HABEAS CORPUS (28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2)) — FAILURE TO DEVELOP THE FACTUAL BASIS OF CLAIMS DURING STATE COURT PROCEEDINGS
Case: Williams v. Taylor
Issue: Whether 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(2), which prohibits, with certain exceptions, federal habeas corpus evidentiary hearings for claims which an applicant in state custody failed to develop during state court proceedings, applies when the failure to develop those claims was not caused by a lack of diligence on the part of the applicant.
Facts: Petitioner Michael Wayne Williams received a capital sentence for two murders. The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed petitioner’s conviction and sentence. Petitioner then filed a habeas petition in state court, alleging that the Commonwealth failed to disclose an informal plea bargain agreement between the state and a co-defendant who testified against petitioner during trial. The Virginia Supreme Court dismissed the petition on the merits. Petitioner subsequently filed a habeas petition in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In addition to his claim regarding the undisclosed agreement, he raised three new claims. First, he claimed the prosecution violated Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) by not disclosing a pre-trial psychiatric examination of the co-defendant. Second, petitioner alleged that his initial trial was unfair because a seated juror failed to reveal possible sources of bias during voir dire. Third, petitioner alleged misconduct by a prosecutor who failed to reveal his knowledge of the juror’s possible bias. The United States District Court granted an evidentiary hearing on each of petitioner’s claims, except the failure to disclose the psychiatric report. Before the hearing took place, the Commonwealth requested an emergency stay and petition for writ of mandamus and prohibition in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, arguing that the evidentiary hearing was prohibited by 28 U.S.C. §2254(e)(2), as amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"), which bars such hearings when "the applicant has failed to develop the factual basis of a claim in State court proceedings." The Fourth Circuit granted the emergency stay and remanded to the United States District Court with instructions to apply the statute to petitioner’s request. On remand, the United States District Court vacated its granting of the evidentiary hearing and dismissed the petition. The Fourth Circuit affirmed. It accepted Williams’s argument that 28 U.S.C. §2254(e)(2) should not apply when the failure to develop claims is not the result of a lack of diligence on the part of the petitioner, but found that Williams had not been diligent during State court proceedings and was therefore barred from an evidentiary hearing.
Holding: 28 U.S.C. §2254(e)(2), as amended by the AEDPA, bars federal habeas evidentiary hearings only when the failure to develop (in state court) the factual basis of a claim results from a lack of diligence on the part of the applicant.
Reasoning: First, the Court concluded that the word "failed" in 28 U.S.C. §2254(e)(2) implies fault or negligence on the part of the defendant in pursuing his claims in state court. "To say a person has failed in a duty implies that he did not take the necessary steps to fulfill it…In this sense, a person is not at fault when his diligent efforts to perform an act are thwarted, for example, by the conduct of another or by happenstance."
The Court next noted that this interpretation is consistent with rulings made prior to the AEDPA. In Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, 504 U.S. 1 (1992), the Court held that prisoners who fail to develop material facts in state courts must demonstrate cause and prejudice excusing the failure. Based on similarities in the language of Keeney and the opening clause of the AEDPA, the Court reasoned that Congress intended to preserve the principle of Keeney that prisoners who are at fault for a deficiency in state court claims must satisfy heightened standards to obtain evidentiary hearings. This heightened scrutiny, however, applies only to cases in which it is the fault of the applicant that the claims were not developed previously. In such cases, the AEDPA, through § 2254(e)(2)(A)(i)(ii)(B), simply codifies Keeney’s threshold of diligence.
Finally, the Court rejected the Commonwealth’s argument that its reading of the AEDPA is contrary to the act’s purpose of furthering comity, finality and federalism in habeas hearings. The Court reasoned that its ruling gave effect to the act’s purpose by avoiding unneeded evidentiary hearings while recognizing that prisoners who exercise due diligence in state proceedings are not to be equated with those who do not.
Having interpreted §2254(e)(2) as barring only evidentiary hearings in which the applicant did not exercise due diligence, the Court then went on to consider whether the petitioner in this case satisfied this requirement.
The Court held that the petitioner had not exercised due diligence with respect to his Brady claim. The psychiatric report was included in the co-defendant’s court report, a file which the petitioner’s state habeas counsel reviewed. Moreover, numerous references were made to the psychiatric report in the transcript of the co-defendant’s sentencing hearing, a copy of which the state habeas counsel attached to the habeas petition. Therefore, the Court held that the petitioner should have been aware of possible Brady violations during the state habeas proceedings. He was therefore barred from an evidentiary hearing on these matters.
On his other two claims regarding possible juror bias and prosecutorial misconduct related thereto, however, the Court held that petitioner did exercise all necessary due diligence to qualify for an evidentiary hearing. During voir dire, prospective jurors were asked if they were related to any of the witnesses slated to be called in the case, including Deputy Sheriff Claude Meinhard. One prospective juror, Bonnie Stinnett, had once been married to Meinhard, but did not answer affirmatively to the question. The trial court then asked the venire persons if any of them or their family members had ever been represented by the attorneys in the case. Stinnett again remained silent, although prosecutor Robert Woodson Jr. had represented her in the divorce. Stinnett was placed on the jury and later became its foreperson. Woodson remained silent during the judge’s voir dire questions. This issue was not discovered by the petitioner until after his state habeas petition had been dismissed.
The Court held that the silence by both the juror and prosecution gave the petitioner no reason to investigate Stinnett's marriage history. (The Fourth Circuit had held that state habeas counsel was not diligent because petitioner's federal habeas investigator had learned of the Stinnett-Meinhard marriage from other jurors and confirmed it through a search of public records.) Therefore, there was no "failure to develop" or "lack of diligence" on the part of the petitioner under the statute, and he was entitled to an evidentiary hearing on these matters. "[T]hese omissions as a whole disclose the need for an evidentiary hearing. It may be that petitioner could establish that Stinnett was not impartial . . . or that Woodson's silence so infected the trial as to deny due process."