Williams v. Cain

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT No. 99-30340 THOMAS J. WILLIAMS, Petitioner-Appellant, versus BURL CAIN, Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Respondent-Appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, New Orleans October 17, 2000 Before GARWOOD, DeMOSS, and PARKER, Circuit Judges. GARWOOD, Circuit Judge: In 1981, petitioner-appellant Thomas J. Williams (Williams), a Louisiana state prisoner, was convicted by a jury of first degree murder and sentenced to death. He was later resentenced to life imprisonment. Williams filed a state habeas corpus application, alleging, inter alia, that the reasonable doubt instruction given to the jury at his trial was constitutionally defective. On October 23, 1991, the state trial court denied Williams’s application for habeas relief, and on July 17, 1994, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied Williams’s request for supervisory and/or remedial writs. On April 22, 1997, Williams filed the instant federal petition for habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254; in his petition, he brought claims similar to those in his state habeas application. On March 9, 1999, the district court denied his petition and dismissed his claims with prejudice. The district court then denied Williams’s request for a certificate of appealability (COA). Williams sought a COA from this Court, which granted his request in part, limited to the question of the constitutionality of the reasonable doubt instruction. We now affirm. Facts and Proceedings Below On January 16, 1981, Williams entered a neighborhood bar near his home in New Orleans. He shot and killed one person, injured another with a gunshot to the arm, and fired errant shots at other bar patrons. In June, 1981, Williams was convicted of first degree murder and later sentenced to death. He made a direct appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which affirmed his conviction but remanded for an evidentiary hearing regarding whether he had received ineffective assistance of counsel during the sentencing phase of his trial. See State v. Williams, 480 So.2d 721 (La. 1985). At the hearing, the trial court determined that while Williams had received effective assistance of counsel during the sentencing phase, he and his counsel had been misinformed by the District Attorney’s Office regarding the nature of his criminal record. The District Attorney’s records incorrectly overstated the 2 seriousness of Williams’s prior convictions, a factor which had led Williams not to testify during the sentencing phase (Williams did not testify or present any evidence at the guilt/innocence stage). The trial court ordered a new sentencing hearing and Williams was resentenced to life imprisonment. He is currently serving that sentence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. Williams later filed an application for state habeas relief. In the application, he argued that the reasonable doubt instruction given to the jury at his 1981 trial was constitutionally defective under Cage v. Louisiana, 111 S.Ct. 328 (1990) (per curiam), overruled on other grounds by Estelle v. McGuire, 112 S.Ct. 475, 482 n.4 (1991). Williams also argued that the specific intent instruction violated due process, and that he received ineffective assistance by his counsel’s failing to object to the jury instructions and not allowing him to testify. Concluding that any error in the instruction was harmless, the state trial court denied the application on October 23, 1991. The Louisiana Supreme Court denied, without opinion or statement of reasons, Williams’s request for supervisory or remedial writs on June 17, 1994. On April 22, 1997, Williams filed the instant petition for post-conviction relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. In his petition, Williams again contended that the trial court’s reasonable doubt instruction was constitutionally defective; he also argued that the specific intent instruction violated due 3 process and that his counsel provided ineffective assistance by not allowing him to testify on his own behalf at the guilt phase regarding his level of intoxication at the time he committed the offense. On March 8, 1999, the district court denied the petition. Regarding the reasonable doubt instruction, the district court found that because Williams filed his petition after the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), he could not “overcome the formidable barriers set up by AEDPA” and therefore the district court could not consider the merits of his claim. The district court did not specify which barriers precluded Williams from prevailing, and dismissed his claims with prejudice. Williams filed a notice of appeal and moved for a COA, which the district court denied. Williams then sought a COA from this Court. This Court granted his request in part, limited to the question of whether the reasonable doubt instruction was constitutionally defective, but declined to issue a COA on any other issue. Discussion At the close of the guilt phase of Williams’s 1981 trial, the trial court gave the following instruction to the jury: “The defendant is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The consequence of this rule of law is, he is not required to prove his innocence, but may rest upon the presumption in his favor until it is overcome by positive affirmative proof. The onus, therefore, is on the State to establish to your satisfaction, and beyond a reasonable doubt, the guilt of the accused, as to the crime charged or any lesser one included in it. 4 If you entertain any reasonable doubt as to any fact or element necessary to constitute the defendant’s guilt, it is your own sworn duty to give him the benefit of that doubt and return a verdict of acquittal. Even where the evidence demonstrates a probability of guilt, yet if it does not establish it beyond a reasonable doubt, you must acquit the accused. This doubt must be a reasonable one, that is, one found upon a real, tangible, substantial basis, and not upon mere caprice, fancy or conjecture. It must be such a doubt that would give rise to a grave uncertainty, raised in your minds by reason of the unsatisfactory character of the evidence; one that would make you feel that you had not an abiding conviction to a moral certainty of the defendant’s guilt. If, after giving a fair and impartial consideration to all of the facts in the case, you find the evidence unsatisfactory upon any single point indispensably necessary to constitute the defendant’s guilt, this would give rise to such a reasonable doubt as would justify you in rendering a verdict of not guilty. A reasonable doubt is not a mere possible doubt. It should be an actual or substantial doubt. It is such a doubt as a reasonable person would seriously entertain. It is a serious doubt for which you could give a good reason.” (emphasis added). No objection was made to this instruction, nor was it complained of on direct appeal. Williams contends that the trial court’s use of the phrases “grave uncertainty,” “moral certainty,” and “actual or substantial doubt,” as well as its requirement that the jury have a “serious doubt for which you could give a good reason,” rendered the instruction constitutionally defective under Cage v. Louisiana and Victor v. Nebraska, 114 S.Ct. 1239 (1994). Williams’s appeal returns this Court to increasingly familiar yet persistently thorny terrain: post-AEDPA habeas challenges to alleged Cage-Victor errors in convictions that became final before Cage and Victor appeared. 5 Despite somewhat conflicting suggestions in our precedent, we conclude that our opinion in Mulheisen v. Ieyoub, 168 F.3d 840 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 120 S.Ct. 81 (1999), controls this case and compels our conclusion that under AEDPA Williams cannot avail himself on habeas of Cage and its progeny. Accordingly, we affirm. I. Background: Cage-Victor Error and Retroactivity The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.” In re Winship, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 1073 (1970); see also Jackson v. Virginia, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2786 (1979). In Cage, a direct appeal, the Supreme Court held that a reasonable doubt instruction ran afoul of Winship and violated the Due Process Clause because, when read “as a whole,” it “equated a reasonable doubt with a