Conner McCowan v. Matt MaCauley

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION
File Name: 20a0347n.06
No. 19-2026
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
FILED
CONNER CHANNING MCCOWAN, ) Jun 12, 2020
) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk
Petitioner-Appellant, )
)
v. ) ON APPEAL FROM THE
) UNITED STATES DISTRICT
MATT MACAULEY, Acting Warden, ) COURT FOR THE WESTERN
) DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
Respondent-Appellee. )
)
Before: COLE, Chief Judge; McKEAGUE, and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges.
KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge. Conner McCowan appeals the district court’s denial of his
petition for a writ of habeas corpus. We reject his arguments and affirm.
In the early morning hours of February 23, 2013, McCowan’s sister and her boyfriend,
Andrew Singler, got into an argument on their way home from a bar. McCowan was at home but
became entangled in their dispute after he received calls and texts from both his sister and Singler.
The two men themselves then started to argue, exchanging dozens of hostile messages in which
each threatened—in colorful terms—to beat up the other.
Eventually, McCowan drove to Singler’s apartment building, armed himself with a folding
Buck knife, and walked up to Singler’s door. Singler was unarmed but hit McCowan first with a
punch to the head. The punch knocked McCowan backwards, but McCowan lunged back at
Singler with the knife and stabbed him in the chest. Singler slumped to the floor and cried out in
pain. McCowan ran back to his car and drove home. Along the way, he tossed the bloody knife
No. 19-2026, McCowan v. MaCauley
out of his window. Meanwhile, Singler’s roommate drove Singler to the hospital. There, he died
from blood loss caused by a stab wound to the heart.
The State of Michigan thereafter charged McCowan with murder. At trial, McCowan
admitted that he killed Singler, but he contended that, during the fight, he had feared for his life
and had stabbed Singler in self-defense. McCowan also testified that he saw a flash of light and
felt disoriented after Singler punched him.
At the end of a ten-day trial, the jury convicted McCowan of second-degree murder.
McCowan appealed, arguing among other things that several of the trial court’s evidentiary rulings
denied him the right to present a complete defense. The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected those
arguments and affirmed McCowan’s conviction; the Michigan Supreme Court denied him leave
to appeal. See People v. McCowan, No. 319475, 2015 WL 3604516, at *1 (Mich. Ct. App. June
9, 2015) (per curiam); People v. McCowan, 873 N.W.2d 306 (Mich. 2016) (mem.). McCowan
then petitioned for federal habeas relief, which the district court denied.
We review the district court’s decision de novo. See Ivory v. Jackson, 509 F.3d 284, 291
(6th Cir. 2007). The state courts addressed McCowan’s claim on the merits, so to succeed on his
federal habeas petition McCowan must show that their decision was “contrary to, or involved an
unreasonable application of,” clearly established Supreme Court precedent. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(d)(1); see also Fleming v. Metrish, 556 F.3d 520, 524–25 (6th Cir. 2009). Habeas relief is
warranted only if the state court’s decision was objectively unreasonable, rather than simply
incorrect or erroneous. See Akins v. Easterling, 648 F.3d 380, 385–86 (6th Cir. 2011).
The Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a meaningful opportunity to present a
complete defense, which includes the right to present relevant evidence, subject to reasonable
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restrictions. See Fleming, 556 F.3d at 534. McCowan argues that the trial court violated this
Constitutional guarantee in three of its evidentiary rulings.
First, McCowan challenges the trial court’s decision to exclude the testimony of a
concussion expert. McCowan argues that the expert’s testimony was essential to establish that
McCowan killed Singler in self-defense—a defense that required McCowan to show that he
“honestly and reasonably” believed that he was in danger of death or serious bodily harm. Mich.
Comp. Laws. § 780.972(1)(a); People v. Heflin, 456 N.W.2d 10, 18 (Mich. 1990). McCowan says
the expert would have testified that McCowan suffered a concussion during the fight, that the
concussion affected his ability to perceive what has happening around him, and that he had suffered
several prior concussions, making it more likely that Singler’s punch put McCowan in a
“confusional state.”
But the right to present a defense is subject to “reasonable evidentiary restrictions.”
Rockwell v. Yukins, 341 F.3d 507, 512 (6th Cir. 2003) (en banc). Here, McCowan himself testified
that no doctor had ever diagnosed him with a concussion. R. 7-16 at PageID 849, 850. And
McCowan’s concussion expert conceded that he had not evaluated McCowan until six months
after the fight, even though—according to the expert himself—a concussion diagnosis typically
requires that the affected person undergo a cognitive assessment at or near the time of the injury.
Id. at PageID 854. Thus, by the expert’s own admission, he could only speculate about whether
McCowan had even suffered a concussion during the fight. Finally, the expert based his
assessment, at least in part, on McCowan’s own recollections that he had seen a “flash of light”
and been confused after Singler’s punch—recollections that McCowan had already testified about.
R. 1-2 at PageID 93; R. 7-16 at PageID 844. The jury had thus already heard, directly from
McCowan, the state-of-mind evidence the expert intended to relate. The trial court’s decision to
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bar his testimony was therefore not so unreasonable as to warrant habeas relief. See Fleming, 556
F.3d at 534.
Second, McCowan challenges the court’s decision to bar him from presenting evidence
related to head injuries that he had suffered more than two years before he stabbed Singler.
McCowan says this evidence would have demonstrated that blows to the head would cause him to
feel confused and “out of it.” But McCowan was able to make that point to the jury: the court
allowed him to discuss how several other head injuries—which had occurred within two years of
the stabbing—had affected McCowan’s mental state. That ruling did not render McCowan’s trial
fundamentally unfair, which means he is not entitled to habeas relief on this ground either. See
Baze v. Parker, 371 F.3d 310, 324 (6th Cir. 2004).
Finally, McCowan contends that the court improperly cut short his testimony on Singler’s
history of fighting, which McCowan says would have shown that Singler had an aggressive
personality. But the jury had already seen ample evidence of Singler’s aggressiveness, not least
in the form of the hostile messages he sent McCowan and Singler’s decision to throw the first
punch. More testimony on Singler’s character likely would have had no impact on the jury’s
verdict, so any error on that point was harmless. See Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 638
(1993).
The district court’s judgment is affirmed.
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