Cox v. Weber

102 F.4th 663

Ronald COX, Petitioner - Appellant, v. Warden Ronald S. WEBER; Attorney General Anthony G. Brown, Respondents - Appellees.

Ronald Cox, Petitioner - Appellee, v. Warden Ronald S. Weber; Attorney General Anthony G. Brown, Respondents - Appellants.

No. 23-6044

No. 23-6148

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit

Argued: January 26, 2024

Decided: May 23, 2024

Appeals from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Greenbelt. Paul W. Grimm, Senior District Judge. (8:19-cv-03443-DLB)

ARGUED: Daniel Jay Wright, Rockville, Maryland, for Appellant/Cross-Appellee. Jer Welter, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF MARYLAND, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellees/Cross-Appellants. ON BRIEF: Anthony G. Brown, Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF MARYLAND, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellees/Cross-Appellants.

Before WYNN, HARRIS, and QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Quattlebaum wrote the opinion, in which Judge Wynn and Judge Harris joined.

QUATTLEBAUM, Circuit Judge:

A Maryland state court jury convicted Ronald Cox of first-degree murder and three firearm offenses. At trial, the State's primary evidence tying Cox to those crimes was the testimony of a jailhouse informant, who claimed that Cox and his co-defendant told him of their involvement in the murder. Though jail records purported to show that Cox and the informant were not in the same area of the jail on the day the informant claimed the conversation occurred, Cox's trial counsel declined to introduce those records into evidence. Cox unsuccessfully sought postconviction relief based on ineffective assistance of counsel. After the state postconviction court denied Cox's petition, Cox petitioned under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 for habeas relief. The district court denied Cox's petition but issued a certificate of appealability on Cox's ineffective assistance claim.

Now, Cox appeals the district court's denial of his § 2254 petition, and the State cross-appeals the district court's issuance of the certificate of appealability. Despite the State's invitation, we find no reason to dismiss the certificate of appealability. And due to the highly deferential standard governing § 2254 petitions alleging ineffective assistance of counsel, we affirm the district court's denial of Cox's petition.

I.

A.

On December 28, 2007, at around 12:38 p.m., a Baltimore City Police Department officer responded to a report of a shooting at a shopping center. The officer found Todd Dargan lying on the ground, bleeding and unresponsive. Dargan had been fatally shot in the head. The officer located a nine-millimeter cartridge casing at the scene.

Shortly before the officer found Dargan, at approximately 12:30 p.m., three Baltimore City Police Department detectives in an unmarked police car were patrolling an area 10 blocks away from the shopping center. The detectives saw Ronald Cox driving without a seatbelt. When Cox failed to stop at a stop sign, the detectives pulled him over. Sitting in the front passenger seat of the car was Rodney Johnson.

During the traffic stop, a series of calls came over the detectives' radios reporting the shooting at the shopping center. Though Cox appeared calm, the detectives noticed that Johnson's hands were shaking. This prompted one of the detectives to pat Johnson down outside of the vehicle. When the detective did not find anything, he ordered Johnson to sit on the curb while Cox remained in the car.

Between 15 and 23 minutes after initiating the stop, the detectives heard a broadcast over their radios describing the shooting suspect as a "black male wearing a black hoodie." J.A. 170. Noting that Johnson matched this description, one of the detectives asked Cox if he had anything in the car. Cox responded by stepping out of the car with his hands in the air. Taking this as Cox's consent to search, the detective searched the vehicle and found a nine-millimeter handgun in the trunk. The detectives then placed Cox and Johnson under arrest and took them to the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center ("Central Booking").

B.

The State filed three separate indictments against Cox in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City, charging him with first-degree murder, three firearm offenses and conspiracy to commit murder. Johnson also faced charges of murder and handgun offenses. Cox's case was initially joined with Johnson's, but the Circuit Court severed the cases for trial.

Cox filed two pretrial motions to suppress. First, he moved to suppress the handgun and testimony about its recovery, arguing that they were fruits of an unlawfully prolonged traffic stop. The trial court agreed, finding that the detectives did not have reasonable suspicion or probable cause to extend the stop, nor did they have consent to search Cox's vehicle.

Second, Cox moved to suppress incriminating statements attributed to him and Johnson by a jailhouse informant, Michael West. At a pretrial hearing on the motion, West testified that he saw Cox and Johnson at Central Booking on December 29, 2007, the day after Dargan's murder. He stated that while they were in the "day room" at Central Booking, Johnson began telling him about shooting Dargan—whom West had known since childhood—while Cox listened and occasionally added details. According to West, Johnson stated that he and Cox had been driving by the shopping center when Cox saw Dargan, whom Cox had identified as having been involved in the murder of an acquaintance. West recalled Johnson stating that Cox offered him $15,000 to kill Dargan. West stated that Johnson said he accepted the offer, so Cox gave him a nine-millimeter pistol and dropped him off on a street next to the shopping center. According to West, Johnson said he ran up to Dargan and shot him in the head. Johnson purportedly stated, as West recounted, that he then met up with Cox on a street around the corner and put the gun in the trunk of the car. Johnson then supposedly told West about getting stopped by the police, prompting Cox to mention that the police noticed that Johnson seemed nervous.

Cox's trial counsel objected to the admission of the statements attributed to Cox as fruits of the poisonous tree, arguing that Cox would not have been at Central Booking had he not been arrested during the unlawfully prolonged traffic stop. The trial court rejected this argument, finding that Cox independently chose to speak with West. As for the statements attributed to Johnson, Cox's counsel argued that the statements were inadmissible hearsay. But the trial court denied the motion to suppress, finding Johnson's statements to be admissions of Johnson tacitly adopted by Cox. However, the trial court precluded West from testifying to Johnson's statements about what happened between the time Johnson left the car and the time he returned, since Cox had no firsthand knowledge of what occurred during that timeframe and, therefore, could not have tacitly adopted them.

Ten days before Cox's trial, a jury acquitted Johnson of all charges. The trial court ruled that Cox could not introduce Johnson's acquittal to the jury. The State dropped its conspiracy charge against Cox but otherwise proceeded with its prosecution.

At Cox's trial, the State presented testimony from the officer and three detectives who responded to the shooting, an evidence technician who processed the shooting scene, the medical examiner who conducted Dargan's autopsy and one of the detectives involved in the traffic stop. The officer who first arrived at the shooting scene testified to finding the bullet casing and a head wrap or "do-rag." The evidence technician testified that the bullet casing had been dusted for fingerprints, but none had been found. The medical examiner testified that Dargan had been shot in the head. And the detective from the traffic stop testified that Cox was in the vehicle stopped near the scene. Besides the testimony that Cox was stopped nearby, none of those witnesses or the evidence introduced through them implicated Cox. For that, the State relied on West.

West's trial testimony about his conversation with Johnson and Cox was consistent with his testimony at the pretrial hearing, with the exception of the excluded statements attributed to Johnson about what allegedly occurred between the time Johnson left Cox's car and returned. West added that his day room conversation with Johnson and Cox took place "probably after eight" in the morning and lasted around 45 minutes or an hour. J.A. 275. West stated that, after spending a few more hours in the day room following the conversation, he used one of the phones there to call the homicide detective who had interviewed him the day before after his own arrest. Having known Dargan since childhood, West reasoned that he called the homicide detective because he "had just found out [his] friend got killed." J.A. 302.

West testified that the homicide detective retrieved him from Central Booking later that week and brought him to the homicide division to be interviewed. He recalled identifying Johnson and Cox in separate photo arrays. On the back of the photo array including Cox's image, West said he wrote a statement describing what Johnson and Cox told him. At trial, West read his written statement on the back of the photo array, which had been admitted into evidence, to the jury. West testified that neither the State nor the homicide detectives gave or promised him anything for his testimony.

Cox's counsel then cross-examined West about the layout of the Central Booking day room and surrounding cells, including the fact that the day room phones were out in the open. West affirmed that other inmates could see him making his phone call. West also affirmed that all phone calls made from the day room phones were recorded and that all detainees at Central Booking wore bracelets with barcodes that officials scanned to track their movements between locations in the facility.

Cox's counsel obtained...