Williams v. Engle

559 F. Supp. 395, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18635
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Ohio
DecidedMarch 11, 1983
DocketNo. C81-116
StatusPublished

This text of 559 F. Supp. 395 (Williams v. Engle) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Ohio primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Williams v. Engle, 559 F. Supp. 395, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18635 (N.D. Ohio 1983).

Opinion

ORDER

DOWD, District Judge.

This is a case filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 whereby the petitioner seeks habeas corpus relief from his 1970 conviction for first degree murder in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

The basis for relief is the unchallenged claim of the petitioner that the instructions 1 of the trial court violated Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979).

The petition for habeas relief was first before the Honorable Ben Green, Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division. Judge Green held that the trial court’s instructions, to the extent that they violated the decision in Sandstrom v. Montana, supra, constituted harmless error because the defendant relied upon the defense of self defense admitting that he had in fact fired three shots into the victim’s body and by such admission acknowledged the intent to kill which the challenge instructions presumed.

In reaching his decision Judge Green applied Sumner v. Mata, 449 U.S. 539, 545-47, 101 S.Ct. 764, 769, 66 L.Ed.2d 722 (1981) in holding that the Ohio Appellate Court which affirmed the petitioner’s conviction had found facts which made the Sandstrom error harmless.

On appeal in Williams v. Engle, 683 F.2d 152 (6th Cir.1982) the decision of Judge Green was reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings2 according to law upon the determination that Judge Green’s reliance upon the appellate court record in applying Sumner v. Mata was inappropriate because the Ohio Appellate Court merely determined that there was a sufficiency of the evidence to justify the conviction but that such determination was not dispositive of the question of harmless error.

The decision in Williams v. Engle concludes with the following language:

It was suggested at oral argument that the transcript of the trial may no longer be available. Whether greater diligence may now uncover it or whether stenographic notes may yet exist to reconstruct the record, we cannot determine here. Neither do we reach the question whether the petitioner ought to be foreclosed from further pursuit of his claim by his failure to have raised the issue in the first petition or, in any event, at the time when the transcript might have been available.

Upon remand, the respondent, despite the narrow nature of the remand, urges this Court to again dismiss the petitioner’s action, citing three separate reasons.

First, the respondent again contends that the petitioner is now barred from asserting his former habeas challenge to the constitutionality of the jury instructions as a result of his procedural default in failing to challenge on state appeal the jury instructions vis-a-vis the Sandstrom violation absent a showing of “cause for” and “actual prejudice” from the default, citing Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977) and Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 102 S.Ct. 1558, 71 L.Ed.2d 783 and Fornash v. Marshall, 686 F.2d 1179 (6th Cir.1982).

Secondly, the respondent contends that the failure of the petitioner to assert the Sandstrom v. Montana ground for relief in the first petition for habeas relief filed by the petitioner in 1978 constitutes an abuse of the writ in violation of Rule 9 of the rules governing 28 U.S.C. § 2254 actions which provides, in pertinent part, that:

[397]*397(b) successive petitions
A second or successive petition may be dismissed if the judge finds that it fails to allege new or different grounds for relief and the prior determination was on the merits or, if new and different grounds are alleged, the judge finds that the failure of the petitioner to assert those grounds in a proper petition constitutes an abuse of the writ.

Finally, as a third ground for dismissing the petitioner’s action, the respondent again asserts the claim of harmless error.

Initially, the Court observes that the remand from the Sixth Circuit to this Court was narrow in its scope. The remand directs this Court to review the harmless error challenge of the respondent based upon a study of the transcript of the trial, subject only to the review of the question of whether the petitioner ought to be foreclosed from further pursuit of this claim by reason of his failure to have raised the Sandstrom v. Montana issue in the first petition filed in 1978, and the transcript might have been available if not now available.3 It is the Court’s view that a consideration of the Wainwright v. Sykes application and further consideration of the harmless error is questionable given the nature of the remand. Nonetheless the Court will address these issues.

I. WAINWRIGHT v. SYKES ISSUE (STATE PROCEDURAL DEFAULT/CAUSE/ACTUAL PREJUDICE)

It is abundantly clear from a review of the record that the defendant did not raise the issue of the Sandstrom instruction on appeal in the state court. As a matter of fact, the decision in Sandstrom was to come years after the petitioner’s 1970 conviction in state court and the review of his conviction by the appellate courts in Ohio.

The question that emerges is whether that failure on the part of the petitioner, applying Wainwright v. Sykes, supra, Engle v. Isaac, supra, and Fornash v. Marshall, supra, forecloses the petitioner from now challenging for the first time by his petition filed in 1981, the Sandstrom instruction.

Three recent decisions of The United States Supreme Court give rise to the present state of the law whereby a petitioner for habeas relief from a state conviction will be barred from relief where it is demonstrated that the defendant failed to timely object during trial to conduct or action now challenged as unconstitutional and is unable to demonstrate cause for such a failure and actual prejudice. The first case is Davis v. United States, 411 U.S. 233, 93 S.Ct. 1577, 36 L.Ed.2d 216 (1973). Davis involved an application for habeas relief under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 2255 in connection with a federal prosecution. The petitioner attempted to raise for the first time under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 2255 the claim of an unconstitutional discrimination in the composition of the Grand Jury. Davis was denied relief as he had failed to challenge his indictment on that ground.

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Related

Sanders v. United States
373 U.S. 1 (Supreme Court, 1963)
Miranda v. Arizona
384 U.S. 436 (Supreme Court, 1966)
Davis v. United States
411 U.S. 233 (Supreme Court, 1973)
Wainwright v. Sykes
433 U.S. 72 (Supreme Court, 1977)
Sandstrom v. Montana
442 U.S. 510 (Supreme Court, 1979)
Sumner v. Mata
449 U.S. 539 (Supreme Court, 1981)
Engle v. Isaac
456 U.S. 107 (Supreme Court, 1982)
United States v. Frady
456 U.S. 152 (Supreme Court, 1982)
Connecticut v. Johnson
460 U.S. 73 (Supreme Court, 1983)
Robert Carter v. Arnold R. Jago
637 F.2d 449 (Sixth Circuit, 1980)
William H. Williams v. Ted Engle
683 F.2d 152 (Sixth Circuit, 1982)
Larry Fornash v. Ronald C. Marshall
686 F.2d 1179 (Sixth Circuit, 1982)

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Bluebook (online)
559 F. Supp. 395, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18635, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/williams-v-engle-ohnd-1983.