Cooley v. Gaffney

EDWARD COOLEY, Petitioner, v. ERIN GAFFNEY, Respondent.

Civil No. 18-10258-LTS

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

August 21, 2018

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ON PETITION FOR HABEAS CORPUS (DOC. NO. 1)

SOROKIN, J.

Edward Cooley, a prisoner at the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, has filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, in which he raises two challenges to his convictions and sentences. The respondent has opposed the petition. Because his claims are meritless, Cooley's petition is DENIED.

I. BACKGROUND

In September 2011, following a jury trial in Hampden County Superior Court, Cooley was convicted of first-degree murder, unlawful possession of a firearm, and wilful interference with a criminal investigation, all in violation of Massachusetts law. Commonwealth v. Cooley, 78 N.E.3d 77, 79 (Mass. 2017); Doc. No. 1 at 1-2;¹ S.A. at 1-2, 8.² He received a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Doc. No. 1 at 1; S.A. at 8.

The charges against Cooley arose from a shooting in Springfield. Cooley, 78 N.E.3d at 49. The Supreme Judicial Court ("SJC") summarized the evidence presented at trial as follows:

At approximately 12:20 A.M. on March 20, 2010, . . . a witness heard two shots fired. She looked out her window and saw two men speaking in a "panicking way"; the men then ran in opposite directions. Other witnesses also heard the gunshots, soon followed by the sound of a motor vehicle crashing. The victim's motor vehicle had crashed through a fence, struck another vehicle, and come to a stop in the yard of one of the witnesses. The victim was slumped over in the driver's seat and bleeding heavily.

As the witnesses approached the vehicle, [Cooley], wearing a leather jacket, ran up yelling, "It's my god-brother," and "Don't call the cops[;] the guy[']s got weed on him." He climbed into the vehicle, pulled the victim slightly toward him while patting him down, and took the victim's cellular telephone. He also took a bag from behind the victim's seat, where police later found two bags containing marijuana. After getting out of the motor vehicle, [Cooley] told the witnesses to telephone the police and left the scene. . . . [T]he victim sustained injuries consistent with a bullet traveling through his right arm and into his chest. He was pronounced dead a short time later at a hospital.

Police were directed to [Cooley], who had since returned to the area (without his leather jacket). [Cooley] was interviewed at the scene and twice more at the police station. As investigators uncovered further evidence, [Cooley] changed portions of his statement. For example, after first denying it, he eventually admitted that the leather jacket, found hidden a short distance away from where the victim and his vehicle had crashed, was his. The jacket tested positive for gunshot primer residue on the cuffs, indicating that the jacket may have been within three feet of a gun when it was fired. The jacket also was stained with blood that matched . . . the victim. [Cooley] admitted to taking the victim's cellular telephone from the motor vehicle after the crash only after police recovered it from a motor vehicle belonging to [Cooley's] girlfriend.

Other portions of [Cooley's] statements to police were proved false at trial. For example, [Cooley] stated that he had happened to meet the victim at a pharmacy store hours before the shooting, but surveillance video recordings from inside and outside the store showed the victim there alone. [Cooley's] claim that he had been on the telephone with the victim at the time of the shooting was belied by telephone records that showed that there were no telephone calls between [Cooley] and the victim at any point prior to the shooting.

The telephone records also showed that . . . both [Cooley and the victim] were in touch with a third party, who had a telephone number ending in 7471, in the hours before the killing. There were numerous calls between the victim's number and the 7471 number, culminating with a call made minutes before the shooting. In addition, the records indicated that there were calls during the night prior to theshooting between [Cooley's] number and the 7471 number until 9:42 P.M. Another call was made from [Cooley's] number to the 7471 number soon after [Cooley] finished giving his second statement at the police station.

Id. at 79-80.

The prosecution's theory of the case was that Cooley "and an unidentified person were involved in a joint venture to rob the victim, that either one or the other shot the victim during the course of the robbery, and that [Cooley] completed the robbery after the shooting at the site of the crash." Id. at 80. The jury returned a general verdict, convicting Cooley of murder without specifying whether they had concluded he was the shooter. S.A. at 21.

Cooley filed a timely direct appeal challenging the trial court's denial of his motion for a judgment of acquittal on the murder, armed robbery, and firearms charges. S.A. at 9; Doc. No. 1 at 2. Shortly thereafter, Cooley's trial counsel learned from the prosecutor that, during an interview conducted by police months before Cooley's trial regarding an unrelated murder, a witness said he had heard another man (not Cooley) confess to having shot the victim in Cooley's case. Cooley, 78 N.E.3d at 82. In light of this disclosure, Cooley filed a motion for a new trial alleging a violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). S.A. at 9; Cooley, 78 N.E.3d at 79. The trial court denied Cooley's motion after a hearing, S.A. at 14-32, and the SJC consolidated his appeal of that ruling with his direct appeal, Cooley, 78 N.E.3d at 79. The SJC affirmed Cooley's convictions and sentence in a July 13, 2017 decision. Id.

In his timely federal habeas petition, Cooley advances the same two challenges considered and rejected by the SJC: 1) that the prosecution violated its Brady obligations when it failed to disclose the witness statement concerning another man's admission "to having done the murder," Doc. No. 1 at 5; and 2) that the evidence was insufficient to prove him guilty ofmurder, armed robbery, and possession of a firearm, id. at 7.³ Cooley's petition is fully briefed and ripe for resolution.⁴

II. LEGAL STANDARD

State court decisions merit substantial deference. Federal district courts may not grant a writ of habeas corpus unless they find that the state court's adjudication of the petitioner's claims "(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[,] or (2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). As the Supreme Court repeatedly has emphasized, these standards are "difficult to meet," with the petitioner carrying a heavy burden of proof. Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 102 (2011); accord Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181 (2011); see Burt v. Titlow, 571 U.S. 12, 19-20 (2013) (emphasizing "formidable barrier" faced by federal habeas petitioner where claims already were adjudicated in state court, and limiting relief to cases of "extreme malfunctions" by state criminal justice systems).

A state court ruling is "contrary to" clearly established Supreme Court precedent "if the state court applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [Supreme Court] cases," or "if the state court confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decisionof [the Supreme] Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from [its] precedent." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06 (2000); see Glebe v. Frost, 135 S. Ct. 429, 431 (2014) (emphasizing that "circuit precedent does not constitute 'clearly established Federal law'" for these purposes). The state court is not required to cite, or even have an awareness of, governing Supreme Court precedents, "so long as neither the reasoning nor the result of [its] decision contradicts them." Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8 (2002).

A state court decision constitutes an "unreasonable application" of Supreme Court precedent if it identifies the correct governing legal rule, but "unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular state prisoner's case." Williams, 529 U.S. at 407-08. When making the "unreasonable application" inquiry, federal habeas courts must determine "whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable." Id. at 409. An unreasonable application of the correct rule can include the unreasonable extension of that rule to a new context where it should not apply, as well as an unreasonable failure to extend the rule to a new context where it should apply. Id. at 407. "The more general the rule, the more leeway courts have in reaching outcomes in case-by-case determinations." Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 664 (2004).

A showing of clear error is not sufficient for a habeas petitioner to establish entitlement to relief. Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 75-76 (2003); accord McCambridge v. Hall, 303 F.3d 24, 36-37 (1st Cir. 2002) (en banc). If a state court's decision "was reasonable, it cannot be disturbed" on habeas review. Hardy v. Cross, 565 U.S. 65, 72 (2011) (per curiam); see Renico v. Lett, 559 U.S. 766, 779 (2010) (admonishing federal habeas courts not to "second-guess the reasonable decisions of state courts"). Relief is available only where a state court's "determination was unreasonable - a substantially higher threshold." Schriro v. Landrigan, 550U.S. 465, 473 (2007); Sanna v. Dipaolo, 265 F.3d 1, 13 (1st Cir. 2001) (explaining habeas relief is appropriate only if a state court ruling is "so offensive to existing precedent, so devoid of record support, or so arbitrary, as to indicate that it is...