David Hudson v. Kurt Jones

351 F.3d 212

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: February 26, 2004
• Docket: 02-1586
• Status: Published

Opinions

QPINION

GILMAN, Circuit Judge.

Imprisoned as the result of a 1985 state-court conviction for murder and for being a felon in possession of a firearm, David Hudson petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus. He contended, among other claims, that he had been denied the effective assistance of counsel at trial because his lawyer had been physically absent from court when the judge, at the request of the deliberating jury, reread selected portions of the instructions as to certain elements of the crimes charged. The district court granted Hudson a conditional writ of habeas corpus on the basis of this claim. For the reasons set forth below, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual background

In April of 1985, Hudson stood trial in a Michigan state court for the murder of Ruth Wilson and for being a felon in possession of a firearm. His attorney was Stuart Young. After instructing the jury at the close of the proof, the trial court sent the jurors to lunch. The following colloquy then took place between the court and counsel:

THE COURT: Before we bring the jury out, gentlemen, Mr. Young is going to be in Judge Gage’s courtroom in the Oakland County Circuit Court. The juries often have a habit of asking for different things. I’ve talked to Mr. Young, Mr. Janice [the prosecutor] about this. Unless the request to be reinstructed is extraordinary for some reason, if the jury asks to be reinstructed, I’m going to go forward and reinstruct them. Mr. Young, any comment about that?

MR. YOUNG: No, your Honor. I have no objection.

THE COURT: As I indicated to Mr. Young, if the jury wants testimony read back, it is my general practice to try to find out exactly the area of concern to try to minimize that. Perhaps that kind of thing can be taken care of over the phone. And if a verdict is reached, we’ll just wait for Mr. Young to get back.

MR. YOUNG: Thank you, your Honor. I’ll be in Judge Gage’s. And I will check back with this Court so that I’m in constant touch. If I can get back here right away, I will.

Approximately three hours later, the jury sent the following note to the judge: “We need the definition of aiding and abetting and the difference between second and first degree murder.” The jury was then brought into the courtroom. Hudson, Young, and the prosecutor were all absent. The judge proceeded to reread to the jury the instructions that had previously been given concerning the elements of (1) first and second degree murder, and (2) aiding and abetting.

In the initial instructions (before the jury began to deliberate), the judge had given a short definition of aiding and abetting when he instructed the jurors on the elements of murder. He had given a more complete instruction on aiding and abetting in conjunction with the charge of possessing a firearm while a felon. During the “reinstruction,” the judge used the second, fuller instruction on aiding and abetting. No other discussion took place and no additional or supplemental instructions were given. The jury then resumed its deliberations. One day later, Hudson was found guilty of first-degree murder and of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

B. Procedural background

Still represented by Young, Hudson filed a direct appeal. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction in September of 1986, and the Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal in January of 1987.

In October of 1995, Hudson returned to the state trial court and filed a motion for relief from judgment pursuant to Rule 6.500 of the Michigan Court Rules. That motion was denied in January of 1996, and Hudson applied for leave to appeal. The Michigan Court of Appeals denied his application, and the Michigan Supreme Court did the same. Hudson then timely filed his federal habeas corpus petition in April of 1998.

The magistrate judge recommended that the petition be denied in its entirety. This recommendation was adopted by the district court as to all of Hudson’s claims except his contention that he had received the ineffective assistance of counsel when the jury was reinstructed in Young’s absence. After supplemental briefing, the district court granted Hudson a conditional writ of habeas corpus on the basis of this claim. It reasoned that Hudson’s counsel was absent at a critical stage of the proceedings, so that prejudice should be presumed pursuant to United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 104 S.Ct. 2039, 80 L.Ed.2d 657 (1984). The state filed a motion for reconsideration, which was denied. This timely appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS

Two issues are raised on appeal by the state. One is whether Hudson is barred from pursuing his underlying constitutional claim because he failed to raise that claim in the state-court proceedings. The other is whether, on the merits, Hudson’s ineffective-assistance claim entitles him to habeas relief.

A. Standard of review

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (codified principally at 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)), provides the standard of review that federal courts must apply to state-court determinations when reviewing petitions for a writ of ha-beas corpus. Because, however, the state courts never addressed Hudson’s Cronic claim, the AEDPA standard of review is inapplicable on this issue.

Regarding the standard of review for district-court determinations, we review de novo the district court’s legal conclusions and apply the “clearly erroneous” standard to its findings of fact. Lott v. Coyle, 261 F.3d 594, 606 (6th. Cir.2001). An ineffective-assistance claim is a mixed question of law and fact, and procedural default is a question of law, so both issues are subject to de novo review. Id.

B. Procedural default

The state argued in the district court that Hudson had procedurally defaulted his Cronic claim because (1) the claim had not been presented to the state courts, and (2) no state-court remedy remained because Rule 6.502 of the Michigan Court Rules prohibits successive petitions for relief from judgment. Although the district court agreed that the Cronic claim was procedurally defaulted, it held that Hudson had established “cause and prejudice” to excuse the default. See Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 622, 118 S.Ct. 1604, 140 L.Ed.2d 828 (1998) (“Where a defendant has procedurally defaulted a claim by failing to raise it on direct review, the claim may be raised in habeas only if the defendant can first demonstrate either ‘cause’ and actual ‘prejudice,’ or that he is ‘actually innocent.’ ”) (internal citations omitted).

The district court concluded that both of Hudson’s state post-trial counsel were ineffective for failing to raise the Cronic claim, and that their ineffective assistance constituted cause to excuse the procedural default. In contrast, the state argues that the procedural default of the Cronic claim took place when Hudson failed to present it on collateral review, and that, because there is no constitutional right to the assistance of counsel in collateral proceedings, ineffective assistance of counsel during state collateral review does not constitute cause as a matter of law.

Analyzing the issue of procedural default requires an interpretation of Michigan state law, specifically Rule 6.508(D)(3) of the Michigan Court Rules, which allows claims to be raised for the first time in state postconviction proceedings if the petitioner can demonstrate both “good cause” for the failure to raise those claims previously and “actual prejudice from the alleged irregularities.” Applying Rule 6.508(D)(3) in this case is especially complex because the Rule’s effective date in 1989 was long after Hudson’s 1985 conviction and the completion of his direct appeals by 1987.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that federal courts are not required to address a procedural-default issue before deciding against the petitioner on the merits. Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 525, 117 S.Ct. 1517, 137 L.Ed.2d 771 (1997) (“Judicial economy might counsel giving the [other] question priority, for example, if it were easily resolvable against the habeas petitioner, whereas the procedural-bar issue involved complicated issues of state law.”); see also Nobles v. Johnson, 127 F.3d 409, 423-24 (5th Cir.1997) (deciding against the petitioner on the merits even though the claim was procedurally defaulted); cf. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(2) (“An application for a writ of habeas corpus may be denied on the merits, notwithstanding the failure of the applicant to exhaust the remedies available in the courts of the State.”)- In the present case, the question of procedural default presents a complicated question of Michigan law and is unnecessary to our disposition of the case. We will therefore proceed directly to the merits of Hudson’s Cronic claim.

C. Merits of the Cronic claim

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the effective assistance of trial counsel for criminal defendants. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 686, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). Generally, to establish constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel, a habeas petitioner must show both that his counsel’s performance fell “below an objective standard of reasonableness,” id. at 688, 104 S.Ct. 2052, and “that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Id. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052.

A criminal conviction must be set aside, however, even without the showing of any actual prejudice, “if the accused is denied counsel at a critical stage of his trial.” United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 659, 104 S.Ct. 2039, 80 L.Ed.2d 657 (1984) (discussing the situations where prejudice should be presumed). Thus, the Supreme Court “has uniformly found constitutional error without any showing of prejudice when counsel was either totally absent, or prevented from assisting the accused[,] during a critical stage of the proceeding.” Id. at 659 n. 25, 104 S.Ct. 2039. Hudson has not demonstrated, nor even contended, that actual prejudice resulted from his attorney’s absence when the trial judge responded to the jury’s note. The question on the merits, therefore, is whether Hudson’s counsel was absent during a critical stage of the proceedings, so that prejudice should be presumed under Cronic.

This court’s opinion in United States v. Harris, 9 F.3d 493 (6th Cir.1993), is relevant to the issue before us. In Harris, the court examined the propriety of a situation in which the jury, at the start of its second day of deliberations, sent a note to the judge that read: “The jury is having a problem with the definition of entrapment could we have a copy of the instructions that were read to us concerning entrapment May we also have a flip chart and some markers Thank you.” Id. at 499 (lack of punctuation in original). “Without contacting the parties, the court responded by providing the jury with a complete written set of all of the jury instructions read by the court.” Id.

The Harris court decided that, although the district judge’s actions technically violated Rule 43 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (dealing with when the defendant must be present), reversal of the conviction was not warranted because “Defendant is unable to state a reasonable possibility of prejudice that resulted from the district court’s conduct.” Id. Implicit in this holding is the conclusion that trial counsel’s absence was not during a critical stage of the proceedings because, had the absence occurred during a critical stage, prejudice would have been presumed under Cronic.

We respectfully disagree with the dissent’s suggestion that our reliance on Harris involves “an impermissible logical leap.” Dis. Op. at 221. Although the court in Harris based its decision on Rule 43 rather than the Sixth Amendment, the opinion explicitly recognized that the defendant’s counsel was not present when the trial court reinstructed the jury. See Harris, 9 F.3d at 495-96 (stating the issue as “whether prejudicial error occurred when the district court responded to a note from the jury without notifying counsel”) (emphasis added). Because the Harris court was aware of trial counsel’s absence, a reasonable inference can be drawn that the court’s exclusive focus on Rule 43 is an indication that the Rule 43 argument was perceived to be stronger than the Cronic argument. So although Harris is not .controlling, it supports the conclusion that the rereading of identical jury instructions is not a critical stage of a criminal trial.

Similarly, the Seventh Circuit has held that “the court’s reading of the jury instructions (as opposed, perhaps!,] to a court’s jury instruction conference with counsel) [is not] a critical stage of the proceedings.” United States v. Morrison, 946 F.2d 484, 503 (7th Cir.1991) (emphasis in original). The Morrison court therefore decided that Cronic was inapplicable where the trial judge instructed the jury at the close of evidence in the absence of defense counsel. Id. Morrison supports the proposition that reading instructions to the jury is not a critical stage of the proceedings if trial counsel has previously agreed to the instructions.

On the other hand, in French v. Jones, 332 F.3d 430 (6th Cir.2003), this court held that Cronic’s presumption of prejudice applied where trial counsel was absent when the state trial judge gave a supplemental instruction to a thrice-deadlocked jury and “the third instruction was not the standard deadlocked jury instruction.” Id. at 434, 438. French, however, is distinguishable from the instant case because the-supplemental instructions given in French had not been articulated by the trial court before the jury began deliberating. In contrast, in the present case, the instructions given by the judge in Young’s absence had been given verbatim in Young’s presence during the initial charge. The only difference is that, during the initial charge, other instructions were interspersed between the murder instruction and the full aiding- and-abetting instruction. We find this difference immaterial.

Several cases from other circuits appear to track this new-versus-repeated distinction. In Curtis v. Duval, 124 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir.1997), for example, the First Circuit stated in dicta that “recalling the jury for supplementary instructions after deliberations are underway is a critical stage of a criminal trial.” But the supplementary instructions in Curtis were new, not a repeat of earlier instructions given when counsel was present. In a later, unpublished decision, the First Circuit held that “the prejudice per se doctrine does not apply” where supplemental instructions were given, without notifying counsel, in response to a note from the deliberating jury, but “the supplemental instructions were similar to portions of the charge, given earlier, that counsel had reviewed without objections.” Gonzalez-Gonzalez v. United States, No. 02-1243, 2002 WL 31416029, at *2, 49 Fed.Appx. 322 (1st Cir. Oct. 29, 2002).

The Third Circuit has similarly rejected the application of Cronic in a situation where, upon a request from the deliberating jury, the trial judge provided the transcript of certain testimony without notifying counsel. United States v. Toliver, 330 F.3d 607 (3d Cir.2003). “Clarifying the substantive elements of the charged offense (Curtis) or instructing a deadlocked jury (French) affirmatively guides jurors as to how they should fulfill their decision-making function. But submitting verbatim specifically excerpted record testimony that the jury itself had requested does not similarly ‘instruct’ the jury.” Id at 614.

We are of the opinion that the factual situation in the present case is closer to Harris, Gonzalez-Gonzalez, Morrison, and Toliver than to French and Curtis. Because the trial judge here simply repeated, at the jury’s request, specific instructions that had previously been given in the presence of Hudson’s counsel, we conclude that their repetition should not be deemed a “critical stage in the proceedings.” Prejudice to Hudson will therefore not be presumed under Cronic, and no actual prejudice has been shown. The district court thus erred in deciding that Hudson was entitled to habeas relief on the basis of his Cronic claim.

III. CONCLUSION

For all of the reasons set forth above, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND with instructions to dismiss Hudson’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.