Elliott v. Burt

SAMUEL LEE ELLIOTT, Petitioner, v. SHERRY BURT, Respondent.

Case No. 14-13735

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN SOUTHERN DIVISION

April 28, 2016

HON. TERRENCE G. BERG

OPINION AND ORDER DENYING PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS, GRANTING A CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY, AND GRANTING PERMISSION TO APPEAL IN FORMA PAUPERIS

This is a habeas case brought by a Michigan prisoner under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Petitioner Samuel Lee Elliot was convicted after a jury trial in the Jackson Circuit Court of armed robbery pursuant to Mich. Comp. Laws § 750.529. Petitioner was sentenced as a fourth-time habitual felony offender to a term of 15-to-30 years. The petition raises one claim: that Petitioner's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was denied when the trial court admitted Petitioner's confession to a parole officer. The Court will deny the petition because the state court adjudication of this claim did not involve an unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent. The Court will, however, grant Petitioner a certificate of appealability and permission to proceed on appeal in forma pauperis.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The facts as stated by the Michigan Supreme Court are presumed correct on habeas review pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). See Wagner v. Smith, 581 F.3d 410, 413 (6th Cir. 2009). Those facts are:

In 2006, defendant was convicted of unarmed robbery in violation of MCL 750.530, and the trial court sentenced him to serve a prison term of 3 to 15 years. In February 2010, at the discretion of the parole board, defendant was granted parole and provisionally released from prison. Upon release, defendant was placed under the supervision of a parole officer and required to abide by certain conditions of parole. These conditions included that defendant not engage in behavior that constitutes a violation of any federal, state, or local law, that he not use or possess controlled substances, and that he follow the parole officer's instructions and report as required by the officer.

On June 17, 2010, defendant was taken into custody by police pursuant to a warrant for failing to report, and the next day, his parole officer, Jason Golightly, served defendant with a notice of parole violation pertaining to that failure. On the same day, after advising defendant of his Miranda rights, detectives of the Jackson Police Department questioned defendant concerning a robbery that had occurred at approximately 4:00 a.m. on June 16, 2010, at a Jackson gas station. After voluntarily answering several questions, defendant requested an attorney. The police then discontinued the interrogation.

On June 21, 2010, while defendant was still incarcerated, his parole officer was on vacation, so another officer, Cheryl Evans, went to the jail to serve defendant with an amended notice of parole violation that identified three additional parole violations, one of which related to the June 16 robbery. Evans testified as follows regarding what occurred at the jail:

Q. And what, exactly does ["serve him parole violation charges and get his statement"] mean? What do you do? What's the process when that happens?

A. When a person is served with a parole violation charge, when we determine they -- or we believe they haveviolated a condition of their parole, we have charges made up. They're on a piece of paper.

We then go and meet with the person. We serve them the charges, which means I say "Count I," "Count II" -- or, for him, it was Count -- it was an additional count, so it was Count III, Count IV, Count V. And then I review it with him. I ask him for a statement. We talk a little bit. And then he decides whether he signs the bottom -- not saying he's guilty -- just signs that he received the charges.

Then he's offered a preliminary parole violation hearing, which is a probable cause hearing. And, again, he waived that, but waiving that does not admit he's guilty. It's just that he's waiving the preliminary hearing.

Q. So, did you do all this with the Defendant?

A. Yes.

Q. And did he give you a statement?

A. Yes, he did.

Q. Did one of the charges have to do with the robbery at the Admiral gas station?

A. Yes.

Q. Did he give you a statement as to those charges?

A. Yes.

Q. And what did he say?

A. We talked generally about everything that was going on and he said that he'd been having a rough time. He said that he was living with his cousin, Laurie Brooks, who has a couple of kids, and that he felt -- he wasn't able to get a job and hold a job -- and he felt that he was putting a lot of financial stresses on her. And he also said, you know, he, himself, got a little stressed about it and was having a lot of trouble adjusting and he slipped and started using his cocaine again.

And he said he went into the Admiral gas station. He told me that he walked in there to the clerk, asked the clerk for some cigarettes. The clerk turned around to get cigarettes. As the clerk turned around -- he actually showed me what he did -- he leaned forward like this onto the counter and told the guy in a low voice to -- told him to give him the money and he wouldn't get hurt, and then he said the guy gave him the money and he left.

Relevant here, the meeting between Evans and defendant took place in the jail library and lasted approximately 15 to 25 minutes. Evans did not inform defendant of his Miranda rights or tell defendant that he was not required to speak to her absent a lawyer being present. According to Evans, during the meeting, defendant told her that he had submitted a letter indicating that he wished to talk to the police again, and at the end of the meeting, defendant asked Evans to convey to the police that he wished to speak to them.

Defendant was eventually charged with armed robbery for the gas station incident, and he was tried before a jury. At the beginning of trial, defendant moved to suppress Evans's testimony regarding defendant's confession, arguing that it was improperly obtained because defendant had not been informed of his Miranda rights and because defendant had previously requested counsel. After conducting a hearing, the trial court determined that Evans had not been acting in concert with law enforcement officials and that Evans was not herself a law enforcement officer obligated to give Miranda warnings. Accordingly, the court denied defendant's motion and admitted Evans's testimony regarding defendant's confession. The jury convicted defendant of armed robbery, and he was sentenced as a fourth-offense habitual offender to a prison term of 15-30 years.

People v. Elliott, 494 Mich. 292, 296-299 (2013) (footnotes omitted).

Following his conviction and sentence, Petitioner appealed in the Michigan Court of Appeals, raising the same issues that form the basis of his habeas claim. The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed Petitioner's conviction in a unanimousdecision, finding that Petitioner's Miranda rights were violated by admission of his confession to Evans. People v. Elliott, 295 Mich. App. 623 (2012).

The prosecutor filed an application for leave to appeal in the Michigan Supreme Court. The Michigan Supreme Court granted the application and reversed the decision of the court of appeals in a 5-to-2 decision. The majority opinion concluded that Petitioner was not in custody for Miranda purposes during his interaction with the parole officer, and therefore his Fifth Amendment rights were not implicated. Elliott, 494 Mich. at 305-322.

Petitioner sought relief in the United States Supreme Court, but his petition for a writ of certiorari was denied. Elliot v. Michigan, ___ U.S. ___ ; 134 S.Ct. 692; 187 L. Ed. 2d 559 (2013).

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) sharply curtails a federal court's review of constitutional claims raised by a state prisoner in a habeas corpus action if the claims were rejected on the merits by the state courts. Relief is barred under this section unless the state court adjudication was "contrary to" or resulted in an "unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court law.

"A state court's decision is 'contrary to' . . . clearly established law if it 'applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [Supreme Court cases]' or if it 'confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of [the Supreme] Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from[this] precedent.'" Mitchell v. Esparza, 540 U.S. 12, 15-16 (2003) (per curiam) (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06 (2000)).

"[T]he 'unreasonable application' prong of the statute permits a federal habeas court to 'grant the writ if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from [the Supreme] Court but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of petitioner's case." Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 520 (2003) quoting Williams, 529 U.S. at 413.

Demonstrating that a state court unreasonably applied clearly established Supreme Court law is no easy task because "[a] state court's determination that a claim lacks merit precludes federal habeas relief so long as 'fairminded jurists could disagree' on the correctness of the state court's decision." Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S.86, 101 (2011) (quoting Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 664 (2004)). "Section 2254(d) reflects the view that habeas corpus is a guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems, not a substitute for ordinary error correction through appeal . . . As a condition for obtaining habeas corpus from a federal court, a state prisoner must show that the state court's ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement." Harrington, 562 U.S. at 103 (internal quotation omitted).

III. ANALYSIS

Petitioner claims that his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was violated when the parole...