Wakilii Brown v. Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections

Opinion

FOR PUBLICATION

In the

United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 25-10210

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WAKILII BROWN, Petitioner-Appellant,

versus

COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Respondent-Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cv-00504-LSC

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Before BRANCH, LUCK, and KIDD, Circuit Judges. LUCK, Circuit Judge:

An Alabama jury convicted Wakilii Brown of murdering his girlfriend and her mother. Based on the jury’s recommendation, the trial court sentenced him to death. He exhausted his state

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appeals to no avail, and a federal district court denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. We granted Brown’s motion for a certificate of appealability on one issue: whether the admission at trial of his statement to his aunt that he “hurt them girls” violated the federal Due Process Clause.

With the benefit of oral argument, we hold that it did not.

First, admitting Brown’s statement didn’t violate the Due Process Clause because it didn’t play a crucial, critical, and highly significant part in his conviction. Second, the state appellate court didn’t unreasonably conclude that any error in admitting Brown’s statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, and we must defer to its conclusion under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). And third, admitting Brown’s statement didn’t have a substantial and injurious effect or influence on the jury’s guilty verdict. We thus affirm.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

A. THE MURDERS

In the fall of 2000, Cherea Jemison moved to Sylacauga, Alabama , to live with her mother, Dotty. 1 She brought her boyfriend , Wakilii Brown; her firstborn, Fred; and her two children with Brown—Tatiyana and Wakilii Jr. Brown v. State, 74 So. 3d 984, 993 (Ala. Crim. App. 2010), aff’d sub nom., Ex parte Brown, 74 So. 3d 1039 (Ala. 2011).

1 Cherea and Dotty share a last name, so we’ll refer to them by their first names

for clarity.

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On Sunday, March 11, 2001, at around 5:30 p.m., someone called Sylacauga police from a payphone to tell them that there was “something wrong” at Dotty’s house. The caller didn’t give his name. An officer went to Dotty’s house and knocked on the door. No one answered, so the officer left. Around four hours later, Sylacauga police received another call—this time from Adam Murrell, who police later discovered was Brown’s uncle. Mr. Murrell, who lived fifty miles away in Hope Hull, Alabama, explained that he “felt like there was something wrong in Sylacauga.” He then hung up and called back; when he did, he gave police Dotty’s address and told them that “something bad had happened” there. Mr. Murrell may have mentioned that someone in the house had been killed.

The officers dispatched to Dotty’s house for the second time that evening didn’t hesitate to enter. The door was locked, so they climbed into the house through a window and opened the door from inside. Inside, they found Cherea and Dotty murdered in their bedrooms. According to forensics, both women had been beaten to death with a blunt object Friday evening or early Saturday morning. There was blood in the bedrooms, but also in the hallway and on a carpet runner bunched up outside the doors of both rooms. The blood on the carpet runner was later traced to Dotty. Cherea was covered with some blankets. Dotty was bound and gagged. The killer had used silver duct tape for her wrists and gag, but green duct tape for her ankles. There was no sign of Brown, the children, or Cherea’s car—a blue Mazda.

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B. BROWN’S ARREST AND INDICTMENT Sylacauga police searched the house well into Monday morning. Sometime before 2:00 a.m., one of the investigators at the scene received a call informing him that Brown was in Cleveland , Ohio—his hometown. The investigators flew to Cleveland early that morning.

While they were on their way, at around 9:30 a.m., Cleveland police located Brown. He’d barricaded himself in an apartment with a gun. For more than a day, Brown refused to surrender . The police had to fire “at least [sixteen]” canisters of tear gas into the apartment to flush him out and arrest him. When the Sylacauga investigators arrived, Cleveland police handed over Brown to them. Cherea’s car was located about a hundred feet away from the barricaded apartment. Her checkbook was inside. And at Brown’s mother’s house in Cleveland, they found Cherea’s three children. See id. at 995.

The State of Alabama charged Brown with three counts of capital murder: one for killing Dotty and Cherea “pursuant to one scheme or course of conduct” and one apiece for the robbery-murder of each woman. Id. at 992. The case went to trial in February 2008. Id. at 1012.

C. BROWN’S TRIAL

Over the course of four days, the state presented twenty-five witnesses and over 120 pieces of evidence against Brown. Brown cross-examined the state’s witnesses but didn’t put on his own case. The state’s theory was that Brown killed Cherea and Dotty on the

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evening of Friday, March 9, 2001, before fleeing to Cleveland with Cherea’s car, checkbook, and children. The state pointed to the apartment standoff, of course, but there was much more. Testimony from Brown’s daughter and fingerprint evidence put Brown at Dotty’s house the night of the murders. Moreover, before fleeing , Brown had gathered up as much money as he could, sometimes lying to others about why he needed it. And on top of all that, Mr. Murrell—whose only connection to Cherea and Dotty was his kinship to Brown—knew to warn Sylacauga police that they needed to check on Dotty’s house because “something bad had happened” there.

1. Brown’s Daughter and Fingerprints Put Him at the Scene Brown’s daughter, Tatiyana, testified that the night of the murders she saw Brown standing over Cherea’s body. 2 Tatiyana had been asleep in her bedroom with Fred and Wakilii Jr. Stirred awake by the sound of Brown and Cherea “fussing”—“screaming” at each other—Tatiyana “peep[ed]” out around the bedroom door into the hallway. There, she saw Cherea lying motionless on the floor with blood on her chest, eyes closed. Brown was “standing over” her; he didn’t see Tatiyana. Dotty’s bedroom door was open, but Tatiyana didn’t see or hear her grandmother. Scared, she ran back to her bed and went to sleep. She couldn’t recall getting up

2 Brown’s habeas petition explains that, although his daughter’s name was

spelled as “Tatitana” “[i]n the trial transcript and all post-trial filings to date,” the correct spelling is “Tatiyana.” We use the correct spelling in this opinion.

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the next morning or traveling to Cleveland. She was four years old at the time.

In addition to Tatiyana, the state called a seventeen-year veteran fingerprint examiner. He explained that he located fingerprints from Brown’s left index finger and thumb on the cardboard roll of green duct tape used to bind Dotty’s ankles.

2. Brown Scrounged and Lied for Money Before Fleeing Witnesses also established that Brown had scrounged for money on Friday and Saturday before fleeing to Cleveland. Brown’s neighbor, Michael Pope, testified that he hired Brown for $200 to help him paint a house on Friday, March 9, before the murders . He and Brown were painting the house when it started to rain, forcing them to stop. Mr. Pope paid Brown $50 for the partial work, but Brown pressed him for more money. He hung around with Mr. Pope until Mr. Pope’s wife, Aletha, got off work at 7:00 p.m., after which Mr. Pope drove Brown to meet Mrs. Pope and asked her to give Brown $10 in cash. Then, Brown accompanied Mr. Pope and his wife to a gas station so that the Popes could cash a check for another $20. Afterward, Mr. Pope and his wife dropped off Brown on “Hammett Street”—not at Dotty’s house— and that was the last time Mr. Pope saw Brown until the trial. On cross-examination, Mr. Pope also testified that he never saw Brown driving Cherea’s blue car. In the month or so Brown worked for Mr. Pope, Brown always hitched a ride with a coworker.

The next morning, on Saturday, March 10, Brown went to Alabama Trust Bank, where Mrs. Pope worked as a teller. She

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recalled that Brown had Cherea’s child Fred with him. Brown tried to cash a $200 check against Dotty’s account; Mrs. Pope told him she couldn’t cash that check because Dotty’s account was with a different bank. He stepped outside and returned a bit later with a $200 check against Cherea’s account, which Mrs. Pope was able to cash for him. Brown also prodded Mrs. Pope to give him the remainder of his pay for the unfinished painting job. Mrs. Pope called her husband and they agreed to give Brown another $100. Brown told her that he needed the money because Wakilii Jr. was sick. When she asked for specifics, Brown told her that the child was receiving treatment for a respiratory problem at Children’s Hospital in Birmingham. That was a lie—a records custodian at the hospital testified that no one with the name Wakilii had been treated on any day in March 2001, let alone on Friday or Saturday.

Later that Saturday, Brown went to the drive-through at First Federal Bank, where Dotty did her banking. The teller there at the time testified that Dotty often did business at the drive- through, at least once a week. Although Dotty usually came in Cherea’s blue car, she always cashed her checks herself. But that Saturday, someone driving a blue car used the drive-through lane farthest away from the tellers to cash a $200 check against Dotty’s account. The teller couldn’t see into the car when the check came through the pneumatic tube; she tried to speak to the driver, but the driver didn’t respond. Once she cashed the check and the blue car pulled away, the teller saw that the driver was a black male. Next to the driver in the passenger seat was a short figure—the teller could see only the top of a head.

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3. Other Evidence Indicated Cherea and Dotty Were Killed on Friday Witnesses from outside Sylacauga confirmed that Cherea and Dotty were murdered Friday night. Cherea’s sister testified that she spoke to her sister and mother “[a]t least three times a week on the telephone.” She’d flown down to Birmingham that Friday and planned to visit her mother and sister. She called them around 11:00 p.m. on Friday, but they didn’t answer. She called them again “several times” on Saturday, Cherea’s birthday. Again, they didn’t answer; their total silence struck her as “very” unusual. She didn’t learn they’d been killed until after she returned to Cleveland on Sunday.

Also, the state’s forensic pathologist testified that, based on the degree of rigor mortis and livor mortis, Cherea and Dotty likely had been killed between thirty-six and forty-eight hours before the police entered Dotty’s house, or between late Friday evening and early Saturday morning.

4. Brown’s Family Knew that “Something Bad Had Happened” at Dotty’s House Then, there was Mr. Murrell, who’d told the police out of the blue on Sunday that “something bad had happened” at Dotty’s house. Brown was Mr. Murrell’s nephew, but Mr. Murrell testified that he didn’t know Brown personally—he only “knew of him.” Nor did he live anywhere near Sylacauga; Hope Hull was fifty miles away, and his trip to Sylacauga to testify at Brown’s trial was the second time he’d ever set foot there.

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At trial, Mr. Murrell professed an array of incapacities. In response to one question about what he recalled, he offered that he’d suffered four strokes. Later, he volunteered to the trial court that he recently had surgery for a tooth that “swole [sic] up big as [his] fist” and that he was having seizures. And asked whether he remembered calling Sylacauga police, he responded that he couldn’t read or write. 3 He also claimed that he couldn’t remember his statement to Sylacauga police investigators, so the court excused the jury while the state read him the transcript of his audiorecorded statement. The jury returned once Mr. Murrell was finally ready to proceed.

The thrust of Mr. Murrell’s testimony was that he called Sylacauga on Sunday because he’d been asked to. At around 9:08 p.m. on Sunday, Mr. Murrell got a call from his sister, Betty Washington. Ms. Washington lived in Cleveland ten or fifteen minutes away from Brown’s mother, with whom Brown had left the children. Ms. Washington asked Mr. Murrell to call Sylacauga police, although Mr. Murrell didn’t say why. Call records showed that he did call the police—then he hung up and called Ms. Washington , then the police again, then Ms. Washington again.

When the state questioned Mr. Murrell about exactly what he relayed from Ms. Washington to Sylacauga police, he had trouble remembering. Mr. Murrell recalled that, after Ms. Washington

3 Mr. Murrell also claimed that he “went blind” sometime between March

2001 and the 2008 trial, but he was able to see either Brown or Wakilii Jr. from across the courtroom.

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called him, he’d “told [the police] that something had—go check that house out[,] that something bad had happened.” He also recalled that Ms. Washington told him to “check it out” and gave him Dotty’s phone number to give to the police.

The police dispatcher to whom Mr. Murrell spoke testified that, in addition to reporting that “something bad had happened,” Mr. Murrell had told her that Cherea and Dotty may have been killed. Mr. Murrell didn’t remember telling her that; initially, he denied saying it, but then conceded that he “may have said [it].” 4 Sylacauga police investigator Jeff Mobbs followed up with Mr. Murrell shortly after his call. Through Mr. Murrell, Investigator Mobbs got Ms. Washington’s number. He called her that evening at around 11:30 p.m. and took her statement. He didn’t discuss the substance of that statement during his direct examination.

To establish why Ms. Washington had prompted Mr. Murrell to call Sylacauga police, the state called her to the stand. She’d

4 The police dispatcher’s testimony was consistent with the transcript of

Mr. Murrell’s recorded statement, which had been read into the record outside the jury’s presence. The recorded statement reflected that Mr. Murrell had straightforwardly told Sylacauga police that Ms. Washington had told him that “Wakilii Brown was or had come up there [to Cleveland] with the three children and said—Wakilii told some of them he had killed the daughter—I mean, the—the girlfriend and the girlfriend’s mother.” The recorded statement also aligned with Mr. Murrell’s testimony about what Ms. Washington had asked him to do: “[Ms. Washington] told me to see could [sic] I check it out, so I got on the phone and called Sylacauga[.] . . . And I told the[ ] [police] I think something bad had happened to the house—to that house. And I got the phone number from my sister up in Cleveland.”

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been uncooperative, so the state obtained permission to treat her as a court witness.5 She testified that she only distantly knew Cherea, didn’t know Dotty, and didn’t know where they lived. Nor did she associate with Brown. That Sunday, she explained, she called Mr. Murrell because “Wakilii was in Cleveland” and there were “rumors.” She claimed she couldn’t recall telling Mr. Murrell to call Sylacauga police and that she merely asked him to “find out what was happening.” She also denied telling him that someone might be dead or that anyone was dead at Dotty’s house. Ms. Washington seemed to grow frustrated when the state pushed her on why she’d called Mr. Murrell, testifying that she “[couldn’t] recall . . . [b]ecause [the state] wo[uld]n’t let [her] put in there what [she] want[ed] to put in there.” The state then asked her pointblank whether Brown had told her that he’d killed them or done something wrong to them. She vehemently denied that Brown had told her either of those things.

5. The State Impeaches Betty Washington The state then sought to impeach Ms. Washington with the statement she’d made to Investigator Mobbs on the evening of Sunday, March 11, 2001. Brown objected that the statement was

5 Alabama law allows witnesses to be called as court witnesses; “all parties are

entitled to cross-examine witnesses thus called.” Ala. R. Crim. P. 19.2(b) (numbered as rule 19.3(a)(1) at the time of Brown’s trial).

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hearsay. In front of the jury, the state responded that it was offering the statement for impeachment purposes:

[The State]: Investigator Mobbs, you’ve already testi- fied that you had the occasion to call and speak with a person you knew and [who’d] identified herself as Betty Washington from the crime scene from your cell phone; is that correct?

Investigator Mobbs: That’s correct.

Q: And when you talked with Ms. Washington, did she give you information about what the defendant had told her?

A: She did.

Q: What did she say?

[Brown’s Attorney]: Judge, I’m going to object to that being hearsay.

[...]

The Court: Let him state his objection. Go ahead.

[Brown’s Attorney]: Judge, we object to the hearsay. There’s—we reviewed the statement. There’s nothing in the statement that he got about Ms. Washington talking to Wakilii.

[The State]: I disagree. I disagree. If you read it, it’s very clear. And it’s [a] prior inconsistent statement. The [s]tate is offering it for impeachment for the

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witness [Ms. Washington] who just testified and [it] go[es] to her credibility.

After reviewing a written copy of the statement, the trial court allowed the state to proceed. Investigator Mobbs then testified that Ms. Washington told him that Brown told her he hurt Cherea and Dotty:

When I spoke to Ms. Washington, [I] identified myself to her, and she told me that she had been told by her nephew [Brown] that he had done something wrong to them girls up there, he had hurt them girls, and that we needed to go in that house and check and see what’s going on.

[...]

She gave me a lot of information about what he had done there and what was going on there, and she told me at the end of our whole conversation not to tell anybody where I got this information.

After the state rested its case, the trial court proposed instructing the jury “relative to the impeachment that was done with [Ms.] Washington and [Investigator] Mobbs” that “statements used for impeachment purposes are not substantive evidence and [are] not [ ] evidence of the matter stated therein.” The trial court explained that it would give the instruction so as “not [ ] to do anything that would cause the defendant any harm in presenting th[e] evidence in [his] case.” Brown agreed. The state complained the instruction might unfairly single out and thereby undermine

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Investigator Mobbs, but ultimately didn’t object. The trial court then read the jury the instruction it had proposed and asked each juror whether he or she could follow it. The jurors agreed that they could. Brown then rested his case without mentioning Ms. Washington.

6. Closing Arguments

In its initial closing—which spanned thirty-three transcript pages—the state went through the evidence proving that Brown murdered Cherea and Dotty. It exhorted the jury to “look at the pieces of the puzzle” and conclude that everything fit:

Eyewitness[ ] Tati[y]ana Jemison saw the defendant standing over Cherea, bloody and not moving. Look at the scientific evidence. Fingerprints inside the rol[l] of tape still attached to Dotty. Crime scene itself. Placement of bodies. Cover the bodies. Locking the door. His need for money. Why [do] you rob somebody ? Because you need something. You need some money. The defendant lied. Why would he have to lie to the bank teller? Why would he have to say the kid is—the baby is in the hospital? The baby is in the hospital in Children’s. He lied. Why you got to go up to Cleveland and have [a] standoff with the Cleveland police for 20-something hours? Pieces of the puzzle all fit together. And when you look at everything we’ve put on, you’re going to have one conclusion, and that is Wakilii Brown is guilty of all three counts of capital murder.

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The state didn’t mention Mr. Murrell. And it mentioned Ms. Washington only to note that she’d been impeached:

There were some witnesses impeached in here. I submit to you it wasn’t our witnesses. It was the Court’s witness, Betty Washington. And that’s who neither party said they were going to call. She had some information we had to get to you all. Phone records, those conversations. She was impeached.

Brown’s closing argument responded that the evidence was flimsy. He conceded that the state had “prove[n] that he stole some checks and took the car.” But he denied that the state had sufficiently linked him to Cherea’s and Dotty’s murders. Tatiyana had testified that she’d seen Cherea’s body lying face up in the hallway, but Cherea was actually found face down in her bedroom. Brown had driven to Ohio, but driving to Ohio “[wasn’t] evidence in itself that he killed anybody.” Mr. Murrell, though “a nice gentleman,” had memory problems. Police had found Brown’s fingerprints on the roll of green duct tape, true, but that tape “could have been handled by him prior to that day”—it was, after all, found in a house he lived in. For all the blood in the bedrooms and hallway, police hadn’t found any trace of blood in Cherea’s car. How could Brown have violently beaten the two women to death without getting blood on himself and tracking it into the car? And even accepting all the evidence as it appeared, perhaps “somebody else had killed [Cherea and Dotty],” and Brown had simply “c[o]me in and [ ] found them.”

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The state’s fifteen-page rebuttal closing asked the jury to apply its “common sense.” Mr. Murrell, it explained, “wasn’t supposed to tell [police] that Betty Washington was the one that told [him]” something bad happened at Dotty’s house. His doing so had pointed suspicion toward him and Ms. Washington, neither of whom knew Brown well. And so “how in the world could [Mr. Murrell and Ms. Washington]”—in faraway Hope Hull and Cleveland—“have known that unless [Brown] went up there and told [Ms. Washington]?” Even though Ms. Washington testified that she hadn’t told Mr. Murrell anything about any deaths, there’d been a “flurry of phone calls” between them that Sunday, each providing Mr. Murrell with more information to pass along to Sylacauga police. How was it, the state asked, that Mr. Murrell and Ms. Washington had anything to pass along or inquire about in the first place, when “nobody in [the] Sylacauga Police Department” learned of the killings “until 9:30 [p.m.] that night, [or] sometime thereafter”? That “might not have made any sense to [the jurors] at any point in time,” the state argued, but they could make sense of it by surmising that Brown “went up there and told [Ms. Washington ] he did it.”

The state also argued that Tatiyana’s testimony didn’t conflict with the physical evidence. Although police found Cherea face down in her bedroom, the blood in the hallway and the bunchedup carpet runner suggested that Brown had killed Cherea in the hallway and then dragged her into her bedroom. Dotty’s blood, after all, had been on the carpet runner outside the bedrooms even though she too had been found in her room.

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7. The Jury Convicts Brown In the end, the jury convicted Brown of “three counts of capital murder.” Id. at 992. It recommended a sentence of death by a vote of ten to two. Id. The trial court followed the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Brown to death. Id.

II. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

A. STATE APPELLATE PROCEEDINGS Brown appealed his convictions and sentence to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. There, Brown argued that admitting Investigator Mobbs’s testimony about Brown’s statement to Ms. Washington was error—one that abridged his state and federal rights. Id. at 1001.

In allowing the state to present his statement to Ms. Washington through Investigator Mobbs, Brown argued, the trial court violated state law in two ways. First, it didn’t require the state to confront Ms. Washington with her previous statement to Investigator Mobbs and “afford [her] an opportunity . . . to deny” making it, as required by Alabama Rule of Evidence 613(b). Second, the trial court allowed Ms. Washington to be called not for anything she’d say, but for what impeaching her would let in: Investigator Mobbs’s otherwise-inadmissible hearsay about Brown’s statement. See Burgin v. State, 747 So. 2d 916, 919 (Ala. Crim. App. 1999) (explaining that the state may not “call a witness that it [knows will] not give it useful evidence, just so it [can] introduce hearsay evidence . . . hop[ing] that the jury will miss the subtle distinction between impeachment and substantive evidence” (quoting United

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States v. Webster, 734 F.2d 1191, 1192 (7th Cir. 1984))). These errors resulted in the introduction of his statement to Ms. Washington through Investigator Mobbs, Brown continued, which “‘so infected the trial with unfairness’ as to result in a denial of Mr. Brown’s right to due process.”

The state appellate court only partly sided with Brown. It agreed that the trial court erred in allowing Investigator Mobbs to testify about Brown’s statement without giving Ms. Washington a chance to deny that she’d relayed it to Investigator Mobbs. Brown, 74 So. 3d at 1002 (citing Ala. R. Evid. 613(b)). But applying the constitutional harmless-error standard set out in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967), the state appellate court held that “any error” in admitting Brown’s statement was harmless because “the evidence as to Brown’s guilt was overwhelming.” Brown, 74 So. 3d at 1003. Considering “the entire record as a whole,” the court was convinced “beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have returned a verdict of guilty” even without Brown’s statement. Id. (quoting United States v. Hasting, 461 U.S. 499, 510 (1983)).

B. FEDERAL HABEAS PROCEEDINGS After nine years of unsuccessful state postconviction litigation , see Ex parte Brown, 349 So. 3d 826 (Ala. 2020), Brown petitioned the federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus, see Brown v. Hamm, 2024 WL 4341324, at *6 (N.D. Ala. Sept. 27, 2024). Once again, he claimed that the trial court’s error in admitting his statement to Ms. Washington through Investigator Mobbs

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rendered his trial so unfair as to violate his federal due-process right. Id. at *44–45.

The district court denied Brown’s habeas petition. For Brown to obtain habeas relief, the district court explained, he had to satisfy the standard set out in Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993): did admitting his statement have a “substantial and injurious effect . . . in determining the jury’s verdict”? Hamm, 2024 WL 4341324, at *48 (quoting Brecht, 507 U.S. at 623). It didn’t, the district court concluded, in view of the strength of “the record as a whole.” Id. (citing Brecht, 507 U.S. at 623).

Brown appealed, and we granted a certificate of appealability on his due-process claim.

III. DISCUSSION

Brown contends that the trial court violated his federal due-

process right when it admitted his statement to Ms. Washington through Investigator Mobbs that he hurt Cherea and Dotty. That due-process violation, he argues, entitles him to habeas relief.

For three reasons, we disagree. First, admitting Brown’s statement didn’t violate his federal due-process right because the statement didn’t play a crucial, critical, and highly significant part in his conviction. Second, the state appellate court didn’t unreasonably conclude that any due-process violation was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. And third, admitting Brown’s statement didn’t have a “substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.” Johnson v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 132

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F.4th 1309, 1314 (11th Cir. 2025) (quoting Davis v. Ayala, 576 U.S. 257, 267–68 (2015)).

A. ADMITTING BROWN’S STATEMENT DID NOT VIOLATE HIS DUE-PROCESS RIGHT Brown claims that the trial court violated his due-process right when it admitted his statement to Ms. Washington through Investigator Mobbs. See Brown, 74 So. 3d at 1001–03. 6 We begin by discussing the legal standard for evaluating a claim that the admission of evidence violated a defendant’s federal due-process right. Then, we apply that standard to the admission of Brown’s statement.

1. Standard

“[W]hen ‘evidence is introduced that is so unduly prejudicial that it renders the trial fundamentally unfair, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides a mechanism for relief.’” Andrew v. White, 604 U.S. 86, 88 (2025) (quoting Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 825 (1991)); see also id. at 93 (collecting pre- Payne cases for the same proposition). “[T]he category of

6 “The Supreme Court has made clear that we are entitled to affirm the denial

of habeas relief . . . [by] reject[ing] [it] on de novo review.” Reese v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 675 F.3d 1277, 1291 (11th Cir. 2012) (citation modified); see also Conner v. GDCP Warden, 784 F.3d 752, 767 n.16 (11th Cir. 2015) (“[We may] deny writs of habeas corpus under [section] 2254 by engaging in de novo review . . . because a habeas petitioner will not be entitled to a writ of habeas corpus if his or her claim is rejected on de novo review.” (quoting Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370, 390 (2010))). That’s what we’ll do here for Brown’s due-process claim.

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infractions that violate ‘fundamental fairness’ [is] very narrow[],” Dowling v. United States, 493 U.S. 342, 352 (1990), which means a habeas petitioner faces a “high bar” in making an admission-of-evidence due-process claim, Taylor v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 760 F.3d 1284, 1296 (11th Cir. 2014) (affirming denial of habeas petition).

Erroneously admitted evidence offends fundamental fairness only when that evidence is “material in the sense of a crucial, critical, highly significant factor” in the conviction. Williams v. Kemp, 846 F.2d 1276, 1281 (11th Cir. 1988) (quoting Jameson v. Wainwright , 719 F.2d 1125, 1126–27 (11th Cir. 1983)); see also Snowden v. Singletary, 135 F.3d 732, 738 (11th Cir. 1998) (focusing on whether the evidence “went to the heart of the case”). In deciding whether a piece of evidence was crucial, critical, and highly significant, we must “evaluate the trial record as a whole.” Carruth v. Comm’r, Ala. Dep’t of Corr., 93 F.4th 1338, 1357 (11th Cir. 2024) (citing Darden v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 168, 181–83 (1986)). Isolated, ambiguous evidence or argument is rarely a “crucial, critical, highly significant factor” in a conviction. See, e.g., Cargill v. Turpin, 120 F.3d 1366, 1379 (11th Cir. 1997) (noting that “isolated or ambiguous” prosecutorial argument “must be viewed with lenity” (citation modified )); Dickson v. Wainwright, 683 F.2d 348, 350 & n.2 (11th Cir. 1982) (holding that an erroneously admitted knife wasn’t “crucial, critical, highly significant” evidence because prosecution witnesses couldn’t “positively identify” it as the knife the defendant used to attack them); id. at 350–51 (holding that the improper display to the jury of the defendant’s rap sheet didn’t abridge fundamental fairness because the display “was of an isolated nature”).

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2. Analysis

Brown’s statement wasn’t a crucial, critical, and highly significant part of the trial record “as a whole.” See Carruth, 93 F.4th at 1357. Start with raw volume. The state put on twenty-five witnesses and more than 120 pieces of evidence across four trial days. Together, all the evidence made up approximately 590 transcript pages. Of those 590 pages, Brown’s statement took up a few lines of one page of Investigator Mobbs’s testimony. That’s less than one percent of the evidence. By volume alone, Brown’s statement wasn’t a “highly significant” part of the trial—it was of an isolated nature. See Cargill, 120 F.3d at 1379; Dickson, 683 F.2d at 350–51.

Nor was the statement a crucial, critical, and highly significant part of the state’s case. In fact, it wasn’t part of its case at all. The state used Brown’s statement only to impeach Ms. Washington . In the jury’s presence, the state told the trial court that it was impeaching Ms. Washington’s credibility with Investigator Mobbs’s testimony about what she’d told him. To dispel any lingering doubt, the trial court instructed the jury that, as to the “impeachment that was done with [Ms.] Washington and [Investigator ] Mobbs,” “statements used for impeachment purposes are not substantive evidence and [are] not [ ] evidence of the matter stated therein.” Each juror then agreed not to treat Brown’s statement as substantive evidence of his guilt. See Romine v. Head, 253 F.3d 1349, 1369 (11th Cir. 2001) (noting that “curative instruction[s]” can remedy what would otherwise be due-process violations).

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Brown’s statement was also too ambiguous to be a crucial, critical, and highly significant factor in his conviction. See Cargill, 120 F.3d at 1379; Dickson, 683 F.2d at 350 n.2. All Investigator Mobbs said was that Brown had told Ms. Washington that he’d done “something wrong to” or “hurt” “them girls.” He didn’t say that Brown had admitted to the murders. Brown could have done “something wrong” to Cherea and Dotty when he took the children from their mother and grandmother in Cherea’s car. He could have “hurt them girls” when he stole Cherea’s and Dotty’s checks to draw money out of their accounts. Indeed, Brown outright admitted in his closing argument that the state had proven he’d stolen the car and the checks. Neither of those things was murder.

Finally, Brown’s statement didn’t play a crucial, critical, and highly significant part in the case because it was double hearsay— from Brown to Ms. Washington, and from Ms. Washington to Investigator Mobbs. And it was double hearsay that Ms. Washington denied hearing (from Brown) or saying (to Investigator Mobbs), rendering it even more “unsatisfactory and . . . weak.” Cf., e.g., United States v. Keegan, 161 F.4th 1334, 1339 (11th Cir. 2025) (quoting Ellicott v. Pearl, 35 U.S. (10 Pet.) 412, 436 (1836) (Story, J.)).

Brown nevertheless relies heavily on Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279 (1991), insisting that his statement was crucial, critical, and highly significant because confessions have such a “profound impact on the jury” that they “tempt the jury to rely upon [them] alone in reaching” a verdict. See id. at 296 (citation modified). He

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urges us to weigh “[t]he likely damage” “by taking the word of the prosecutor.” Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 444 (1995). According to Brown, the state focused on his statement in its rebuttal closing because it was the only way to “tie together all the other strands of evidence.” In doing so, Brown says, the state made his statement the center of its case.

But Fulminante doesn’t help Brown. First, unlike this case, Fulminante involved a “full confession”—a confession “in which the defendant discloses the motive for and means of the crime.” Fulminante , 499 U.S. at 296. While in prison, Fulminante told another inmate that he’d “driven [his stepdaughter] to the desert on his motorcycle , where he choked her, sexually assaulted her, and made her beg for her life, before shooting her twice in the head.” Id. at 283. He also told the inmate that “he hid the murder weapon in a pile of rocks at the murder scene” and that he “hated” his stepdaughter , whom he considered “a little f––ing b––h.” State v. Fulminante , 778 P.2d 602, 606, 621 (Ariz. 1988), aff’d, 499 U.S. 279 (1991). His confession, in other words, identified a specific act—a killing—and described whom he killed, what led up to the killing, where it happened, how he did it, what he did afterward, and why he did it.

Brown’s statement to Ms. Washington wasn’t a “full confession ,” or anything close to one. As we explained, Brown didn’t admit to Ms. Washington that he’d committed any specific act, just that he’d done “something wrong to” or “hurt” Cherea and Dotty. He said nothing about the “means of the crime,” see Fulminante, 499

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U.S. at 296—nothing about beating Cherea and Dotty (let alone fatally ), nothing about any blunt weapon, nothing about Dotty’s house, and nothing about what he did before or after. Nor did he suggest a “motive” for whatever he did to Cherea and Dotty. See id. Unlike a “full confession,” a defendant’s statement doesn’t have a “profound impact” on the jury if it’s “incriminating only when linked to other evidence,” id., like Brown’s statement here.

Second, the case against Fulminante “depended” on his confession , Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 297, while the case against Brown did not. In Fulminante, even the state “recognized that a successful prosecution depended on the jury believing [Fulminante’s] confession [].” Id. Alone, “the physical evidence from the scene and other circumstantial evidence would have been insufficient to convict.” Id. And admitting the confession “led to the admission of other evidence prejudicial to Fulminante.” Id. at 300. Unsurprisingly, then, the state made Fulminante’s confession the centerpiece of its opening statement and closing argument, “conceding” that although the other evidence fell “a little short,” the confession “ma[de] this case fileable, and prosecutable[,] and triable.” Id. at 297–98.

In sharp contrast, the state here didn’t use Brown’s statement as substantive evidence. It brought in the statement only to impeach Ms. Washington. No other evidence depended on the statement’s admission. Nor did the state so much as mention Brown’s statement in its opening statement or in the bulk of its closing argument.

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We thus decline to equate Brown’s ambiguous, impeachment -only statement with the “full confession” in Fulminante. Fullconfession cases are simply inapposite here.7 B. WE OWE AEDPA DEFERENCE TO THE STATE APPELLATE COURT’S HARMLESSNESS DETERMINATION

Brown’s habeas petition also fails under AEDPA. When a state court “adjudicate[s]” a claim “on the merits,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), we review its decision under AEDPA’s “highly deferential ” standard, Pye v. Warden, Ga. Diagnostic Prison, 50 F.4th 1025, 1034 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (quoting Ayala, 576 U.S. at 269). Here, the state appellate court held that the erroneous admission of Brown’s statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under Chapman. Brown, 74 So. 3d at 1002–03 (first citing Hasting, 461 U.S. at 510; then citing Chapman, 386 U.S. at 23). That was a determination on the merits. Ayala, 576 U.S. at 269 (citing Mitchell v. Esparza, 540 U.S. 12, 17–18 (2003)).

7 In addition to Fulminante, Brown points to a few other cases, all of which fail

to persuade. United States v. Ince, like Fulminante, involved a full confession. 21 F.3d 576, 583 (4th Cir. 1994). In Michaels v. Davis, the Ninth Circuit held that the admission of the confession “was harmless as to the guilt phase,” which cuts against Brown. 51 F.4th 904, 926–27 (9th Cir. 2022). And in Harris v. Thompson, the error wasn’t the admission of the defendant’s statement, but the exclusion of exculpatory evidence that “changed the entire tenor of the defense case.” 698 F.3d 609, 631 (7th Cir. 2012). Harris, in other words, wasn’t a confession case.

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1. Standard

Under AEDPA, we may disturb a state court’s decision on the merits of a claim only if its decision “involved an unreasonable application of clearly established [f]ederal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), or “resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented at the [s]tate court proceeding,” id. § 2254(d)(2). Section 2254(d)(1) “demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt.” Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181 (2011) (citation modified). This standard is “difficult to meet.” Id. (citation modified). A state court’s application of federal law is unreasonable “only if no ‘fairminded jurist’ could agree with the state court’s determination or conclusion.” Holsey v. Warden, Ga. Diagnostic Prison, 694 F.3d 1230, 1257 (11th Cir. 2012) (quoting Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101 (2011)). That is, “every fairminded jurist” must disagree with the state court’s determination. Brown v. Davenport, 596 U.S. 118, 136 (2022). Not even an incorrect application of federal law will necessarily clear that bar. Harrington, 562 U.S. at 101.

Likewise, “[a] state court’s . . . determination of facts” under section 2254(d)(2) “is unreasonable only if no ‘fairminded jurist’ could agree with [that] determination.” Holsey, 694 F.3d at 1257. This standard is as stringent as the one we use for section 2254(d)(1) challenges. Landers v. Warden, Att’y Gen. of Ala., 776 F.3d 1288, 1294 (11th Cir. 2015). Fact determinations are unreasonable “when the direction of the evidence, viewed cumulatively, [is] ‘too powerful

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to conclude anything but [the petitioner’s factual claim].’” Id. (quoting Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231, 265 (2005)).

2. Analysis

Brown argues both that the state appellate court’s harmless-

error conclusion was an unreasonable application of Chapman, see 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), and that the state appellate court made unreasonable factual determinations on its way to concluding that any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, see id. § 2254(d)(2). Neither attack succeeds.

a. No Unreasonable Application of Federal Law In Brown’s telling, the state appellate court measured harmlessness against the wrong standard. According to him, “[t]he Supreme Court has long held that, in reviewing for harmless error, the question is not (as the [state appellate court] treated it), ‘whether there was sufficient evidence on which the petitioner could have been convicted without the evidence complained of,’” but “whether there is a reasonable possibility that the evidence complained of might have contributed to the conviction.” See Fahy v. Connecticut, 375 U.S. 85, 86–87 (1963). On his theory, if his statement to Ms. Washington hadn’t been admitted, all the other evidence against him would have been far too weak to sustain a conviction . But for his statement, the jury supposedly would have: disbelieved Tatiyana’s testimony because of her youth and because it wasn’t perfectly consistent with the physical evidence; disregarded Mr. Murrell’s testimony because it was “vague” and “did not link [ ] Brown to the crimes”; understood Brown’s flight to

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Cleveland as an “expression of fear for himself and his children, having found his girlfriend and her mother dead”; and so on. It was therefore more than reasonably possible, Brown says, that admitting his statement contributed to his conviction.

But the state appellate court didn’t unreasonably apply Chapman . “[E]rrorless trials are not expected, much less required,” United States v. Pon, 963 F.3d 1207, 1238 (11th Cir. 2020) (citation modified), and “most constitutional errors can be harmless,” id. at 1239 (quoting Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 306). “[T]he question [Chapman ] instructs the reviewing court to consider is not what effect the constitutional error might generally be expected to have upon a reasonable jury, but rather what effect it had upon the guilty verdict in the case at hand.” Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 279 (1993) (citing Chapman, 386 U.S. at 24).

To determine whether an error was harmless, we must “consider the trial record as a whole,” Pon, 963 F.3d at 1238 (quoting Hasting, 461 U.S. at 509), “quantitatively assess[ing] [the error] in the context of other evidence presented,” Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 308. An error is harmless when it’s overwhelmed by other evidence of guilt, such that the jury verdict would have been the same without it. Pon, 963 F.3d at 1239 (citing Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 2 (1999)). In “an AEDPA case[,] . . . we [can] grant habeas relief only if the [state court] applie[s] the Chapman standard unreasonably .” Burns v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 720 F.3d 1296, 1303 (11th Cir. 2013) (citing Mitchell, 540 U.S. at 18); see, e.g., Consalvo v. Sec’y

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for Dep’t of Corr., 664 F.3d 842, 847 (11th Cir. 2011) (deferring under AEDPA to the Florida Supreme Court’s Chapman determination).

The state appellate court quantitatively assessed the effect of Brown’s statement in the context of the other evidence and concluded that admitting his statement was harmless. See Brown, 74 So. 3d at 1003. That assessment wasn’t unreasonable. In several instances, our sister circuits—fellow fairminded jurists—have held that an erroneously admitted statement by the defendant was harmless where the record as a whole was comparable to what the state presented against Brown.

For example, in Juarez v. Minnesota, the Eighth Circuit deemed harmless the admission of the defendant’s invocation of his right to counsel. 217 F.3d 1014, 1017 (8th Cir. 2000). There, the defendant was a “maintenance painter” accused of sexually assaulting several children at a juvenile mental health facility. Id. at 1015– 16. When the police interrogated him, he responded to their questions for a while, but eventually told them, “I’m gonna have to get a lawyer next.” Id. at 1016. When the interrogating officer testified , the state played a tape of the defendant’s custodial interrogation —including his request for an attorney. Id. A Minnesota state- court jury convicted him of first-degree criminal sexual conduct against one child, third-degree criminal sexual conduct against another , and two counts of soliciting minors for prostitution. Id. There was no physical evidence against him—just the testimony of the child victims and the police officers. See State v. Juarez, 572 N.W.2d 286, 288–90 (Minn. 1997).

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On direct appeal, the defendant argued that the trial court erroneously admitted his request for an attorney. Id. at 290–91. The Minnesota Supreme Court agreed that playing his request before the jury was error “because the jury could view his request as a ‘badge of guilt.’” Id. It nevertheless held that the error was harmless under Chapman because of the witness testimony against him. Id. at 291.

The Eighth Circuit agreed and affirmed the denial of the defendant ’s habeas petition. Juarez, 217 F.3d at 1018. Although the state court had already conducted a Chapman analysis, the Eighth Circuit explained that it would have “arrive[d] at the same decision as the Minnesota Supreme Court and h[e]ld that admission of the statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt . . . [under] the [] Chapman standard.” Id. at 1017. It characterized the victim testimony against the defendant as “overwhelming” and consistent, even though the victims were minors and in a mental health facility . Id. It also explained that “the admitted statement was only a small part of the record evidence relating to [the defendant]’s credibility .” Id.

The Seventh Circuit reached a similar conclusion in Kamlager v. Pollard, where the defendant’s confession was admitted in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights. 715 F.3d 1010, 1012 (7th Cir. 2013). There, the victim was found dead, killed by gunshot and blunt force trauma. Id. The defendant was the victim’s boyfriend . Id. When police detectives first interviewed him, he told them he hadn’t seen the victim on the day she disappeared and

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requested an attorney. Id. at 1013. But he also told one of the detectives that he might be willing to speak with that detective later. When the detective spoke to the defendant again sometime later, the defendant admitted that he’d seen and fought with the victim on the day she disappeared. State v. Kamlager, 740 N.W.2d 901, 2007 WL 2711671, at *10 (Wis. Ct. App. 2007) (unpublished table decision ). When the defendant was tried for murder in state court, the detective testified about the defendant’s admission.

On direct appeal, the defendant complained that his later statement to the detective was a “tacit admission[ ] of guilt” that should have been excluded because he made it after invoking his Miranda rights. Kamlager, 715 F.3d at 1016. The state appellate court “assumed, without deciding, that [the defendant]’s constitutional rights were violated through the admission of this evidence, but nevertheless concluded that the error was harmless because it was clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have rendered the same verdict even if the tainted evidence had been suppressed.” Id. at 1015.

The Seventh Circuit affirmed the denial of the defendant’s habeas petition, holding that the state appellate court had reasonably applied Chapman in view of the “compelling circumstantial evidence ” in the case. Id. at 1017. The state appellate court noted the defendant’s strange behavior on the day of [the victim]’s disappearance and thereafter; his large debt (approximately $35,000 to $36,000) owed to [the victim]; his presence, captured on video surveillance, in the area

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of the ATM at which five of ten withdrawals were made from [the victim]’s checking account two days after she went missing; his conversation with his father -in-law, in which [the defendant] told him to take care of [the defendant’s wife] and stated, “The bitch [referring to the victim] wanted me to leave my [wife] for her”; expert testimony that three unfired .22-caliber bullets were recovered from [the defendant]’s hunting jacket (one of the bullets taken from [the victim ]’s body was a fired lead .22-caliber long-rifle bullet ); and his .22-caliber rifle was not seen after [the victim ] disappeared.

Id. The court also noted that the defendant hadn’t made a “full confession” under Fulminante. Id. at 1018. His admission that he’d seen and fought with his girlfriend wasn’t, after all, a confession to killing her. Id. For those reasons, it held that “fairminded jurists could not disagree” with the state appellate court’s Chapman analysis . Id.

The evidence in these cases was comparable to the evidence against Brown. That fairminded jurists affirmed Chapman rulings based on similar evidence—even when the defendants’ statements were erroneously admitted—shows that the state appellate court here didn’t unreasonably apply federal law. The “overwhelming” evidence in Juarez, for example, was made up of testimony from minor victims and law enforcement. Here, in addition to Tatiyana ’s testimony and Investigator Mobbs’s description of the crime scene, the state produced physical evidence, like Brown’s fingerprints on the roll of tape used to bind Dotty’s ankles, and

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circumstantial evidence, like Brown’s theft of Cherea’s car and both victims’ checks, his flight to Cleveland, and his lie to Mrs. Pope about his son’s illness.

Kamlager cuts the same way. There, as here, the state appellate court counted the defendant’s “behavior” after the victim disappeared and his theft of the victim’s money as “compelling circumstantial evidence.” And there, as here, the defendant’s statement fell short of a “full confession.” It wasn’t deemed unreasonable for the state appellate court in Kamlager to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant’s statement had no effect on the outcome of the trial, even though the other evidence was circumstantial . We reach the same conclusion as these fairminded jurists.

b. No Unreasonable Determination of the Facts Brown also contends that the state appellate court unreasonably determined the facts in concluding that any error was harmless . But this argument largely repackages his unreasonable-application -of-Chapman objections.

For example, Brown complains that it was an unreasonable determination of the facts “to conclude . . . that it was harmless to admit a confession that provided crucial bolstering for” Tatiyana, “the only witness who placed [ ] Brown at the crime scene.” He likewise protests that it was an unreasonable determination of the facts “to disregard the obvious bolstering effect of the improperly admitted confession evidence on th[e] weak, inconclusive testimony from [Mr.] Murrell.”

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These arguments fail because these so-called factual errors are actually legal conclusions. Factual determinations under section 2254(d)(2) are record-bound. That is, they encompass determinations of “basic, primary, or historical facts,” as well as factdriven determinations of credibility and demeanor. Thompson v. Keohane, 516 U.S. 99, 109–11 (1995). Whether a defendant has an adaptive-behavior impairment, for example, and whether a habeas petitioner in fact made a certain argument in state court, are factual determinations. Compare, e.g., Tharpe v. Warden, 834 F.3d 1323, 1331, 1346 (11th Cir. 2016) (holding that a state court reasonably determined that the petitioner hadn’t in fact shown a significant impairment in adaptive behavior—which is a “requirement[] for establishing intellectual disability”—because conflicting expert testimony left “sufficient evidence in the record for a fairminded jurist ” to reach that conclusion), with Sears v. Warden GDCP, 73 F.4th 1269, 1288 (11th Cir. 2023) (holding that a state court unreasonably determined that the petitioner “withdrew [a] motion ‘without presenting any argument,’” because the record showed that the petitioner “did argue” his motion (citation modified)).

Harmlessness, however, is not a factual determination.

“Harmlessness is a question of law.” Vining v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr., 610 F.3d 568, 571 (11th Cir. 2010). We therefore review it under a different section of AEDPA—section 2254(d)(1)—and not section 2254(d)(2). See Mitchell, 540 U.S. at 17–18. And whether a piece of evidence “bolstered” another is, at bottom, part of the harmlessness inquiry. Comparing one piece of evidence against the rest to gauge its effect is “a conclusion in the nature of an

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application of law to fact”—not the kind of determination of “who, what, where, when, and how” that could be second-guessed under section 2254(d)(2). See Holsey, 694 F.3d at 1259 (citation modified).

The state appellate court’s conclusion that admitting Brown’s statement was harmless wasn’t a factual one. The state appellate court didn’t get any of the details about Brown’s trial wrong—it just drew conclusions from them that he dislikes. Because , as we’ve explained, a fairminded jurist could have reached those same conclusions, we must defer to the state appellate court’s Chapman ruling.

C. ADMITTING BROWN’S STATEMENT HAD NO SUBSTANTIAL AND INJURIOUS EFFECT “[A] federal court must deny relief to a state habeas petitioner who fails to satisfy either [the Supreme] Court’s equitable precedents or AEDPA.” Davenport, 596 U.S. at 134. “But to grant relief, a court must find that the petitioner has cleared both tests.” Id. That means Brown must persuade us both that “every fairminded jurist would agree that [admitting Brown’s statement] was prejudicial ” (the AEDPA standard), see id. at 136, and that we should harbor “grave doubt about whether a trial error of federal law had [a] substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict,” O’Neal v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 436 (1995) (citation modified); see also Davenport, 596 U.S. at 135–36 (“[A] petitioner may prevail by persuading a federal court that it alone should harbor ‘grave doubt’ . . . about whether the trial error affected the

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verdict’s outcome.”). The latter requirement flows from Brecht, 507 U.S. at 637–38.

Brown hasn’t satisfied the first test, as we’ve explained. After setting out the Brecht standard, we’ll show why Brown fails the second test too.

1. Standard

“To show prejudice under Brecht, there must be more than a reasonable possibility that the error contributed to the conviction or sentence.” Mansfield v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr., 679 F.3d 1301, 1313 (11th Cir. 2012) (quoting Mason v. Allen, 605 F.3d 1114, 1123 (11th Cir. 2010)). “[T]he erroneous admission of evidence is likely to be harmless under the Brecht standard where there is significant corroborating evidence or where other evidence of guilt is overwhelming .” Id. (citation modified). We may conclude that a petitioner “did not suffer actual prejudice from [an] error” when there’s both “overwhelming evidence against [him]” and “difficulty in tracing the error to the verdict in his case.” Al-Amin v. Warden, Ga. Dep’t of Corr., 932 F.3d 1291, 1301–02 (11th Cir. 2019) (affirming the denial of habeas relief in just such a case). To determine the relative strength of other evidence, as well as the extent to which we can connect the error with the conviction, we may consider the “centrality and frequency” of the error in the state’s case. E.g., Cargill , 120 F.3d at 1376 (holding that certain trial errors didn’t have a “substantial and injurious effect or influence” because they were insufficiently central to or frequent in the state’s case).

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2. Analysis

Because the evidence against Brown was overwhelming—

and unrelated to his statement—we can’t “trac[e] the error” of admitting the statement “to the verdict in his case.” See Al-Amin, 932 F.3d at 1301. The admission of Brown’s statement therefore didn’t have a substantial and injurious effect or influence on the jury verdict against him. See Mansfield, 679 F.3d at 1313.

Brown lived with Cherea, Dotty, and the children in Dotty’s house. On the night of the murders, Tatiyana heard Brown and Cherea “screaming” at each other in the bedroom hallway. When Tatiyana peeked into that hallway, she saw Brown “standing over” Cherea. Cherea was on the floor, bloodied; her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving. Despite the screaming, Tatiyana didn’t see or hear Dotty, even though she saw that Dotty’s bedroom door was open. She ran back to bed. There was no body in the bedroom hallway when the police investigated the house, but there was blood on the floor of the hallway and on a carpet runner there. Some of that blood was Dotty’s, and the runner was bunched up outside the bedrooms as though someone had dragged something heavy across it down the hallway and into the rooms.

Inside the bedrooms themselves were Cherea and Dotty, bludgeoned to death. Cherea was covered with blankets, while Dotty was bound and gagged with silver and green duct tape. Brown’s fingerprints were found on the roll of green tape used to bind Dotty’s ankles—his left index finger and his left thumb.

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Despite the gruesome scene inside Dotty’s house, police saw nothing amiss from the outside. The officer dispatched to the house on an anonymous tip early Sunday evening knocked on the door; when no one answered, he simply left. The officers dispatched later found the door to the house locked. There was no sign of forced entry; in fact, the officers themselves had to push their way in through a window to unlock the door. Just Cherea and Dotty were inside. Brown and the children—the only other people living in the house—were nowhere to be found.

Cherea and Dotty were killed between late Friday evening and early Saturday morning. The state’s forensic pathologist deduced as much by projecting backward from the degree of livor and rigor mortis. Cherea’s sister, for her part, testified that when she called on Friday evening and “several times” more on Saturday —Cherea’s birthday—no one answered. The total silence struck her as “very” unusual.

Brown spent that same Friday and Saturday gathering money from all around Sylacauga. On Friday, Brown was supposed to get $200 from Mr. Pope for painting a house but received only $50 because rain stopped the work. Instead of leaving, Brown pressed Mr. Pope for more, hanging around until 7:00 p.m. so that Mr. and Mrs. Pope could give him another $30. When he saw Mrs. Pope at Alabama Trust Bank the next morning, he harried her for the rest of his money from the painting job until she and Mr. Pope agreed to give him another $100. Brown told Mrs. Pope he needed the money because Wakilii Jr. was in Children’s

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Hospital in Birmingham with a respiratory problem. He lied. In the entire month of March 2001, no one named Wakilii had been treated at that hospital. Wakilii Jr. was found in Cleveland the following Tuesday. See Brown, 74 So. 3d at 995.

Even though Brown lived with Cherea and Dotty, at no point on Saturday did he report that they’d been killed. He used his Saturday to drive around with at least one of the children to the banks where Cherea and Dotty had accounts. He did so to cash what he conceded were stolen checks. He started at Cherea’s bank, walking in with Fred—Cherea’s child with another man—and a $200 check against Dotty’s account. When that check couldn’t be cashed there, he produced another, against Cherea’s.

Afterward, he went to Dotty’s bank. The teller there remembered that Dotty visited the bank at least once a week to cash her checks herself. Usually, Dotty came in Cherea’s blue car, but she never let anyone else cash her checks. Plus, Mr. Pope testified that he’d never seen Brown drive Cherea’s car. But that Saturday, Brown was the one who cashed Dotty’s check, driving Cherea’s blue car, with Cherea’s child in the passenger seat beside him. He did so surreptitiously, using the farthest-away drive-through lane and sitting mutely when the teller tried to talk to him.

Brown then drove Cherea’s car—and her checkbook, and some of her mother’s checks, and her children, including one who wasn’t his—to his mother’s house in Cleveland. Brown’s mother lived ten or fifteen minutes away from Ms. Washington, Brown’s aunt.

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Brown was in Cleveland by Sunday. Early that evening, an anonymous caller tipped off Sylacauga police that there was “something wrong” at Dotty’s house. A few hours later, Mr. Murrell called to report “something wrong,” and a few minutes after that he reported that “something bad had happened” at Dotty’s address —that Cherea and Dotty may have been killed. Mr. Murrell testified that he called Sylacauga police because Ms. Washington asked him to. The phone records laid out the sequence of Mr. Murrell ’s calls: police, Ms. Washington, police, Ms. Washington. And Ms. Washington testified that she asked Mr. Murrell to “find out what was happening” because “Wakilii was in Cleveland” and there were “rumors.”

When Mr. Murrell reported that “something bad had happened ,” the police hadn’t entered Dotty’s house or discovered Cherea’s and Dotty’s bodies. Mr. Murrell didn’t know Brown personally and didn’t testify that he knew Cherea or Dotty. He had no connection to Dotty’s house; at the time he called, he lived fifty miles away and had been to Sylacauga just once. His connection to whatever had happened at Dotty’s house was Ms. Washington. But Ms. Washington’s own connection to Dotty’s house was tenuous . She knew of Cherea but not Dotty. She didn’t know their address. The only link from Mr. Murrell and Ms. Washington to Cherea and Dotty was Brown himself. That link surfaced shortly after Brown arrived in Cleveland, no more than fifteen minutes away from Ms. Washington.

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And Brown didn’t depart Cleveland quietly. Armed with a gun, he held out against police for over a day in a barricaded apartment . He surrendered only after the police fired sixteen (or more) canisters of tear gas into the apartment. See United States v. Wright, 392 F.3d 1269, 1277 (11th Cir. 2004) (“[E]vidence of resistance to arrest and flight is admissible to demonstrate consciousness of guilt and thereby guilt.” (citation modified)).

None of this evidence depends on Brown’s statement. See Al-Amin, 932 F.3d at 1301. And all of it “overwhelming[ly]” demonstrates Brown’s guilt. See id.

Brown invited us to “tak[e] the word of the prosecutor” in assessing the harm done to his case by his statement. Kyles, 514 U.S. at 444. We’ll accept that invitation. Brown’s statement was a single, ambiguous line that occupied a tiny fraction of one witness examination. It didn’t identify the crime, the weapon, the motive, the location of any evidence, or when anything happened. It was used only for impeachment. The jurors were instructed not to consider it for anything else and agreed that they wouldn’t. See Hallford v. Culliver, 459 F.3d 1193, 1204 (11th Cir. 2006) (“Jurors are presumed to follow the law as they are instructed.” (quoting Raulerson v. Wainwright, 753 F.2d 869, 876 (11th Cir. 1985))). And so, as one would expect, the state barely used it. The state obliquely mentioned Brown’s statement for just five pages of its fifteen-page rebuttal closing. The statement otherwise didn’t matter to the state’s case—not in the state’s opening statement, not in its initial closing, and not broadly throughout its presentation of the evidence. See

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Cargill, 120 F.3d at 1376 (holding that errors that weren’t central or frequent caused no “substantial and injurious effect or influence”).

Accordingly, because there was “overwhelming” evidence against Brown, and because the statement added nothing to that overwhelming evidence, we’re confident that admitting Brown’s statement had no “substantial and injurious effect or influence” on his conviction. See Al-Amin, 932 F.3d at 1298, 1301.

IV. CONCLUSION

Admitting Brown’s statement didn’t violate his due-process right. The state appellate court didn’t unreasonably conclude that any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. And admitting Brown’s statement didn’t have a substantial and injurious effect on his conviction. We therefore affirm the district court’s order denying Brown’s habeas petition.

AFFIRMED.