David Wi v. Washburn

1

DAVID WI #571826, Petitioner, v. RUSSELL WASHBURN, Respondent.

No. 3:19-cv-00605

United States District Court, M.D. Tennessee, Nashville Division

September 27, 2022

MEMORANDUM OPINION

ELI RICHARDSON UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

David Wi faced a collection of charges in state court that included first-degree murder. Wi's counsel advised him that he may receive the death penalty if convicted at trial. Fearing a death sentence, Wi pleaded guilty in exchange for a sentence of life plus 25 years' imprisonment. Wi has since argued that his fear was unfounded because the prosecution had not filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty in his case. Wi asserts that the hollow threat of the death penalty renders his plea invalid and his counsel's advice ineffective. Wi unsuccessfully sought postconviction relief on these bases in state court, and he now comes to federal court through a pro se habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C § 2254. Because the propriety of the state court's rejection of Wi's claims is not beyond fair-minded disagreement, his federal habeas petition will be denied.

I. Background

An indictment charged Wi with twelve offenses: first-degree felony murder (plus three attempt counts and one conspiracy count), first-degree premeditated murder (plus three attempt counts and one conspiracy count), aggravated burglary, and aggravated assault. (Doc. No. 8-1 at 5-9.) Wi entered a negotiated plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to six offenses: felony murder, attempted felony murder, attempted premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, aggravated burglary, and aggravated assault. (Id. at 32-39.) In exchange for Wi's plea, the prosecution agreed to dismiss the other six charges, and Wi received a total effective sentence of life plus 25 years' imprisonment. (Id. at 33, 36.)

The prosecution provided a factual basis for the plea, summarized by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) as follows:

As the factual basis of the plea, the State offered an October 4, 2015 shooting in Montgomery County where Brandon Jiminez and a two-year-old minor male victim, the son of [Wi's] wife, were shot. On this particular day, [Wi's] wife, [Wi's] daughter, [Wi's] mother-in-law, and the minor male victim were at the home of Mr. Jiminez. Mr. Jiminez answered a knock on the door of his apartment, and a man greeted him asking for jumper cables. When Mr. Jiminez declined the man's request, the man pulled out a gun and began firing. Mr. Jiminez fell to the floor, and the man walked past him and fired several shots as he went down the hallway, including firing shots into the room where [Wi's] wife and daughter were hiding. As the man was leaving, the minor male victim began to cry. Hearing this cry, the man walked deeper into the home and fired more shots. Mr. Jiminez was seriously injured and transported via life flight to Vanderbilt Hospital, and the minor male victim died as a result of a gunshot to the back of the head.

During his interview at the hospital, Mr. Jiminez recalled seeing a red or burgundy Impala on the evening of the shooting, and he recalled that the man who committed the shooting had come by the apartment the day before to ask for directions. Bullets from the shooting matched a pistol recovered from a vehicle owned by Zachary Alexander, and DNA analysis revealed that blood from the scene, which had not matched any of the victims, matched Mr. Alexander. Phone records revealed that Mr. Alexander and [Wi] had communicated before and after the shooting, and a field book recovered from Mr. Alexander's vehicle contained pages labeled “Wi's plan.” The plan contained notes about life insurance, the need for a body, and the date on which the crime was to be committed, October 4th. A different page contained a hand drawn map labeled “Wi's crib.”

While in jail, [Wi] wrote a letter to another inmate describing the crime and detailing his motive. In the jail letter, [Wi] wrote the following:

First of all I never asked him to kill [the minor male victim]. He was only supposed to take out my ole lady, Alicia [and] her boyfriend if he got in the way. I didn't want anyone else in the house to die. Not even Rachel[, Alicia's mother,] because I didn't want [the minor male victim] to go into foster care. But what I think happen was, he knew I have life insurance on [the minor male victim], so after he shot the boyfriend, he couldn't find anyone else but the boy. He couldn't find Alicia, and he wanted to get paid so he shot [the minor male victim]. When he told me he shot him, I flipped out [and] asked him why. He just kept saying IDK, IDK, IDK, it was an accident. By the way, I didn't go in the house. I waited in the car. And he never saw Rachel. She hid in the bathroom the whole time....

Wi v. State, No. M201800671CCAR3PC, 2019 WL 1556244, at *1 (Tenn. Crim. App. Apr. 10, 2019) (footnote omitted).

At the plea hearing, Wi testified that he did not disagree with this summary of the facts in any material respect. (Doc. No. 8-3 at 38.) The court accepted the plea agreement and imposed judgment accordingly. (Id. at 39-41; Doc. No. 8-1 at 40-45.)

Wi filed a pro se post-conviction petition (Doc. No. 8-1 at 46-53), followed by an amended petition. (Id. at 62-70.) The court held an evidentiary hearing (Doc. No. 8-2) and denied relief. (Doc. No. 8-1 at 74-87.) The TCCA affirmed, and the Tennessee Supreme Court denied Wi's application for permission to appeal.^[1] Wi, 2019 WL 1556244, perm. app. denied June 19, 2019.

Wi then filed this pro se habeas petition in federal court. (Doc. No. 1-1.) Respondent filed an Answer (Doc. No. 9), and Wi filed a Reply. (Doc. No. 21.) Wi claims that his plea was unknowing and involuntary and that his counsel induced him to plead guilty by “threatening” him with the death penalty. (Doc. No. 1-1 at 5, 7.)

II. Legal Standard

Federal habeas relief for state prisoners is governed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 97 (2011). AEDPA establishes a demanding standard for granting federal relief on claims “adjudicated on the merits” in state court. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Under AEDPA, such a claim cannot be the basis for federal relief unless the state court's decision was: (1) “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States”; or (2) “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).

Under Section 2254(d)(1), a state court's decision is “contrary to” clearly established federal law “‘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 decision [of the Supreme Court] and nevertheless arrives at a [different result].'” Hill v. Curtin, 792 F.3d 670, 676 (6th Cir. 2015) (en banc) (quoting Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 73 (2003)). “Under the ‘unreasonable application' clause of [Section] 2254(d)(1), habeas relief is available if ‘the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from [the Supreme Court's] decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case.'” Id. (quoting Harris v. Haeberlin, 526 F.3d 903, 909 (6th Cir. 2008)). A state court's application is not unreasonable under this standard simply because a federal court finds it “incorrect or erroneous”; instead, the federal court must find that the state court's application was “objectively unreasonable.” Id. (quoting Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 520-21 (2003)).

To grant relief under Section 2254(d)(2), a federal court must find that “the state court's factual determination was ‘objectively unreasonable' in light of the evidence presented in the state court proceedings.” Young v. Hofbauer, 52 Fed.Appx. 234, 236 (6th Cir. 2002). State court factual determinations are unreasonable only “if it is shown that the state court's presumptively correct factual findings are rebutted by ‘clear and convincing evidence' and do not have support in the record.” Pouncy v. Palmer, 846 F.3d 144, 158 (6th Cir. 2017) (quoting Matthews v. Ishee, 486 F.3d 883, 889 (6th Cir. 2007)). “[I]t is not enough for the petitioner to show some unreasonable determination of fact; rather, the petitioner must show that the resulting state court decision was ‘based on' that unreasonable determination.” Rice v. White, 660 F.3d 242, 250 (6th Cir. 2011) (citing Byrd v. Workman, 645 F.3d 1159, 1172 (10th Cir. 2011)).

III. Analysis

As noted above, Wi brings two claims: that his plea was unknowing and involuntary, and that his counsel induced him to plead guilty by advising him that he may receive the death penalty if he proceeded to trial. The TCCA rejected these claims on post-conviction appeal, and the Court will address each claim in turn.

A. Validity of Guilty Plea

The federal standard governing a challenge to the knowing and voluntary nature of a guilty plea is set forth in Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238 (1969), and its progeny. See King v. Berghuis, 744 F.3d 961, 965 (6th Cir. 2014) (citing Boykin, 395 U.S. at 242-44) (explaining that a Boykin claim requires a court to determine “whether the record demonstrates that the defendant's plea was entered into knowingly intelligently, and voluntarily”). “The longstanding test for determining the validity of a guilty plea is ‘whether the plea represents a voluntary and intelligent choice among the alternative courses of action open to the defendant.'” Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 56 (1985) (quoting North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 31 (1970)); see also ...