Turley v. Estep

375 F. App'x 867
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedApril 12, 2010
Docket09-1215
StatusUnpublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 375 F. App'x 867 (Turley v. Estep) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Turley v. Estep, 375 F. App'x 867 (10th Cir. 2010).

Opinion

ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY *

CARLOS F. LUCERO, Circuit Judge.

David Turley requests a certificate of appealability (“COA”) to appeal the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habe-as petition. We deny a COA and dismiss the appeal.

*868 Adopting the recommendations of a magistrate judge, the district court dismissed several of Turley’s claims on procedural grounds and denied his remaining claims on the merits. To obtain a GOA for the procedural rulings, Turley must demonstrate “that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the petition states a valid claim of the denial of a constitutional right and that jurists of reason would find it debatable whether the district court was correct in its procedural ruling.” Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484, 120 S.Ct. 1595, 146 L.Ed.2d 542 (2000). To obtain a COA for the merits rulings, Turley must show “that reasonable jurists would find the district court’s assessment of the constitutional claims debatable or wrong.” Id.

I

The district court found that many of Turley’s claims had not been exhausted through the course of Turley’s direct appeals and two state post-conviction proceedings relating to the convictions challenged here. 1 Concluding that state court review would now be unavailable, the court dismissed these claims under the “anticipatory procedural bar” doctrine. See Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 735 n. 1, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991). The propriety of that ruling is not debatable.

As the magistrate judge explained, claims three, nine, and ten- — -in which Tur-ley objected to the admission of evidence relating to his arrest warrant, a search warrant for his wife’s vehicle, and the probable cause determinations underlying the warrants — were not raised in Turley’s direct appeals or post-conviction proceedings. 2 Similarly, claim eight, regarding severance of Turley’s habitual criminal proceeding from that of his co-defendant, and claim eleven, regarding a jury instruction on complicity, were never raised before the Colorado Court of Appeals either on direct appeal or during post-conviction proceedings.

Turley also failed to exhaust part of his fifth claim, which challenges three prior convictions upon which the state court relied for the habitual criminal adjudication. Turley did challenge a 1979 conviction in his initial post-conviction proceeding, see Turley, 18 P.3d at 806, but omitted this challenge from the certiorari petition he filed with the Colorado Supreme Court. “Claims not included in a petition for discretionary review to the state’s highest court are not exhausted and are procedurally defaulted when, as here, they are now time-barred.” Gonzales v. McKune, 279 F.3d 922, 924 (10th Cir.2002).

Claim twelve — ineffective assistance of trial counsel — was only partially exhausted. Turley’s allegation that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to adequately investigate and challenge the prior convictions underlying his habitual criminal de *869 termination was rejected on the merits in his last post-conviction proceeding. See Turley, 01CA1991. 3 But his additional allegations that trial counsel improperly informed Turley about his right to testify in the habitual criminal phase of the trial and failed to move for a mistrial based on the incompetence of co-defendant’s counsel were not exhausted.

Finally, Turley’s claim four — in which he complains the prosecution elicited testimony from his wife regarding the fact that he was in jail — was addressed by the district court on the merits. The court evidently concluded that this claim was preserved as part of the cumulative error claim presented in Turley’s first post-conviction proceeding challenging the convictions currently under review. However, this claim was not raised independently or as a component of a broader cumulative error claim in that or in any other state proceeding related to the criminal prosecution under review here. 4

These exhaustion deficiencies bar habe-as review under the anticipatory procedural bar doctrine. Procedural bar may be avoided if “the petitioner can demonstrate cause and prejudice or a fundamental miscarriage of justice.” Smith v. Workman, 550 F.3d 1258, 1274 (10th Cir.2008), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 130 S.Ct. 238, 175 L.Ed.2d 163 (2009). But Turley has not attempted to show that either exception applies here.

II

A

Turley argues that Colorado’s scheme for handling peremptory challenges violated his constitutional rights in two respects. First, he contends that he was afforded fewer peremptory challenges than a capital defendant would receive when facing the same (life) sentence he faced as an habitual-criminal defendant. Second, he claims that the joint peremptory challenges allotted the defense in multi-defendant criminal prosecutions deprived him of the guaranteed number of individual challenges he would have received had he been tried alone.

The Supreme Court “has consistently held that there is no freestanding constitutional right to peremptory challenges.” Rivera v. Illinois, — U.S.-, 129 S.Ct. 1446, 1453, 173 L.Ed.2d 320 (2009). Consequently, “the ‘right’ to peremptory challenges is ‘denied or impaired’ only if the defendant does not receive that which state law provides.” Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 89, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988). Turley does not allege that he received fewer peremptory challenges than Colorado law provided for a defendant in his circumstances.

However, Turley appears to ai*gue that Colorado law violates equal protection principles. Because neither a suspect class nor a fundamental right is involved, 5 *870 the State need possess only a legitimate interest rationally related to the challenged statutory distinction. Vacco v. Quill, 521 U.S. 793, 799, 117 S.Ct. 2293, 138 L.Ed.2d 834 (1997). It clearly does: Capital offenses, regardless of whether they implicate the death penalty, are “plainly the most serious offenses,” warranting a unique allowance (for the defense and the State) of peremptory challenges. Turley, 18 P.3d at 805.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
375 F. App'x 867, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/turley-v-estep-ca10-2010.