Williams v. Warden, GDCP

1

JOSEPH WILLIAMS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. WARDEN, GDCP Respondent-Appellee.

No. 22-10249

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

October 8, 2024

DO NOT PUBLISH

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 4:12-cv-00106-WTM

Before WILSON, ROSENBAUM, and LUCK, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

Petitioner-Appellant Joseph Williams appeals the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. We granted a Certificate of Appealability (COA) as to the following claims:

1. Whether the district court violated Williams's due process rights by dismissing Claims 1(a)-1(c), 1(h)-1(m) 1(o), 1(r), 1(t), 1(x), 1(y), 1(aa)-1(dd), 1(ff), 1(gg) 1(ii), 1(jj), 1(ll), 1(oo), 1(qq)-1(ss), 1(uu)-1(aaa) 1(ccc)-1(ggg), and 1(iii) without giving Williams notice of its intent to dismiss these claims or an opportunity to respond.

2. Whether the district court violated Williams's due process rights by denying him leave to amend Claims 1(i) 1(j), 1(k), 1(1), 1(r), 1(t), 1(x), 1(aa), 1(bb), 1(ll) 1(qq), 1(xx), 1(iii), and Claim 2 after the court dismissed them as insufficiently pled under Rule 2(c) of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Proceedings.

After careful review and with the benefit of oral argument, we find that the district court violated the Supreme Court's directive in Day v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 198, 210 (2006), that a habeas petitioner is entitled to notice and opportunity to be heard before sua sponte dismissal of his petition. Williams's due process rights were violated because the district court failed to give him notice and afford him an opportunity to respond before sua sponte dismissing thirty-five of his claims. Thus, we vacate and remand to the district court to provide Williams with notice and opportunity to address whether he sufficiently pled those thirty-five claims.

I. Factual Background

The facts surrounding Williams's underlying crime were summarized by the Supreme Court of Georgia in his direct appeal:

[O]n July 24, 2001, Williams was a jail inmate at the Chatham County Detention Center. Seven other inmates, including Michael Deal, were being held in the same unit as Williams. Williams and four of the other inmates, Leon McKinney, Pierre Byrd, Michael Wilson, and John McMillan, discovered a loose window and used an improvised chisel to chip away at the wall around it. Deal inquired what the men were doing but left when he was told "to mind his own business." Williams and other inmates began to suspect that Deal had informed, or was going to inform, the jail authorities about the escape plan. McKinney suggested stabbing Deal with the improvised chisel, but Williams objected that there would be too much blood and that their plan would be frustrated. The group then carried out an alternative plan to strangle Deal and make the killing appear to be a suicide. McKinney engaged Deal in a discussion about their relative body sizes and then, facing Deal, lifted him in a "bear hug." Williams then began strangling Deal from behind with an Ace bandage. Deal fell to the floor but did not immediately lose consciousness. The evidence is unclear whether it was Wilson or Byrd, but one of those two men then assisted Williams by taking one end of the Ace bandage and completing the strangulation in a "tug-of-war." Byrd invited Anthony King, an inmate who had been friendly with Deal, into Byrd's cell to distract King as Deal's body was moved. Williams then dragged Deal's body to Deal's cell, flushed the Ace bandage down the toilet, cleaned up blood and hair on the floor with a rag, flushed the rag, tied a bed sheet around Deal's neck, and finally, with the assistance of McKinney and McMillan, lifted Deal's body and tied the bed sheet to a grate in the ceiling to make the death appear to be a suicide. After the murder, Williams and Byrd favored also killing King and Dewey Anderson, but McKinney and McMillan objected. Byrd, later troubled by dreams about the victim, contacted his attorney, passed a note about the murder to a jail guard, and then directed authorities to the improvised chisel, the loosened window, and a letter about the murder written to him by Williams. Williams confessed in an audiotaped interview conducted by a [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] agent.

Williams v. State, 635 S.E.2d 146, 147-48 (Ga. 2006) (internal citation omitted).

II. Procedural Background

A Georgia grand jury charged Williams with one count of malice murder and one count of felony murder. Williams proceeded to trial in March 2004. But during the voir dire proceedings in April 2004, Williams stated that he wanted to plead guilty to malice murder. After a competency hearing, the trial court accepted Williams's plea, Georgia nolle prossed the felony murder charge, and the trial proceeded to the sentencing phase.

At sentencing, Georgia presented evidence that established Williams had a history of violence, including murder convictions for two people, before these charges. In total, Georgia presented seventeen witnesses and focused on future dangerousness as a key theme of its case. Williams's counsel presented only two witnesses: a short-term pen pal and a mitigation specialist to provide evidence about mitigating factors.

The jury found beyond a reasonable doubt that the offense of murder was committed: (1) while the defendant was in a place of lawful confinement; and (2) by a person with prior convictions for murder and armed robbery. The jury fixed the sentence at death, and the state trial court judge accepted the recommendation of death.

Williams appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, which affirmed his sentence in September 2006. Williams, 635 S.E.2d at 147-50. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Williams's petition for a writ of certiorari in April 2008. Williams v. Georgia, 553 U.S. 1004 (2008).

In 2009, Williams filed a state habeas petition arguing, among other claims, multiple ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) claims and a prosecutorial misconduct claim. After an evidentiary hearing, the state habeas court denied relief as to the IAC claims on the merits and found the prosecutorial misconduct claim procedurally defaulted. The Georgia Supreme Court denied Williams's application for a certificate of probable cause.

In April 2012, Williams filed his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition, alleging nine claims. Relevant to this appeal, Williams raised an ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) claim, which he broke into 61 subclaims (Claim 1), and a prosecutorial misconduct claim (Claim 2). The Warden of the Georgia Department of Corrections answered, arguing that the prosecutorial misconduct claim was procedurally defaulted because the state habeas court found the same claim defaulted. The Warden next admitted that the IAC claim was "properly before this court for review . . . [and] reviewable under § 2254(d)," but still denied the allegations and noted that they were "properly rejected on their merits by the state habeas 33 corpus court.

The Warden then moved for a scheduling order that would impose a truncated schedule to resolve all the claims. Williams opposed, asking the court to implement a scheduling order that would allow him to seek discovery and request an evidentiary hearing before addressing the procedural issues and the merits. The district court granted the motion for a scheduling order by providing a timeline for Williams to request discovery and move for an evidentiary hearing. Then the parties would brief "the issues of procedural default, cause and prejudice, and fundamental miscarriage of justice." Once briefing was completed, the district court would issue an order on procedural issues. Lastly, following briefing, the court would rule on the merits of Williams's petition.

From January 2013 through March 2018, Williams moved for discovery and sought an evidentiary hearing. In September 2017, Williams filed his brief on procedural issues, noting that his ineffective assistance of counsel claim was not procedurally defaulted, to which the Warden had before agreed. Williams argued that his prosecutorial misconduct claim was not procedurally defaulted. The Warden responded that the prosecutorial misconduct claim and thirty-three of the IAC subclaims in Claim 1 were procedurally defaulted and that ten of the IAC subclaims^[1] were insufficiently pled under Rule 2(c) of the Rules Governing Section 2254 Proceedings (hereinafter Habeas Rules). The Warden conceded that twelve of the subclaims, including Claims 1(t) and 1(qq), were properly before the district court. Williams replied that the state was on notice of all his ineffective-assistance subclaims.

In an April 2019 order, the district court addressed the procedural issues. The court first found that the state had expressly waived its ability to raise any exhaustion challenge to Williams's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims in its original response. But then the court found that forty of the IAC subclaims, Claims 1(a)-1(c), 1(h)-1(m), 1(o), 1(r) 1(t), 1(x), 1(y) 1(aa)-1(dd), 1(ff), 1(gg), 1(ii), 1(jj), 1(ll), 1(oo), 1(qq)-1(ss), 1(uu)-1(aaa), 1(ccc)-1(ggg), and 1(iii), were insufficiently pled under Rule 2(c). Therefore, these claims were not properly before the court and could not be asserted in the merits briefing. But the court ordered that Williams brief his general claim that counsel was ineffective for failing to properly investigate and present evidence of his mental health and background at trial, using those remaining subclaims in Claim 1 that the court found were adequately pled. As to Claim 2, the court found that this claim was insufficiently pled, as Williams provided no factual detail to support his conclusory allegation that the state had suppressed evidence. It also...