Doan v. Carter

548 F.3d 449

Vincent DOAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Harold E. CARTER, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 07-3516.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: October 29, 2008.

Decided and Filed: November 26, 2008.

ARGUED:

Kort W. Gatterdam, Carpenter, Lipps & Leland, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Michael D. Meuti, Office of the ohio Attorney General, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.

ON BRIEF:

Kort W. Gatterdam, Carpenter, Lipps & Leland, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. M. Scott Criss, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.

Before: SILER and McKEAGUE, Circuit Judges; LUDINGTON, District Judge.^*

OPINION

LUDINGTON, District Judge.

A state-court jury convicted Vincent Doan of aggravated murder, with one death-penalty specification, and three counts of kidnapping. The court followed the recommendation of the jury and imposed a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the aggravated murder conviction and also imposed a nine-year prison term for the kidnapping convictions. In affirming his conviction, the Ohio Court of Appeals rejected Doan's claims that the trial court violated his due process rights by utilizing a jury instruction that allegedly reduced the State's burden of proof, and that the trial court violated Doan's Confrontation Clause rights by admitting hearsay statements indicating that Doan had physically abused or threatened the victim. State v. Doan, No. CA97-12-014, 2000 WL 221963 (Ohio Ct.App. Feb. 28, 2000).

Doan filed his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition in federal district court in August 2000. Doan had a state postconviction proceeding pending at the time, but because of the Ohio courts' delay in acting on the petition, the federal district court excused Doan from exhausting the claims that had not been exhausted in Doan's direct appeal, including claims under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). The district court denied Doan's habeas petition, which alleged thirteen grounds for relief, but granted Doan a certificate of appealability as to whether the State violated his rights under Brady. Doan v. Voorhies, No. 1:00-CV-727, 2007 WL 894559 (S.D.Ohio Mar.21, 2007). This Court expanded the certificate of appealability to include Doan's claims that the trial court violated his due process rights with a jury instruction that allegedly reduced the State's burden of proof, and that the trial court violated his Confrontation Clause rights by admitting inadmissible hearsay testimony. For the following reasons, we AFFIRM.

I

Doan was convicted of the kidnapping and murdering of his girlfriend, Clarissa Ann (Carrie) Culberson, who disappeared in the overnight hours of August 28-29, 1996. On the evening of August 28, 1996, Culberson was scheduled to play a game in a coed volleyball league. Witnesses saw Doan arrive in his car at the volleyball court and have a verbal dispute with Culberson, who refused to go home with him because she needed to drive her friends home, as they had been drinking. At approximately 11:30 p.m. that evening, after Culberson's game was over and she had returned home, a Culberson neighbor saw her leave in her red Honda CRX. Between 12:30 and 12:45 a.m. on August 29, 1996, Doan's neighbor, Billie Jo Brown, observed Doan chasing Culberson in Brown's front yard, with Culberson "asking for help." Brown observed the red CRX with the driver's door open. She saw Doan catch Culberson, punch her in the face, and tell her, "`I told you the next time I'd kill you, you fucking bitch.'" While Brown was attempting to wake her husband, she heard squealing tires; when she returned to the window, she observed that Culberson, Doan, and Culberson's car were gone.

At 3:15 a.m. on August 29, 2006, Doan appeared at the home of his half-brother, Tracey Baker. According to Tracey's exwife Lori Baker, Doan was shirtless and had blood on his chest, arm, and jeans, and according to another witness, Vicki Watkins, Doan was "dirty," "grungy looking," and "distraught." At approximately 3:45 a.m., after Doan had showered, changed clothes, and conversed with Tracey, Doan and Tracey left in Tracey's truck, carrying with them several garbage bags and a gun. The men returned to Tracey's house at approximately 6:00 a.m. and attempted to clean up Doan's clothes and boots that he had left behind. Neither Culberson's body nor her Honda CRX was ever found.

At trial, multiple witnesses testified that, on many occasions in the months prior to Culberson's disappearance, Culberson had described to them physical abuse by Doan, and threats that Doan had made on her life and the lives of her family members. Witnesses testified that Culberson had told them that Doan had punched her, dragged her through a bedroom, smashed her face into a steering wheel, held her by the hair after kicking out the window of a car in which she was riding, and picked her up and slammed her against a car trunk.

II

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA"), 28 U.S.C. § 2254, placed "a new constraint on the power of a federal habeas court to grant a state prisoner's application for a writ of habeas corpus with respect to claims adjudicated on the merits in state court." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). Doan's petition for a writ of habeas corpus may be granted only if he can show that the state court's adjudication of his claims on the merits:

(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).

"Under the `contrary to' clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by [the Supreme] Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than [the Supreme] Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts." Williams, 529 U.S. at 412-13, 120 S.Ct. 1495. Conversely, "[u]nder the `unreasonable application' clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ 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. at 413, 120 S.Ct. 1495. A state court need not cite Supreme Court cases on point or even be aware of such cases, "so long as neither the reasoning nor the result of the state-court decision contradicts them." Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8, 123 S.Ct. 362, 154 L.Ed.2d 263 (2002) (per curiam).

"Furthermore, state findings of fact are presumed to be correct unless the defendant can rebut the presumption by clear and convincing evidence." Baze v. Parker, 371 F.3d 310, 318 (6th Cir.2004) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1)). This review is conducted in light of the law as it existed at the time of the final state-court decision, Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 310, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), unless an intervening decision of constitutional import announces a "watershed" rule of criminal law with implications for the fundamental fairness of the trial proceeding. Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U.S. 383, 395, 114 S.Ct. 948, 127 L.Ed.2d 236 (1994) (citation omitted). This Court reviews the district court's legal conclusions de novo. Greer v. Mitchell, 264 F.3d 663, 671 (6th Cir.2001).

A

In his habeas petition, Doan contends that an erroneous jury instruction that referred to a civil "greater weight of the evidence" standard deprived him of the right to have the State prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The trial court properly defined the "beyond a reasonable doubt" burden of proof by providing the jury with Ohio's statutory definition of reasonable doubt. See Ohio Rev. Code § 2901.05(D). However, in response to Doan's counsel's request for an instruction cautioning jurors about drawing an inference upon an inference, the trial court included the following ancillary instruction in its explanation of direct and circumstantial evidence:

To infer or to make an inference is to reach a reasonable conclusion of fact which you may but you are not required to make from other facts which you find have been established by direct evidence. Whether an inference is made rests entirely with you. You may infer a fact or facts or reach a reasonable conclusion about a fact or facts only from other facts or circumstances that have been proved by the greater weight of the evidence, but you may not infer a fact or facts, or make inferences — or reach a conclusion about a fact or facts from a speculative or remote basis that has not been established by a greater weight of the evidence.

Tr. 3330-31, J.A. 907-08. During deliberations, and at the jury's request, the trial court re-read to the jury the ancillary instructions concerning direct and circumstantial evidence, including the erroneous instruction cautioning inferences. Although Doan's counsel objected to the instruction after the court re-read it to the jury, the trial court declined to correct the instruction, in order to avoid drawing the jury's attention to it.

"To warrant habeas relief, jury instructions must not only have been erroneous, but also, taken as a whole, so infirm that they rendered the entire trial fundamentally unfair." Austin v. Bell, 126 F.3d 843, 846-47 (6th Cir.1997) (citing Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 72, 112 S.Ct. 475, 116 L.Ed.2d 385 (1991), Henderson v. Kibbe, 431 U.S. 145, 154, 97 S.Ct. 1730, 52 L.Ed.2d 203 (1977), and Wood v. Marshall, 790 F.2d 548, 551-52 (6th Cir.1986)). When a court makes an error in instructing the jury, the proper inquiry is "whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury" applied the instruction "in an unconstitutional manner." Victor v. Nebraska, 511...