Sharon May Rockwell v. Joan Yukins

341 F.3d 507, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 17895, 2003 WL 22014700

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: August 27, 2003
• Docket: 00-1992
• Status: Published

Opinions

DAVID A. NELSON, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., C.J., BOGGS, BATCHELDER, GILMAN, GIBBONS, and ROGERS, JJ., joined. CLAY, J. (pp. 514-523), delivered a separate dissenting opinion, in which DAUGHTREY, MOORE, and COLE, JJ., joined.

OPINION

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge.

The petitioner in this habeas corpus action, Sharon Rockwell, was convicted at trial in a state court of conspiring with her sons to murder the boys’ father, her husband. A federal writ of habeas corpus was subsequently granted on the ground that her Sixth Amendment right to present a complete defense precluded the state trial court from barring evidence that Mr. Rockwell had abused his sons sexually. Under the legal standard prescribed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the writ should not have been issued unless exclusion of the evidence in question involved an “unreasonable” application of, or was contrary to, federal law clearly established by the United States Supreme Court. Concluding that the result reached in the state court passes muster under the statutory test, we shall reverse the grant of habeas relief.

I

As we noted in an earlier appeal in this case, Rockwell v. Yukins, 217 F.3d 421, 422-23 (6th Cir.2000), Sharon and Edward Rockwell had three sons. One of the sons, acting with two friends, attempted to kill Mr. Rockwell by cutting the brake lines on his car. The attempt failed. Then, in a second unsuccessful attempt on Mr. Rockwell’s life, the two friends hit him on the head with a baseball bat. Although Mrs. Rockwell was not present on either occasion, she had engaged in discussions with one or more of her sons about killing Mr. Rockwell. On the strength of these discussions, the State of Michigan charged Mrs. Rockwell with conspiracy to commit murder.

Mrs. Rockwell’s defense, as her lawyer described it at a pretrial hearing, was that her participation in the talk of killing Mr. Rockwell was not intended to further an actual murder; rather, according to counsel, Mrs, Rockwell’s purpose had been to let the boys vent the extreme and abiding hatred they harbored against their father for having abused them, sexually and otherwise, when they were younger. “[Mrs. Rockwell] felt in her heart that the only way she could keep the situation under control,” defense counsel explained, “was to allow the boys to talk and fantasize about [killing the hated Mr. Rockwell.]” Far from agreeing to a murder, the theory went, Mrs. Rockwell hoped to forestall a murder through what her lawyer seems to have viewed as some sort of talk therapy.

In connection with this “therapy defense,” as we characterized it in our earlier opinion, Mrs. Rockwell wanted to show at trial that Mr. Rockwell had sexually abused his sons. The prosecution wanted to exclude evidence of the alleged abuse. The state trial court ordered briefing and heard argument on the admissibility of the evidence of abuse, after which it ordered the evidence excluded as not “material” under Mich. Rule of Evid. 404.¹

When the case went to trial, Mrs. Rockwell elected not to take the stand. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and Mrs. Rockwell was sentenced to imprisonment for life. An appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals followed.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, succinctly explaining its rationale as follows:

“We find no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s exclusion of evidence of the victim’s alleged prior acts of abuse against defendant’s and the victim’s children. People v. Watkins, 176 Mich.App. 428, 440 N.W.2d 36 (1989). Defendant was merely limited in the method with which to present her defense and not deprived [of] the opportunity to present the same. Although marginally relevant, the evidence was properly excluded under MRE 403.”²

Mrs. Rockwell applied to the Michigan Supreme Court for leave to appeal the affir-mance of her conviction, but further review was denied.

Mrs. Rockwell then filed her habeas action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The initial pleading raised two issues, insufficiency of the evidence and improper exclusion of the evidence of sexual abuse, both of which had been exhausted in the state courts. The district court eventually granted Mrs. Rockwell leave to amend her petition to include an unexhausted claim as well. Following a hearing at which arguments were presented on the merits, the district court granted the writ on the ground that the state trial court’s decision to exclude evidence of the alleged sexual abuse clearly violated Mrs. Rockwell’s constitutional right to present a defense — and “[n]o reasonable jurist could conclude otherwise.”

The soundness of this proposition was not decided in the initial appeal to our court. The panel that heard the appeal vacated the judgment on the ground that the district court should not have reviewed a “mixed” petition containing an unex-hausted claim in addition to the exhausted claims. The first panel remanded the case with a suggestion that the district court could reenter its original decision after allowing Mrs. Rockwell to dismiss her unexhausted claim. See Rockwell v. Yukins, 217 F.3d at 425.

On remand, the district court accepted this suggestion. Mrs. Rockwell moved for dismissal of her unexhausted claim and reentry of the habeas judgment, and the district court granted the motion.

The warden again appealed to our court. Reaching the merits of the ease, a divided three-judge panel reversed the district court’s judgment. The Ml court then voted to rehear the case en banc. Supplemental briefs having been filed, and the case having been reargued, the appeal is now ready for decision by the full court.

II

As amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub.L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996), subsection (d) of 28 U.S.C. § 2254 provides, in relevant part, as follows:

“(d) 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.... ”

This version of the statute applies to habe-as applications filed, as Mrs. Rockwell’s was, after April 24, 1996, the effective date of AEDPA. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997).

The statute means what it says. See Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 402-13, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). What the statute says, to repeat, is that habeas relief may not be granted unless the state court’s decision was either “contrary to ... clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,”³ or “involved an unreasonable application of ... [such] law.”

Mrs. Rockwell does not contend that the affirmance of her conviction by the state court of appeals was “contrary to” clear Supreme Court caselaw. She does contend, however, that it involved an unreasonable application of such law.

For this contention to be accepted, Mrs. Rockwell must do more than persuade us that the Michigan judiciary’s application of federal law was incorrect. As Justice O’Connor said, speaking for the Court in Williams:

“In § 2254(d)(1), Congress specifically used the word ‘unreasonable,’ and not a term like ‘erroneous’ or ‘incorrect.’ Under § 2254(d)(l)’s ‘unreasonable application’ clause, then, a federal habeas court may not issue the writ simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or incorrectly. Rather, that application must also be unreasonable.” Williams, 529 U.S. at 411, 120 S.Ct. 1495 (emphasis supplied).

“[A]n unreasonable application of federal law is different from an incorrect or erroneous application of federal law.” Id. at 412 (emphasis in original). And in making the “unreasonable application” inquiry, we “should ask whether the state court’s application of clearly established federal law was ‘objectively’ unreasonable.” Id. at 409.

In Mrs. Rockwell’s case, as we have seen, the Michigan Court of Appeals concluded that the probative value of the evidence of Edward Rockwell’s alleged abuse of his sons was substantially outweighed by the danger that unfair prejudice would ensue were the evidence to be admitted. This conclusion may or may not have been erroneous, but we cannot say that it represented an objectively unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent.

A Supreme Court decision that the district court found “particularly instructive,” Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974), held that the defendant in a burglary case had a constitutional right to cross-examine a crucial prosecution witness about a juvenile burglary adjudication for which the witness was on probation, notwithstanding a state rule making evidence of juvenile adjudications inadmissible. The Court emphasized that “[c]ross-examination is the principal means by which the believability of a witness and the truth of his testimony are tested,” adding that the juvenile’s testimony “provided ‘a crucial link in the proof ... of [the defendant’s] act.’ ” Id. at 316 and 317, 94 S.Ct. 1105 (citation omitted). “In this setting,” the Court concluded, “... the [Sixth Amendment] right of confrontation is paramount to the State’s policy of protecting a juvenile offender.” Id. at 319, 94 S.Ct. 1105.

In the case at bar, by contrast, the evidence of sexual abuse was not being proffered to attack the believability of a crucial witness against Mrs. Rockwell. The rule under which the trial court excluded the evidence, moreover, is not aimed at protecting juvenile offenders. The interests at stake in this case are entirely different than those at stake in Davis. Because Davis is readily distinguishable, and because the gloss Mrs. Rockwell would have us put on the case flies in the face of a line of authority (to which we shall turn shortly) culminating in United States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 118 S.Ct. 1261, 140 L.Ed.2d 413 (1998), we reject the claim that the Michigan court’s decision represented an unreasonable application of Davis.

Mrs. Rockwell attempts to extract from Davis and other Supreme Court cases a general rule that a criminal defendant must be permitted to present any evidence that she deems critical to her defense. In this connection she cites Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683, 106 S.Ct. 2142, 90 L.Ed.2d 636 (1986), which holds that “the Constitution guarantees criminal defendants ‘a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense.’ ” Id. at 690, 106 S.Ct. 2142 (citations omitted).

But the Supreme Court has made it perfectly clear that the right to present a “complete” defense is not an unlimited right to ride roughshod over reasonable evidentiary restrictions. A defendant “does not have an unfettered right to offer testimony that is incompetent, privileged, or otherwise inadmissible under standard rules of evidence.” Taylor v. Illinois, 484 U.S. 400, 410, 108 S.Ct. 646, 98 L.Ed.2d 798 (1988). Rather, she “must comply with established rules of procedure and evidence designed to assure both fairness and reliability in the ascertainment of guilt and innocence.” Chambers v. Mississippi 410 U.S. 284, 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973).

As the Supreme Court explained in Scheffer:

“state and federal rulemakers have broad latitude under the Constitution to establish rules excluding evidence from criminal trials. Such rules do not abridge an accused’s right to present a defense so long as they are not ‘arbitrary’ or ‘disproportionate to the purposes they are designed to serve.’ ” 523 U.S. at 308[, 118 S.Ct. 1261] (citations omitted).

A defendant’s right to present a “complete” defense, in other words, does not automatically trump state evidentiary rules. The competing interests must be balanced, and “a defendant’s interest in presenting ... evidence may [have to] bow to accommodate other legitimate interests in the criminal trial process.” Id. (Internal quotation marks and citations omitted.)

It was not objectively unreasonable, in our view, for the Michigan court to conclude that “other legitimate interests in the criminal trial process” outweighed Mrs. Rockwell’s interest in presenting evidence of her husband’s prior conduct. The evidence of sexual abuse posed a substantial danger of unfair prejudice — a risk that the jury would be tempted to acquit Mrs. Rockwell not because of any sense that she was innocent of conspiring with her sons to kill Mr. Rockwell but because of a sense that killing would be too good for such a man.

In addition to the danger of unfair prejudice, the sexual abuse evidence presented a risk of undue delay and confusion of the issues. The facts that Mrs. Rockwell wished to introduce into evidence were disputed. Resolution of this tangential dispute would have complicated the trial and could have tended to mislead the jury.

It is true that the chances of the jury’s accepting Mrs. Rockwell’s “therapy defense” may have been diminished by exclusion of the sexual abuse evidence. But it would not be correct to say that Mrs. Rockwell was deprived of her defense. Exclusion of the evidence would not have prevented her from testifying that her sons hated their father because of his unspeakable behavior toward them over the years.⁴ It would not have barred her from telling the jury that she thought such talk had a healthy prophylactic effect; that she did not think it would lead to overt action; and that she had never been a party to any mutual understanding or agreement to commit murder. The court’s ruling barred Mrs. Rockwell only from testifying that her husband’s abuse of her sons was sexual in nature.

Explication of the sexual aspect of the abuse, in short, did not go to the essence of the “talk therapy” defense. Rather, it was a detail — an important detail, to be sure, but a detail nonetheless.

It is far from certain, moreover, that presentation of this detail to the jury would have increased the likelihood of Mrs. Rockwell’s acquittal. The more heinous Mr. Rockwell’s offenses, the jury could reasonably have concluded, the more likely it was that Mrs. Rockwell understood the talk of murder to be in earnest. If, on the other hand, testimony that the abuse was sexual would have made the jury more likely to acquit Mrs. Rockwell, it might well have done so on the improper basis mentioned above — a sense that the conspiracy was justified — rather than on any legitimate basis. In these circumstances, we believe it was not unreasonable for the Michigan Court of Appeals to weigh the competing interests as it did.⁵

The decision made by the Michigan court was a judgment call of the sort that judges make all the time. Some members of this court, had they been on the state bench, would have made a different call. We cannot say they would have acted unreasonably in doing so, particularly in view of the fact that the danger of undue prejudice could have been minimized by a cautionary instruction. See Lewis v. Wilkinson, 307 F.3d 413, 422 (6th Cir.2002). What we can say, however, is that the call made by the Michigan court was well within that court’s discretion. The decision to exclude evidence of the sexual nature of the victim’s mistreatment of his sons did not, in our opinion, involve an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The decision of the district court is REVERSED, and the case is REMANDED with instructions to dismiss the petition.

1 . Although the prosecution had cited Rule 404 in argument, its relevance is not readily apparent. Rule 404 provides that evidence of a person's character is generally inadmissible for the purpose of proving that the person acted in conformity therewith on a particular occasion.

2 . Rule 403 — which had also been cited in argument before the state trial court — provides that relevant evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.

3 . The condition of this "contraiy to” clause would be met if "the state court arrive[d] at a conclusion opposite to that reached by [the U.S. Supreme] Court on a question of law or if the state court decide[d] a case differently than [the U.S. Supreme Court has] on a set of materially indistinguishable facts.” Williams, 529 U.S. at 413, 120 S.Ct. 1495.

4 . By the same token, the ruling did not bar Mrs. Rockwell from simply testifying that the boys had an intense hatred of their father. If such testimony had gone unchallenged, the jury might well have accepted it. If the prosecution had cross-examined Mrs. Rockwell as to the basis of the hatred, on the other hand, or if it had presented the husband as a witness and evoked a denial that he had done anything to cause the boys to hate him, the door would then have been opened, in all probability, for Mrs. Rockwell to present evidence of the alleged sexual misconduct.

5 . Even if the Michigan court acted unreasonably in concluding that exclusion of the sexual abuse evidence was constitutional, any error was probably harmless. There was evidence at trial that Mrs. Rockwell herself had attempted to acquire a bomb, that she had continued to discuss killing her husband even after she knew there had been an actual attempt on his life, and that, on the night of the second attempt, she had taken her younger children out of the house so that they would not be present during the attack. This evidence severely undercuts the defense theory that Mrs. Rockwell believed her sons were merely engaging in harmless talk.