
argument is outside the scope of the certificate, we dismiss it.
IV. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM the denial of Parker’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
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