Moore v. Biter

742 F.3d 917

ROOSEVELT BRIAN MOORE, Petitioner–Appellant,

v.M.D. BITER, Warden, Respondent–Appellee.

No. 11–56846.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Feb. 12, 2014.

Patricia Ann Young, Federal Public Defender's Office, Los Angeles, CA, for Petitioner–Appellant.

Roosevelt Brian Moore, pro se.

Mary Sanchez, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Xiomara Costello, Office of the California Attorney General, Los ANGELES, CA, for Respondent–Appellee.

Before: HARRY PREGERSON, WILLIAM A. FLETCHER, and JACQUELINE H. NGUYEN, Circuit Judges.

ORDER

The panel has voted to deny the petitions for rehearing and rehearing en banc.

The full court was advised of the petition for rehearing en banc. A judge requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. The matter failed to receive a majority of the votes of the nonrecused active judges in favor of en banc consideration. Fed. R.App. P. 35.

The petitions for rehearing and rehearing en banc are DENIED. No further petitions will be entertained.

Judge O'Scannlain's dissent from denial of rehearing en banc is filed concurrently with this Order.

O'SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge, joined by TALLMAN, BYBEE, CALLAHAN, BEA, M. SMITH, and IKUTA, Circuit Judges, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc:

Our Court defies AEDPA once again, this time by failing to distinguish one “life without parole” sentence from multiple “term-of-years” sentences. A panel of this Court holds that Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010), invalidates the latter, ignoring the contrary holding of the Sixth Circuit,¹ disregardingthe views of state courts across the country, and flouting Graham's text and reasoning.

I respectfully dissent from our decision not to rehear this case en banc.

I

Roosevelt Moore appeals the district court's denial of his petition for habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Moore committed a series of forcible rapes and other offenses at the age of sixteen and was tried as an adult. In 1991, a jury convicted him of twenty-four crimes, including nine counts of forcible rape, seven counts of forcible oral copulation, and two counts of robbery, and also found that he used a firearm for most of the offenses. He was sentenced to fixed terms of imprisonment for each offense with enhancements for using a firearm, to run consecutively. Although none of the individual sentences exceeded eight years, Moore was sentenced to 254 years in prison, cumulatively. He cannot be considered for parole until he serves at least 127 years and two months.

Nearly two decades later, Moore filed state habeas petitions, pro se, arguing that his sentence is unconstitutional in light of Graham. The Los Angeles County Superior Court summarily denied his petition. The California Court of Appeal held that Graham does not apply to Moore's sentence, and the California Supreme Court summarily denied review.

Our panel, however, granted habeas relief, holding that Graham applies retroactively to Moore's sentence and that the California state courts' decisions were contrary to Graham because Moore's case is materially indistinguishable from Graham's. Moore, 725 F.3d at 1186.

II

Under AEDPA, federal courts may not grant habeas relief on a claim that was adjudicated on the merits in state court, 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) “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). A state court decision is “contrary to” Supreme Court precedent “if it applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [the Court's] 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 [the Court's] precedent.” Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8, 123 S.Ct. 362, 154 L.Ed.2d 263 (2002) (internal quotation marks omitted).

A state court “must apply legal principles established by a Supreme Court decision when the case falls squarely within those principles, but not in cases where there is a structural difference between the prior precedent and the case at issue, or when the prior precedent requires tailoring or modification to apply to the new situation.” Moses v. Payne, 555 F.3d 742, 753 (9th Cir.2009) (quotation marks omitted). Unless the Supreme Court has “squarely address[ed]” an issue or established a principle that “clearly extend [s] to a new context,” there is no “clearly established Supreme Court precedent addressing the issue.” Id. at 754 (internal quotation marks omitted; second alteration in original).

The Court has consistently warned lower courts, and this court in particular, to avoid defining “clearly established” law too broadly. See, e.g., Parker v. Matthews, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2148, 183 L.Ed.2d 32 (2012); Howes v. Fields, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 1181, 182 L.Ed.2d 17 (2012); Wright v. Van Patten, 552 U.S. 120, 128 S.Ct. 743, 169 L.Ed.2d 583 (2008); Carey v. Musladin, 549 U.S. 70, 127 S.Ct. 649, 166 L.Ed.2d 482 (2006).

A

In Graham, the Supreme Court announced that the Constitution does not permit “a juvenile offender to be sentenced to life in prison without parole for a nonhomicide crime.” 560 U.S. at 52–53, 130 S.Ct. 2011. The Court's “categorical rule” was meant to give “juvenile nonhomicide offenders a chance to demonstrate maturity and reform.” Id. at 79, 130 S.Ct. 2011.

To support its conclusion that the state court's decision was contrary to Graham, the panel reasoned that “Moore's sentence of 254 years is materially indistinguishable from a life sentence without parole because Moore will not be eligible for parole within his lifetime.” Moore, 725 F.3d at 1191. That Moore's sentence was not likely to be completed during his lifetime, even if not labeled a “life sentence,” did not distinguish it from Graham.Id. at 1191–92. Furthermore, that Moore committed serious crimes did not distinguish his case from Graham, because the Supreme Court “expressly rejected a case-by-case approach” that would take account of factual differences between crimes. Id. at 1192–93.

And there the panel's opinion stops, failing to confront the most meaningful distinction between Moore's case and Graham: Moore's term of imprisonment is composed of over two dozen separate sentences, none longer than eight years; Graham's is one sentence, “life without parole.” Because the Supreme Court explicitly stated that Graham concerned “only those juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole solely for a nonhomicide offense,” 560 U.S. at 62, 130 S.Ct. 2011, it “did not clearly establish that consecutive, fixed-term sentences for juveniles who commit multiple nonhomicide offenses are unconstitutional when they amount to the practical equivalent of life without parole,” Bunch, 685 F.3d at 550.

If that express limitation on Graham's holding were not enough, Graham's reasoning makes clear that the Supreme Court did not squarely address aggregate term-of-years sentences. Beginning with “objective indicia of national consensus,” the Court noted that there were “123 juvenile nonhomicide offenders serving life without parole sentences,” and “only 11 jurisdictions nationwide in fact impose life without parole sentences on juvenile nonhomicide offenders—and most of those do so quite rarely.” Graham, 560 U.S. at 62–64, 130 S.Ct. 2011. Thus, “[t]he sentencing practice now under consideration is exceedingly rare.” Id. at 67, 130 S.Ct. 2011.

But, to reach that conclusion, the Court did not consider the prevalence of sentences like Moore's—lengthy term-of-years sentences adding up to de facto life imprisonment. See id. at 113 n. 11, 130 S.Ct. 2011 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (“[T]he Court counts only those juveniles sentenced to life without parole and excludes from its analysis all juveniles sentenced to lengthy term-of-years sentences ( e.g., 70 or 80 years' imprisonment).”). Nor was Moore counted among those 123 juvenile nonhomicide offenders. See P. Annino et al., Juvenile Life without Parole for No—Homicide Offenses: Florida Compared to Nation 14–15 (Sept. 14, 2009) (listing four such offenders incarcerated in California for crimes of kidnapping and/or robbery).

If the Court did not consider aggregate term-of-years sentences adding up de facto to life without parole, it cannot have squarely addressed their constitutionality. See Graham, 560 U.S. at 124, 130 S.Ct. 2011 (Alito, J., dissenting) (“Nothing in the Court's opinion affects the imposition of a sentence to a term of years without the possibility of parole.”). As our sister circuit held: The Supreme Court “did not analyze sentencing laws or actual sentencing practices regarding consecutive, fixed-term sentences for juvenile nonhomicide offenders. This demonstrates that the Court did not even consider the constitutionality of such sentences, let alone clearly establish that they can violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments.” Bunch, 685 F.3d at 552.²

If the Court has not squarely addressed the constitutionality of aggregate term-of-years sentences, the state court's determination that Moore's sentence is not unconstitutional cannot be contrary to clearly established federal law.

B

Unsurprisingly, in the absence of an express holding regarding such sentences, “courts across the country are split over whether Graham bars a court from sentencing a juvenile nonhomicide offender to consecutive, fixed terms resulting in an aggregate sentence that exceeds the defendant's life expectancy.” Id. Some have held that Graham prohibits aggregate term-of-years sentences that amount to the functional equivalent of life without parole. See, e.g., People v. Caballero, 55 Cal.4th 262, 145 Cal.Rptr.3d 286, 282 P.3d 291, 294–95 (2012...