Brown v. Warden, Sci-Retreat

Opinions of the United
2004 Decisions States Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit
7-6-2004
Brown v. Warden SCI Retreat
Precedential or Non-Precedential: Non-Precedential
Docket No. 03-2619
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"Brown v. Warden SCI Retreat" (2004). 2004 Decisions. Paper 525.
http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/thirdcircuit_2004/525
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NOT PRECEDENTIAL
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
_______________
No. 03-2619
________________
DAVID BROWN,
v.
Appellant
WARDEN, SCI-RETREAT
____________________________________
On Appeal From the United States District Court
For the Middle District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 98-cv-01961)
District Judge: Honorable A. Richard Caputo
_______________________________________
Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
June 29, 2004
Before: AMBRO, BECKER and GREENBERG, Circuit Judges
(Filed July 6, 2004)
_______________________
OPINION
_______________________
BECKER, Circuit Judge.
This is an appeal by defendant David Brown from an order of the District Court
denying his petition for habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Brown is a state prisoner
currently serving a sentence of imprisonment for burglary, assault, and related offenses.
He contends that his state court trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance when he
failed to seek the removal of a juror who had been the victim of a burglary and had, on
another occasion, been threatened with a handgun. Although the District Court agreed
that counsel’s representation was deficient, it denied relief on the ground that Brown had
failed to prove prejudice in terms of actual bias against the defendant. Brown argues that
the District Court erred in utilizing an “actual bias” standard rather than an “implied bias”
standard, and that, even if an “actual bias” standard is the correct one, the District Court
erred in its application of the standard. Because the parties are fully familiar with the
background facts and procedural history we need not set them forth, and limit our
discussion to our ratio decidendi. For the reasons that follow, we will affirm.
The evidentiary hearing conducted by the District Court contained the following
testimony by Mr. Bobb, the juror whose putative bias was the primary basis of the habeas
challenge concerning burglary of Bobb’s home, which he conceded made his wife feel
insecure: “Mr. Brown wasn’t involved in that crime [the one against M r. Bobb], so I’m
not going to hold anything against him.” Additionally, in response to the Court’s
question: “Had you been asked about that [being threatened with a gun], would that have
colored your judgment, in any way, as far as you rability to listen to the evidence and
decided the case, based on the evidence that you heard and the instructions that the court
gave?,” Bobb replied “no.” Bobb also testified that “he [the appellant] wasn’t the one
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who burglarized my house, so I was going in there with a fair and open mind.” With
respect to the other incident, occurring about five or six years prior to Brown’s trial, an
individual the Bobbs were buying a house from threatened Bobb with a gun, but Bobb
testified that this incident would not have colored his judgment in any way, and that he
would be able to listen to the evidence and decide the case based on the evidence and the
Court’s instructions.
Brown’s contention that this case should be governed by an implied bias standard,
see Smith v. Phllips, 455 U.S. 209, 221 (1982) ( O’Connor, J., concurring), is legally
frivolous. As we noted in United States v. Calabrese, 942 F.2d 218 (3d Cir.1991),
application of the doctrine of implied bias is “‘limited in application to those extreme
situations where the relationship between a prospective juror and some aspect of the
litigation is such that it is highly unlikely that the average person could remain impartial
in his deliberations under the circumstances.’” Id. at 226 n.3 (quoting Person v. Miller,
854 F.2d 656, 664 (4th Cir. 1988)). That standard simply does not “fit” the facts here,
which are light years from the facts of Smith. Thus the actual bias standard applies.
In determining whether a juror is (actually) biased, a court should consider factors
such as: the objective similarities between the events, the effects of the crime on the
juror’s life, and the passage of time since the crime. See, e.g., Gonzales v. Thomas, 99
F.3d 978, 990-91 (10th Cir. 1996). Bobb’s testimony at the District court’s evidentiary
hearing establishes that the situations were dissimilar. First, Bobb’s house was
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burglarized while he was not at home, unlike the victims in Brown’s case. Second, two
years had passed. Finally, but for Bobb’s wife feeling insecure, the incident had little or
no effect on Bobb’s life. The second incident (involving the gun threat) also had no
influence on Bobb’s life. Applying de novo review to Brown’s ineffective assistance of
counsel claim, see United States v. Cross, 308 F.3d 308, 314 (3d Cir. 2002) (citing
Duncan v. Morton, 256 F.3d 189, 200 (3d Cir. 2001)), we are satisfied that juror Bobb
was not actually biased, and hence there was no prejudice flowing from his counsel’s
putative ineffective assistance. The order of the District Court denying Brown’s
application for a writ of habeas corpus will be affirmed.
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