Moormann v. Schriro

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedOctober 12, 2005
Docket00-99015
StatusPublished

This text of Moormann v. Schriro (Moormann v. Schriro) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Moormann v. Schriro, (9th Cir. 2005).

Opinion

FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ROBERT HENRY MOORMANN,  Petitioner-Appellant, No. 00-99015 v. D.C. No. DORA B. SCHRIRO,* Director,  CV-91-01121-PHX- Arizona Department of ROS Corrections, OPINION Respondent-Appellee.  Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Roslyn O. Silver, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted November 8, 2001—Pasadena, California Submission Deferred February 15, 2002 Submission Deferred September 26, 2002 Resubmitted October 3, 2005

Filed October 13, 2005

Before: Mary M. Schroeder, Chief Judge, Stephen S. Trott, and Johnnie B. Rawlinson, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Chief Judge Schroeder

*Dora B. Schriro, is substituted for her predecessor, Terry Stewart, as Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections. Fed. R. App. P. 43(c)(2).

14007 MOORMANN v. SCHRIRO 14011

COUNSEL

Denise I. Young, Tucson, Arizona, for the petitioner- appellant.

John Presley Todd, Phoenix, Arizona, for the respondent- appellee. 14012 MOORMANN v. SCHRIRO OPINION

SCHROEDER, Chief Judge:

Robert Henry Moormann was convicted in Arizona of the first degree murder of his elderly adoptive mother and sen- tenced to death in 1985. This is an appeal from the district court’s denial of his first federal petition for habeas corpus relief. He earlier filed two unsuccessful state petitions for col- lateral relief after losing his direct appeal from the conviction and sentence in state court.

We heard oral argument in this case in November 2001. We then deferred submission pending the Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Ring. 536 U.S. 584 (2002). In Ring, the Court decided that the Arizona sentencing scheme applied in this case, in which the trial judge alone determined the pres- ence or absence of aggravating factors required by Arizona law for the imposition of the death penalty, was not compati- ble with the Sixth Amendment. 536 U.S. at 589. We again deferred submission pending the outcome of other cases with priority that determined the retroactivity of Ring. See Pizzuto v. Arave, 280 F.3d 949 (9th Cir. 2002); amended by 385 F.3d 1247 (9th Cir. 2004); aff’d 385 F.3d 1247 (9th Cir. 2004); Summerlin v. Stewart, 341 F.3d 1082 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc); rev’d sub nom. Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 S.Ct. 2519 (2004). Subsequently, the Supreme Court held that Ring is not retroactive to cases on habeas corpus review. Schriro v. Sum- merlin, 124 S.Ct. at 2526. Thus, Ring ultimately does not affect the current appeal. Given the length of time that had passed since oral argument, we then gave the parties an opportunity to file supplemental briefs. We have received and considered those briefs and this case can now be decided.

In order to set the legal framework for our decision, we first determine that the provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effec- tive Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”) do not apply to this case. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244 et seq. Chapter 153 of MOORMANN v. SCHRIRO 14013 AEDPA, dealing with general habeas corpus petitions, does not apply to cases which were pending at the time AEDPA became effective. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 336 (1997) (“[T]he new provisions of chapter 153 generally apply only to cases filed after the [Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty] Act became effective.”). Moormann filed his initial habeas petition in July 1991, and an amended petition in September 1993, both well before AEDPA’s effective date of April 24, 1996. Id. at 322. The provisions of chapter 154, dealing with special habeas corpus proceedings in capital cases, do not apply unless a state “opts in” by establishing a statute or court rule for the appointment and compensation of competent counsel in state post-conviction proceedings brought by indigent capital prisoners. See 28 U.S.C. § 2261(b). It is undisputed that Arizona has not “opted in.” Thus, neither the general nor the capital case provisions of AEDPA apply to this case.

The parties, as is to be expected under the our pre-AEDPA capital habeas jurisprudence, devote a great deal of time to discussing whether Moormann’s various claims can be con- sidered in federal court, or whether they have been forfeited by his failure to bring them in state court, or by his having presented them in a manner that invokes state procedural bars to their consideration by the state supreme court. See Duncan v. Henry, 513 U.S. 364, 365 (1995). Although we affirm the district court’s dismissal of most of the claims, we observe that some of Moormann’s federal claims were never properly litigated in state court, but were handled by counsel with a conflict of interest. Moormann thus presents some claims of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel that appear color- able on this limited record. We therefore vacate the district court’s judgment and remand for further proceedings on those claims.

I. FACTS

The facts are set out in all their lurid detail in the Arizona Supreme Court’s opinion on direct appeal. State v. Moor- 14014 MOORMANN v. SCHRIRO mann, 744 P.2d 679 (1987). Moormann appeals his convic- tion for the murder of his adoptive mother during a furlough from state prison. Moormann was apprehended after his strange and inconsistent behavior came to the attention of the local police.

In January 1984, Robert Moormann was incarcerated in the Arizona State Prison in Florence, Arizona, serving a sentence of nine years to life for kidnapping. Moormann’s adoptive mother, Roberta, then age 74, traveled by bus on Thursday, January 12, to visit with Moormann during a 72-hour fur- lough. They checked into the Blue Mist Motel in Florence.

At about seven a.m. the next morning, Friday, January 13, 1984, Moormann called Marianne Southworth, the friend who had brought Roberta to the prison from the bus depot, and told her that when she came to the motel that afternoon, he would like her to take him to Mesa so that he could see a lawyer. Sometime between six and seven-thirty a.m., Moormann walked to a store where he purchased a buck knife, a steak knife, and some food. Shortly after eight a.m., Moormann went to a local pizza parlor owned by a former prison guard, where he bought a soda. He told the owner that he was on fur- lough with his mother, that she was not feeling well, but that they would come back that evening for dinner.

At about nine a.m., Moormann went to the front desk of the Blue Mist and asked the owner to hold both maid service and phone calls because his mother was ill. At around this time, he also approached the owner’s wife, asked her not to come to the room because his mother was sick, and asked to borrow some disinfectant spray. She testified that Moormann smelled horrible, that he had some blood on his face, and that some towels he later left outside his room smelled so bad that she threw them away.

When Roberta’s friend, Marianne Southworth, arrived that afternoon with Roberta’s suitcase, Moormann told her that his MOORMANN v. SCHRIRO 14015 mother had been gone since he returned from getting her a salad at ten that morning. Moormann also said that his mother had asked him to dispose of some garbage bags. Marianne refused to help dispose of the bags. She noticed that Roberta’s purse was still in the motel room and that the room was extremely cold because the air conditioning was turned up all the way.

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