In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Nos. 07-2093 & 07-2182
JOSEPH E. C ORCORAN,
Petitioner-Appellee/
Cross-Appellant,
v.
B ILL W ILSON, Superintendent,
Respondent-Appellant/
Cross-Appellee.
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division.
†
No. 3:05-CV-389—Allen Sharp, Judge.
S UBMITTED JANUARY 3, 2011 —D ECIDED JUNE 23, 2011
Before B AUER, W ILLIAMS, and S YKES, Circuit Judges.
†
Judge Sharp has passed away. The Honorable Jon E. DeGuilio
has replaced him.
After examining the parties’ Circuit Rule 54 statements and
the record, we concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. See
F ED . R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
2 Nos. 07-2093 & 07-2182
P ER C URIAM. This habeas case returns to us from the
Supreme Court for a second time. See Wilson v. Corcoran,
131 S. Ct. 13 (2010); Corcoran v. Levenhagen, 130 S. Ct. 8
(2009). Joseph Corcoran’s capital case has a complex
history in state and federal court, which we set forth
more completely in our two prior opinions, see Corcoran
v. Levenhagen, 593 F.3d 547 (7th Cir. 2010), and Corcoran v.
Buss, 551 F.3d 703 (7th Cir. 2008), and will repeat here
only as necessary to correct the mistakes the Supreme
Court has identified and get the case back on track.
In 1997 Joseph Corcoran shot and killed four men. An
Indiana jury convicted him of four counts of murder and
recommended a sentence of death. The state trial court
agreed and imposed the death penalty. On direct
appeal Corcoran raised several challenges to his sen-
tence. The Indiana Supreme Court rejected most of these
arguments, but vacated the sentence after finding
that the trial court might have violated Indiana law
by weighing non-statutory aggravating factors when
deciding whether to impose the death penalty. See
Corcoran v. State, 739 N.E.2d 649, 657-58 (Ind. 2000). On
remand the state trial court reimposed the death sen-
tence with an explanatory order, and the Indiana
Supreme Court affirmed. Corcoran v. State, 774 N.E.2d
495, 498-99 (Ind. 2002). Corcoran waived state post-con-
viction relief after the trial court found him competent
to forego further challenges to his sentence; the Indiana
Supreme Court affirmed this determination as well.
Corcoran v. Buss, 551 F.3d at 706. He later changed his
mind and tried to file a petition for post-conviction
relief. The trial court dismissed the petition as untimely,
and the Indiana Supreme Court affirmed. Id. at 707.
Nos. 07-2093 & 07-2182 3
The case then moved to federal court. Corcoran filed
a habeas petition in the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Indiana raising multiple
claims. But he vacillated again and made an effort to
withdraw this petition. Id. The district court rejected
this attempt and eventually considered two of Corcoran’s
claims for relief. The court held that (1) the Indiana
courts had reasonably concluded that Corcoran was
competent to waive his state post-conviction remedies;
and (2) the prosecutor violated the Sixth Amendment
by offering to forego the death penalty if Corcoran
would waive his right to a jury trial. The court granted
habeas relief on the Sixth Amendment claim, finding
that the state supreme court’s contrary holding on this
issue violated United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570
(1968). Having granted Corcoran’s habeas petition on
this ground, the court ordered Indiana to resentence
Corcoran to a sentence other than death and did not
address any of his remaining claims. Corcoran v. Buss,
551 F.3d at 707-08.
Indiana appealed the district court’s order granting
the writ of habeas corpus. Corcoran cross-appealed,
challenging the court’s rejection of his argument about
his competence to waive state post-conviction remedies.
We reversed the district court’s order granting habeas
relief on the basis of a Sixth Amendment violation and
affirmed on the issue of Corcoran’s competence to
waive his right to pursue post-conviction remedies. Id.
at 709-14. Judge Williams dissented, but only on the
competency issue. Id. at 714-18 (Williams, J., dissenting).
We remanded “with instructions to deny the writ,” id. at
4 Nos. 07-2093 & 07-2182
714, overlooking the fact that Corcoran had raised addi-
tional claims for relief that the district court had not
addressed. This oversight was the subject of the Su-
preme Court’s first decision. The Court granted
Corcoran’s certiorari petition, vacated our judgment,
and remanded for further proceedings, noting that the
“Seventh Circuit should have permitted the District
Court to consider Corcoran’s unresolved challenges to
his death sentence on remand, or should have itself
explained why such consideration was unnecessary.”
Corcoran v. Levenhagen, 130 S. Ct. at 9.
On remand we made two critical misjudgments—one
procedural, one substantive. The procedural mistake
was our decision to take up Corcoran’s remaining chal-
lenges ourselves, without further appellate briefing,
rather than sending the case back to the district court
so the previously unaddressed claims could be fully
adjudicated there. This procedural misstep led to a sub-
stantive error, which the Supreme Court identified
in its second decision. Although we rejected most of
Corcoran’s remaining claims for relief, we ordered the
issuance of a habeas writ based on what we said was
a violation of Indiana’s death-sentencing law, without
finding that this error of state law amounted to a viola-
tion of a federal right. Corcoran v. Levenhagen, 593 F.3d
at 551-52, 555. The Supreme Court reminded us that
“[f]ederal courts may not issue writs of habeas corpus
to state prisoners whose confinement does not violate
federal law.” Wilson v. Corcoran, 131 S. Ct. at 14; see also
Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 67-68 (1991) (“[I]t is not
the province of a federal habeas court to reexamine state-
Nos. 07-2093 & 07-2182 5
court determinations on state-law questions.”), and id. at
75 (noting that a state-law evidentiary or instructional
error may be grounds for federal habeas relief only if
the error “so infused the trial with unfairness as to deny
due process of law” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
The Court again granted certiorari, vacated our judg-
ment, and remanded for further proceedings, expressing
“no view about the merits of the habeas petition.” Wilson
v. Corcoran, 131 S. Ct. at 17.
In hindsight we should have returned the case to the
district court after the first remand from the Supreme
Court. We do so now. This will permit the parties to
fully air Corcoran’s remaining habeas claims and allow
the district court to address them in the first instance.
We note, however, that neither of the Supreme Court’s
decisions casts doubt on our resolution of the issues
raised in the initial appeal, in which we found no basis
for habeas relief on the claimed Sixth Amendment viola-
tion or on the issue of Corcoran’s competency to waive
post-conviction remedies. In his Circuit Rule 54 state-
ment, Corcoran addresses only his remaining claims, not
these two; he asks for a remand so that the district court
can adjudicate the previously unaddressed grounds for
habeas relief.
Accordingly, we R EINSTATE and incorporate by refer-
ence our earlier opinion in Corcoran v. Buss, 551 F.3d 703,
to the extent that it (1) reversed the district court’s judg-
ment granting habeas relief on the basis of the claimed
Sixth Amendment violation; and (2) affirmed the dis-
trict court’s conclusion that the Indiana courts did not
6 Nos. 07-2093 & 07-2182
mishandle the issue of Corcoran’s competence to waive
post-conviction remedies. As we have noted, Judge
Williams joined the panel in rejecting Corcoran’s Sixth
Amendment claim but filed a dissent on the competency
issue, see id. at 714-18, which we also reinstate and in-
corporate herein by reference. We R EMAND the case to
the district court to permit it to address Corcoran’s re-
maining grounds for habeas relief.
6-23-11