Jones v. Winn

CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Michigan
DecidedOctober 30, 2020
Docket2:18-cv-12231
StatusUnknown

This text of Jones v. Winn (Jones v. Winn) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Michigan primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Jones v. Winn, (E.D. Mich. 2020).

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN SOUTHERN DIVISION DIAGO JONES, #864511, Petitioner, Civil Action No. 18-CV-12231 vs. HON. BERNARD A. FRIEDMAN THOMAS WINN, Respondent. ________________/ OPINION AND ORDER DENYING PETITION FOR A WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS, DENYING A CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY, AND DENYING LEAVE TO PROCEED IN FORMA PAUPERIS ON APPEAL This is a habeas case brought pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Petitioner was convicted of first-degree felony murder, MICH. COMP. LAWS § 750.316, torture, MICH. COMP. LAWS § 750.85, and second-degree home invasion, MICH. COMP. LAWS § 750.110a(3), following a jury trial in Wayne County Circuit Court. In 2015, he was sentenced, as a second-habitual offender, MICH. COMP. LAWS § 769.10, to concurrent terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, 10 to 15 years imprisonment, and 5 to 20 years imprisonment on those convictions, respectively. He raises claims concerning the admission of evidence and the sufficiency of the evidence. For the reasons stated below, the Court denies the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The Court also denies a certificate of appealability and denies petitioner leave to proceed in forma pauperis on appeal. I. Facts and Procedural History

Petitioner’s convictions arise from his participation in the beating death and home burglary of Louis Norris in 2014. Petitioner was jointly tried before separate juries with co- defendants Taranda Carson Jr. and Mary Lynell Pye. The Michigan Court of Appeals described the relevant facts as follows: Late in the evening of June 23, 2014, Dominque Reynolds asked her neighbor, Norris, to watch her 11–year–old son, DR, while she visited a friend around the block. At approximately 10 or 11 p.m., Reynolds’s sister, Alecia Latimer, arrived at Reynolds’s home with a carload of friends, including Pye, Kyle Wilson, Carson, and Jones. Latimer went into the home and spoke with DR. Based on this conversation Latimer believed that Norris had sexually assaulted her nephew. Latimer flew into a rage and Norris retreated to his next door home. According to Wilson, Latimer acted as the ring leader and encouraged Jones to join her in kicking Norris while Norris sat on his front porch. Reynolds returned home shortly after Latimer’s arrival, resulting in a brief pause in the action. Reynolds described that Jones and Carson then attacked Norris, jumping on him and hitting him with fists, a metal folding chair, and a 2 ½-foot rod. Reynolds accused Pye of spraying Norris in the face with an aerosol substance. Jones admitted to police that he struck Norris once, but shifted blame for the attack to Latimer and Carson. Following the assault, the group decided to burgle Norris’s home. At trial, Wilson described that Latimer and young DR entered Norris’s house and carried various items to Reynolds’s home for storage. Wilson earlier told police that Carson, Jones, and DR were involved in the burglary. Reynolds identified Carson, Jones, and Pye as the thieves. Police discovered Norris’s body on his front porch the following morning. Norris’s head was covered in blood and first responders believed he had been shot. Norris’s home was also ransacked. Later examination revealed that Norris had actually been killed by multiple blunt blows to his head, one or more of which fractured Norris’s spine. Investigators initially interrogated Latimer and Reynolds and learned the names of the others present on the night in question. After hearing of Latimer’s part in the attack and robbery from defendants and Wilson, officers attempted to arrest her as well, but she successfully evaded capture. 2 Ultimately, Carson, Jones, and Pye were tried jointly but before separate juries. As noted, the juries convicted Carson and Jones of several charged offenses [and Pye was acquitted]. People v. Jones, No. 326760, 2016 WL 5956030, at *1 (Mich. Ct. App. Oct. 13, 2016). Following his convictions and sentencing, petitioner filed an appeal of right with the Michigan Court of Appeals asserting that the trial court erred in admitting autopsy photographs of the victim and that the prosecution failed to present sufficient evidence to support his convictions. The Michigan Court of Appeals denied relief on those claims and affirmed his convictions and sentences. Id. at *2-5. Petitioner filed an application for leave to appeal with the Michigan Supreme Court, which was denied in a standard order. People v. Jones, 898 N.W.2d 206 (Mich. 2017). Petitioner thereafter filed his federal habeas petition raising the same claims presented to the state courts on direct appeal. Respondent has filed an answer to the petition contending that it should be denied for lack of merit.

II. Legal Standards The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), codified at 28 U.S.C. § 2241 et seq., sets forth the standard of review applied in federal habeas cases: An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim – (1) resulted in 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; or (2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceedings. 3 Section 2254(d). “A state court’s decision is ‘contrary to’ . . . clearly established law if it ‘applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [Supreme Court cases]’ or if it ‘confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of [the Supreme] Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from [that] precedent.’” Mitchell v. Esparza, 540 U.S. 12,

15-16 (2003) (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06 (2000)). “[T]he ‘unreasonable application’ prong of § 2254(d)(1) permits a federal habeas court to ‘grant the writ if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from [the Supreme] Court but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts’ of petitioner’s case.” Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 520 (2003) (quoting Williams, 529 U.S. at 413). However, “[i]n order for a federal court to find a state court’s application of our precedent ‘unreasonable,’ the state court’s decision must have been more than incorrect or erroneous. The state court’s application must have been ‘objectively unreasonable.’” Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 520-21 (citations omitted). “AEDPA thus 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 (2010) (citations omitted). “A state court’s determination that a claim lacks merit precludes federal habeas relief so long as fairminded jurists could disagree on the correctness of the state court’s decision.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101 (2011) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The Court emphasized that “even a strong case for relief does not mean the state court’s contrary conclusion was unreasonable.” Id. at 102. “Under § 2254(d), a habeas court must determine what arguments or theories supported or . . .

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Bluebook (online)
Jones v. Winn, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jones-v-winn-mied-2020.