F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
PUBLISH
JAN 24 2000
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
TENTH CIRCUIT
RONNIE L. BARNES,
Petitioner-Appellant,
v. No. 98-6085
H.N. SCOTT,
Respondent-Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF OKLAHOMA
(D.C. No. CIV-97-274-A)
Submitted on the briefs:
Michael G. Katz, Federal Public Defender, James P. Moran, Assistant Federal
Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Petitioner-Appellant.
W.A. Drew Edmondson, Attorney General of Oklahoma, Diane L. Slayton,
Assistant Attorney General, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Respondent-Appellee.
Before BALDOCK , EBEL , and MURPHY , Circuit Judges.
EBEL , Circuit Judge.
In this case, petitioner Ronnie Lee Barnes appeals the district court’s denial
of his petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Mr. Barnes
asserts that the Oklahoma state court’s application of a 1987 statutory amendment
adding life without parole to the sentencing options for first degree murder
violates his rights under the Ex Post Facto Clause. For the reasons that follow,
we disagree and affirm the district court’s denial of Mr. Barnes’ habeas corpus
petition. 1
Background
On April 6, 1988, Mr. Barnes was charged with first degree murder for
a crime committed on October 15, 1987. At the time of the crime, the punishment
for first degree murder in Oklahoma was life imprisonment or death. See Okla.
Stat. Ann. tit. 21, § 701.9 (1981). On November 1, 1987, § 701.9 was amended to
include a third intermediate option, life imprisonment without parole. In 1989,
Mr. Barnes was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The state
did not seek the death penalty, and the judge refused to instruct the jury on the
life imprisonment without parole option because the option had not been available
when Mr. Barnes committed the crime. On appeal, Mr. Barnes’ conviction was
1
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has
determined unanimously to grant the parties’ request for a decision on the briefs
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case
is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument.
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reversed on unrelated grounds and remanded for a new trial. On remand, the state
filed a bill of particulars seeking the death penalty which the court dismissed
prior to trial. The court did, however, submit the option of life without parole to
the jury. In 1993, Mr. Barnes was convicted for a second time and this time he
was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
On direct appeal, Mr. Barnes asserted, inter alia, that application of the
1987 amendment to him violated the Ex Post Facto Clause. The Oklahoma Court
of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence. The federal district
court denied his habeas corpus petition, holding that the addition of an
intermediate punishment option of life imprisonment without parole did not affect
the quantum of punishment available, and, therefore, was not an ex post facto
violation. On appeal, Mr. Barnes raises the same issue–that his sentence of life
without parole violates the Ex Post Facto Clause.
Discussion
Mr. Barnes filed his federal habeas corpus petition in February 1997. The
provisions of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
(AEDPA), which altered the substantive standard by which federal courts review
state court determinations of law, apply to this case because Mr. Barnes filed his
habeas petition after April 24, 1996, AEDPA’s effective date. See Lindh v.
Murphy , 521 U.S. 320, 336 (1997); Hooks v. Ward , 184 F.3d 1206, 1213 (10th
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Cir. 1999). Therefore, because Mr. Barnes’ claim of ex post facto violation was
adjudicated on the merits in state court, this court cannot grant him habeas corpus
relief on the ex post facto question of law unless the state court’s adjudication on
the issue “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable
application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme
Court of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).
The United States Constitution expressly prohibits states from enacting ex
post facto laws. U.S. Const. Art. I, § 10, cl.1. “The focus of the ex post facto
inquiry is not on whether a legislative change produces some ambiguous sort of
‘disadvantage’ [to covered offenders] . . . but on whether any such change alters
the definition of criminal conduct or increases the penalty by which a crime is
punishable.” California Dep’t of Corrections v. Morales , 514 U.S. 499, 506 n.3
(1995).
The amendment at issue here does not alter the definition of Mr. Barnes’
criminal conduct. Therefore, the narrow issue before this court is whether the
retroactive application of the 1987 amendment to § 701.9 increased the
punishment to which Mr. Barnes was subject when it added an intermediate
punishment option not available at the time the crime was committed and when
the intermediate option of life without parole neither increased the maximum
punishment possible (death) nor increased the minimum punishment possible for
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the offense. 2
Here, the critical date for our review of whether this case poses
serious ex post facto implications is the date that Mr. Barnes committed the
crime, not the date of his first trial. See Weaver v. Graham , 450 U.S. 24, 30-31
(1981) (holding that a statute violates the Ex Post Facto Clause “if it is both
retrospective and more onerous that the law in effect on the date of the offense”);
United States v. Gerber , 24 F.3d 93, 96 (10th Cir. 1994) (same).
Under the law as it existed at the time Mr. Barnes committed his crime, the
death penalty was an available option although the state chose to seek only a
sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Retroactively
applying the amendment to Mr. Barnes upon retrial, however, gave the jury the
additional option of life without parole, an option they selected.
In Hatch v. Oklahoma , 58 F.3d 1447 (10th Cir. 1995), this court considered
an ex post facto challenge to retroactive application of an Oklahoma law
dispensing with the requirement that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals
perform a proportionality review on every appeal from a death sentence. In
2
We recognize that we asked for supplemental briefs on whether
prosecutorial vindictiveness motivated the state’s actions in Mr. Barnes’ second
trial. Following consideration of the parties’ arguments, we agree that the issues
of prosecutorial vindictiveness were not raised to the district court and therefore,
are not properly before this court on appeal. See Walker v. Mather (In re Walker) ,
959 F.2d 894, 896 (10th Cir. 1992). We note, however, that if we were to address
the prosecutorial vindictiveness issues, we would determine them to be without
merit.
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holding that this action did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause, we reasoned that
“[t]he penalty for first degree murder, both before and after the legislature
changed [the statute], was death. Petitioner cannot ‘escape the ultimate burden of
establishing that the measure of punishment itself has changed.’” Id. at 1464
(quoting Morales , 514 U.S. at 510 n.6); see also United States v. Shorty , 159 F.3d
312, 317 (7th Cir. 1998) (holding that if, under either the old or new law, the
maximum amount of punishment does not change, there is no ex post facto
violation), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 2024 (1999).
In Morales , 514 U.S. at 506 n.3, the Court recognized that, following its
decision in Collins v. Youngblood , 497 U.S. 37 (1990), the focus of the ex post
facto inquiry was no longer on whether challenged criminal law changes operated
to the “disadvantage” of the defendants, as had been the case in Lindsey v.
Washington , 301 U.S. 397 (1937), Miller v. Florida , 482 U.S. 423 (1987), and
Weaver , 450 U.S. 24. The Court noted that, following Collins , the focus of the
inquiry would be on “whether any such change alters the definition of criminal
conduct or increases the penalty by which a crime is punishable.” Morales , 514
U.S. at 506 n.3.
In Collins , the defendant challenged, as an ex post facto violation, a state
statute allowing an appellate court to reform an improper jury verdict rather than
grant a new trial. The Court rejected the notion that a legislative change violates
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ex post facto if it merely “altered the situation of a party to his disadvantage.”
497 U.S. at 48-49 (further quotation omitted). The Court, focusing on whether a
legislative change violates the Ex Post Facto Clause even if it does not actually
change the amount of punishment, held that the change at issue simply altered the
procedure for correcting an improper punishment, a procedural change which in
no way increased the defendant’s punishment. See id. Therefore, even though the
defendant was disadvantaged by the new legislation in that he was denied a new
trial which he would otherwise have received, the Court held that there was no ex
post facto violation. See id. at 52.
Oklahoma courts have addressed a number of ex post facto challenges to
the 1987 amendment to § 701.9 adding life imprisonment without parole. It
appears, however, that the state ex post facto challenges to the change have all
been in the context of the trial court’s failure to give the jury an instruction
including the additional sentencing option in cases where the defendant was
sentenced to death. In the majority of its decisions, the state court held that the
change was procedural and therefore, its retroactive application was not an ex
post facto violation. See Wade v. State , 825 P.2d 1357, 1363 (Okla. Crim. App.
1992); Allen v. State , 821 P.2d 371, 376 (Okla. Crim. App. 1991); Salazar v.
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State , 852 P.2d 729, 737 (Okla. Crim. App. 1993). 3
The Oklahoma Court of
Criminal Appeals held that because the 1987 amendment did not alter either the
minimum or maximum penalty for first degree murder, the amendment was
procedural in nature and therefore, not in violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause. 4
See Wade , 825 P.2d at 1363; Allen , 821 P.2d at 376.
“The substantive law is that which declares what acts are crimes and
prescribes the punishment for committing them as distinguished from the
procedural law which provides or regulates the steps by which one who commits a
crime is to be punished.” 88 C.J.S. Criminal Law § 2 (1989); see also Black’s
Law Dictionary 1281 (5th ed. 1979) (defining substantive law as “[t]hat which
creates duties, rights and obligations, while ‘procedural or remedial law’
prescribes methods of enforcement of rights or obtaining redress”) (citation
omitted).
3
The court in Salazar circumscribed its decision to “the very limited
facts of this death penalty case.” 852 P.2d at 740.
4
The Salazar court reiterated its prior holding in Ault v. State , 115 P.
128 (Okla. Crim. App. 1911), in which it held that “procedural changes in the
law, which do not prejudice or operate to the detriment of the defendant, apply to
all trials occurring after the enactment of the statute.” 852 P.2d at 737. The court
did not, however, address how this holding was affected by the Supreme Court’s
move away from the “disadvantage” standard articulated in Collins, 497 U.S. at
52.
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We do not agree with the Oklahoma state court’s label of this amendment
as procedural. It is clear that the addition of the intermediate penalty alters the
available punishments for first degree murder, and is therefore, substantive.
Designating the change as procedural, however, does not dispose of the ex post
facto question. In determining whether the law is an ex post facto violation, we
look to the effect of the statute, not the form. See Weaver , 450 U.S. at 31. As
discussed above, the amendment to § 701.9 provides an intermediate alternative
punishment for the crime of first degree murder. It does not alter the crime for
which Mr. Barnes was indicted, increase the maximum punishment prescribed for
that crime, or change the quantity or level of proof necessary to convict him. See
Dobbert v. Florida , 432 U.S. 282, 294 (1977) (holding it “axiomatic that for a law
to be ex post facto it must be more onerous than the prior law”).
Conclusion
In sum, it is our conclusion that at the time Mr. Barnes committed the
crime, he was on notice that the presumptive sentencing range for first degree
murder in Oklahoma was life imprisonment to death. At the time of his trial, his
presumptive sentencing range remained life imprisonment to death. Adding an
intermediate punishment did not prescribe more onerous punishment than that
available under the old law.
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We therefore conclude that the Oklahoma state court’s determination that
the amendment to § 701.9 is not an ex post facto law is not “contrary to” or “an
unreasonable application of” established Supreme Court law. 28 U.S.C. §
2254(d)(1). Accordingly, the district court was correct in denying Mr. Barnes’
petition for habeas corpus relief.
The judgment of the United States District Court for the Western District of
Oklahoma is AFFIRMED.
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