Parker v. Matthews, 567 U.S. 37 (2012)
Docket No.
11-845
Decided:
June 11, 2012
Granted:
June 11, 2012
Opinions
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
PHILIP PARKER, WARDEN v. DAVID EUGENE
MATTHEWS
on petition for writ of certiorari to the
united states court of appeals for the sixth circuit
No. 11–845. Decided June 11,
2012
Per Curiam.
In this habeas case, the United States Court of
Ap- peals for the Sixth Circuit set aside two 29-year-old murder
convictions based on the flimsiest of rationales. The court’s
decision is a textbook example of what the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) proscribes:
“using federal habeas corpus review as a vehicle to
second-guess the reasonable decisions of state courts.”
Renico v. Lett, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip
op., at 12). We therefore grant the petition for certiorari and
reverse.
I
Between 1 and 2 a.m. on the morning of June
29, 1981, respondent David Eugene Matthews broke into the
Louisville home he had until recently shared with his estranged
wife, Mary Marlene Matthews (Marlene). At the time, Matthews’
mother-in-law, Magdalene Cruse, was staying at the home with her
daughter. Matthews found Cruse in bed and shot her in the head at
point-blank range, using a gun he had purchased with borrowed funds
hours before. Matthews left Cruse there mortally wounded and went
into the next room, where he found his wife. He had sexual
relations with her once or twice; stayed with her until about 6
a.m.; and then shot her twice, killing her. Cruse would die from
her wound later that day.
Matthews was apprehended that morning at his
mother’s house, where he had already begun to wash the
clothes he wore during the crime. Later in the day, police officers
found the murder weapon secreted below the floorboards of a
backyard shed on the property. At the police station, Matthews made
a tape-recorded statement to a police detective in which he denied
responsibility for the murders.
A grand jury indicted Matthews for the two
murders and for burglary. At trial, he did not contest that he
killed the two victims. Instead, he sought to show that he had
acted under “extreme emotional disturbance,” which
under Kentucky law serves to reduce a homicide that would otherwise
be murder to first-degree manslaughter. Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann.
§§507.020(1)(a), 507.030(1)(b) (West 2006). As support
for that claim, Matthews pointed to the troubled history of his
marriage with Marlene. Matthews and his wife had been frequently
separated from one another, and their periods of separation were
marked by extreme hostility. Marlene would regularly procure
criminal warrants against Matthews; several weeks before the
murders she obtained one charging Matthews with sexual abuse of
Marlene’s 6-year-old daughter, which had led to
Matthews’ spending roughly three weeks in jail. Witnesses
also testified that Marlene sought to control Matthews when they
were together and would yell at him from across the street when
they were separated; and Matthews’ mother recounted that
Marlene would leave the couple’s young child crying in the
street late at night outside the house where Matthews was sleeping
in order to antagonize him.
Matthews also introduced the testimony of a
psychiatrist, Dr. Lee Chutkow, who had evaluated Matthews. Dr.
Chutkow related what Matthews had told him about the murders,
including that Matthews had been drinking heav- ily and taking
Valium and a stimulant drug. Dr. Chut- kow testified that he had
diagnosed Matthews as suf- fering from an adjustment disorder,
which he described as a “temporary emotional and behavioral
disturbance in individuals who are subject to a variety of
stresses,” that would temporarily impair a person’s
judgment and cause symptoms such as “anxiety, nervousness,
depression, even suicide attempts or attempts to hurt other
people.” 6 Record 558. Dr. Chutkow testified to his opinion
that Matthews was acting under the influence of extreme emotional
disturbance at the time of the murders—in particular, that he
experienced “extreme tension, irritability, and almost a kind
of fear of his late wife,” id., at 567, whom he
perceived as having tormented and emasculated him.
The jury convicted Matthews on all charges, and
he was sentenced to death. The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the
convictions and sentence, rejecting Matthews’ 37 claims of
error. Matthews v. Commonwealth,
709 S.W.2d 414, 417 (1985). In response to Matthews’
argument that the evidence was insufficient to establish that he
had acted in the absence of extreme emotional disturbance, the
court concluded that the evidence regarding Matthews’
“conduct before, during and after the offense was more than
sufficient to support the jury’s findings of capital
murder.” Id., at 421. A claim that the prosecutor had
committed misconduct during his closing argument was rejected on
the merits, but without discussion.
Following an unsuccessful state postconviction
proceeding, Matthews filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus
under 28 U. S. C. §2254 in the United States
District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. Matthews
contended, among other things, that the Kentucky Supreme Court had
contravened clearly established federal law in rejecting his claim
that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he had not acted
under the influence of extreme emotional disturbance and in
rejecting his claim of prosecutorial misconduct. The District Court
dismissed the petition, but a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit
reversed with instructions to grant relief. 651 F.3d 489
(2011).
II
Under AEDPA, the Sixth Circuit had no
authority to issue the writ of habeas corpus unless the Kentucky
Supreme Court’s decision “was contrary to, or involved
an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as
determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” or
“was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in
light of the evidence presented in the State court
proceeding.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d). The Sixth
Circuit gave two grounds for its conclusion that Matthews was
entitled to relief under this “difficult to meet
. . . and highly deferential standard,”
Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011)
(slip op., at 9) (internal quotation marks omitted). Neither is
valid.
A
First, the Sixth Circuit held that the
Kentucky Supreme Court had impermissibly shifted to Matthews the
burden of proving extreme emotional disturbance, and that the
Commonwealth had failed to prove the absence of extreme emotional
disturbance beyond a reasonable doubt. The Sixth Circuit reasoned
that, at the time Matthews committed his offenses, the allocation
of the burden of proof on extreme emotional disturbance was
governed by the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision in
Gall v. Commonwealth,
607 S.W.2d 97, 108 (1980), which placed the burden of producing
evidence on the defendant, but left the bur- den of proving the
absence of extreme emotional disturbance with the Commonwealth in
those cases in which the defendant had introduced evidence
sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt on the issue. According to
the Sixth Circuit, however, the Kentucky Supreme Court departed
from that understanding in Matthews’ case and placed the
burden of proving extreme emotional disturbance “entirely on
the defendant,” 651 F. 3d, at 500.
The Sixth Circuit’s interpretation is
supported by certain aspects of the Kentucky Supreme Court’s
opinion in Matthews’ case. For example, the state court
indicated that Matthews had “present[ed] extensive
evidence” of his extreme emotional disturbance, yet the court
rejected his sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim by finding the
evidence he had presented “far from overwhelming,”
rather than by stating that it failed to raise a reasonable doubt.
Matthews, 709 S. W. 2d, at 420–421. The state
court also observed that it had recently clarified in
Wellman v. Com- monwealth,
694 S.W.2d 696 (1985), that “absence of extreme emotional
disturbance is not an element of the crime of murder which the
Commonwealth must affirmatively prove.” Matthews,
supra, at 421. In the Sixth Circuit’s view, the
Kentucky Supreme Court’s reliance on this Wellman
formulation of extreme emotional disturbance in resolving
Matthews’ appeal violated the Due Process Clause, as
construed by this Court in Bouie v. City of Columbia,
378 U.S.
347, 354 (1964), because it involved the retroactive
application of an “ ‘unexpected and
indefensible’ ” judicial revision of the Kentucky
murder statute.
The Kentucky Supreme Court’s initial
assessment of the evidence and reliance upon Wellman would
be relevant if they formed the sole basis for denial of
Matthews’ sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim. It is not clear,
however, that they did. The Kentucky Supreme Court explained that
“[t]he trial court’s instructions in regard to extreme
emotional disturbance were adequate, and the proof supported the
jury’s findings of intentional murder.” 709 S. W.
2d, at 421. Those jury instructions required the jury to find
beyond a reasonable doubt that Matthews had not acted “under
the influence of extreme emotional disturbance for which there was
a reasonable justification or excuse under the circumstances as he
believed them to be.” 6 Record 625, 628–629. The case
had been submitted to the jury with the burden assigned to the
Commonwealth, the jury had found that burden carried, and the
Kentucky Supreme Court found the evidence adequate to sustain that
finding. That ground was sufficient to reject Matthews’
claim, so it is irrelevant that the court also invoked a ground of
questionable validity. See Wetzel v. Lambert, 565
U. S. ___, ___–___ (2012) (per curiam) (slip op.,
at 4–5).[1]
The Sixth Circuit’s opinion also
challenges the conclusion that the evidence supported a finding of
no extreme emotional disturbance. We have said that “it is
the responsibility of the jury—not the court—to decide
what conclusions should be drawn from evidence admitted at
trial,” Cavazos v. Smith, 565 U.S.
1, ___ (2011) (per curiam) (slip op., at 1). The
evidence is sufficient to support a conviction whenever,
“after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to
the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found
the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable
doubt.” Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S.
307, 319 (1979). And a state-court decision rejecting a
sufficiency challenge may not be overturned on federal habeas
unless the “decision was ‘objectively
unreasonable.’ ” Cavazos, supra, at
___ (slip op., at 1).
In light of this twice-deferential standard, it
is abundantly clear that the Kentucky Supreme Court’s
rejection of Matthews’ sufficiency claim is controlling in
this federal habeas proceeding. The Sixth Circuit noted that Dr.
Chutkow expressed an opinion that Matthews was under the influence
of extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the murders, and
did not retreat from that opinion on cross-examination. But there
was ample evidence pointing in the other direction as well. As the
Kentucky Supreme Court observed, Matthews’ claim of extreme
emo- tional disturbance was belied by “the circumstances of
the crime,” 709 S. W. 2d, at 421—including the
facts that he borrowed money to purchase the murder weapon the day
of the murders, that he waited several hours after buying the gun
before starting for his wife’s home, and that he delayed
several hours between shooting his mother-in-law and killing his
wife. The claim was also belied by his behavior after the murders,
including his “[taking] steps to hide the gun and clean his
clothes,” and later “giv[ing] a false statement to the
police.” Ibid. The Sixth Circuit discounted this
evidence because Dr. Chutkow testified that Matthews’
deliberateness and consciousness of wrongdoing were not
inconsistent with the diagnosis of extreme emotional disturbance.
651 F. 3d., at 504, n. 4. But expert testimony does not
trigger a conclusive presumption of correctness, and it was not
unreasonable to conclude that the jurors were entitled to
consider the tension between Dr. Chutkow’s testimony and
their own common-sense understanding of emotional disturbance. In
resolving the conflict in favor of Dr. Chutkow’s testi- mony,
the Sixth Circuit overstepped the proper limits of its authority.
See Jackson, supra, at 326.
More fundamentally, the Sixth Circuit did not
appear to consider the possibility that the jury could have found
the symptoms described by Dr. Chutkow inadequate to establish what
is required to reduce murder to manslaughter under Kentucky law:
that Matthews “acted under the influence of extreme emotional
disturbance for which there was a reasonable explanation or excuse,
the reasonableness of which is to be determined from the viewpoint
of a person in the defendant’s situation under the
circumstances as the defendant believed them to be.” Ky. Rev.
Stat. Ann. §507.020(1)(a). Dr. Chutkow himself agreed that
many people face tension and anxiety—two symptoms he
attributed to Matthews. 6 Record 579–580. And he agreed that
many people suffer from adjustment disorders. Id., at 592.
But of course very few people commit murders. In light of these
points, which bear on the proper characterization of
Matthews’ mental condition and the reasonableness of his
conduct, the Kentucky Supreme Court made no objectively
unreasonable error in concluding that the question of extreme
emotional disturbance was properly committed to the jury for
resolution.
B
As a second ground for its decision, the Sixth
Circuit held that certain remarks made by the prosecutor during his
closing argument constituted a denial of due process. This claim
was rejected on the merits by the Kentucky Supreme Court (albeit
without analysis) and therefore receives deferential review under
the AEDPA standard. See Harrington v. Richter, 562
U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 8). The “clearly
established Federal law” relevant here is our decision in
Darden v. Wainwright, 477 U.S.
168 (1986), which explained that a prosecutor’s improper
comments will be held to violate the Constitution only if they
“ ‘so infected the trial with unfairness as to
make the resulting conviction a denial of due
process.’ ” Id., at 181 (quoting
Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416
U.S. 637, 643 (1974)).
According to the Sixth Circuit, the prosecutor
violated Darden by suggesting that Matthews had colluded
with his lawyer, David Busse, and with Dr. Chutkow to manufacture
an extreme emotional disturbance defense. But although the Sixth
Circuit quoted a lengthy section of the prosecutor’s closing
argument which could be understood as raising a charge of
collusion,[2] the court did not
address the prosecutor’s statement that immediately followed
the quoted portion and expressly disavowed any suggestion of
collusion:
“And that’s not to say that
Mr. Busse is unethical. Not at all. He is entitled to the best
defense he can get, but that’s the only defense he has, what
the doctor has to say, and that’s not to say that the doctor
gets on the stand and perjures himself. He’s telling you the
truth. He wouldn’t perjure himself for anything. He’s
telling you the truth, Ladies and Gentlemen.” 7 Record
674.
With the prosecutor’s immediate
clarification that he was not alleging collusion in view,
the Sixth Circuit’s conclusion that this feature of the
closing argument clearly violated due process is unsupportable. Nor
does the prosecutor’s suggestion that Matthews had
“enhance[d] his story to Doctor Chutkow,” ibid.,
suffice to justify the Sixth Circuit’s grant of habeas
relief. In context, that statement is clearly a part of a broader
argument that Matthews had a motive to exaggerate his emotional
disturbance in his meetings with Dr. Chutkow. Shortly after the
quoted statement, the prosecutor continued with a series of
rhetorical questions:
“Don’t you think he would
exaggerate his fears about his wife, his mother-in-law, and all
these other things about what other people might be doing to his
mother? Don’t you think he would overstate the extent of his
intoxication to his psychiatrist?” Ibid.
The Sixth Circuit cited no precedent of this
Court in support of its conclusion that due process prohibits a
prosecutor from emphasizing a criminal defendant’s motive to
exaggerate exculpatory facts.
The Sixth Circuit also suggested that the
prosecutor “denigrated the [extreme emotional disturbance]
defense itself,” 651 F. 3d, at 506, by stating that
“[i]t’s the defense of last resort, Ladies and
Gentlemen. He has no excuse for his conduct, but that’s his
only way out.” 7 Record 674. But the Kentucky Supreme Court
could have understood this comment too as having been directed at
Matthews’ motive to exaggerate his emotional
disturbance—i.e., as emphasizing that the
unavailability of any other defense raised the stakes with respect
to extreme emotional disturbance.
Moreover, even if the comment is understood as
directing the jury’s attention to inappropriate
considerations, that would not establish that the Kentucky Supreme
Court’s rejection of the Darden prosecutorial
misconduct claim “was so lacking in justification that there
was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law
beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.”
Harrington, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 13).
Indeed, Darden itself held that a closing argument
considerably more inflammatory than the one at issue here did not
warrant habeas relief. See 477 U. S., at 180, n. 11
(prosecutor referred to the defendant as an
“ ‘animal’ ”); id., at
180, n. 12 (“ ‘I wish I could see [the defendant]
with no face, blown away by a shotgun’ ”).
Particularly because the Darden standard is a very general
one, leaving courts “more leeway . . . in reaching
outcomes in case-by-case determinations,” Yarborough
v. Alvarado, 541 U.S.
652, 664 (2004)), the Sixth Circuit had no warrant to set aside
the Kentucky Supreme Court’s conclusion.
The Sixth Circuit also erred by consulting its
own precedents, rather than those of this Court, in assessing the
reasonableness of the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision.
After quoting the governing standard from our decision in
Darden, the Sixth Circuit added that it would
“engag[e] in a two step inquiry to determine whether the
prosecutorial misconduct rises to the level of unconstitutionality.
‘To satisfy the standard . . . , the conduct must
be both improper and flagrant.’ ” 651 F. 3d,
at 505 (quoting Broom v. Mitchell,
441 F.3d 392, 412 (CA6 2006)). It went on to evaluate the
flagrancy step of that inquiry in light of four factors derived
from its own precedent: “ ‘(1) the likelihood that
the remarks . . . tended to mislead the jury or prejudice
the defendant; (2) whether the remarks were isolated or extensive;
(3) whether the remarks were deliberately or accidentally made; and
(4) the total strength of the evidence against
[Matthews].’ ” 651 F. 3d, at 506 (quoting
Broom, supra, at 412). And it stated that “the
prosecutor’s comments in this case were sufficiently similar
to” certain comments held unconstitutional in its prior
decision in Gall II,
231 F.3d 265 (CA6 2000), “that they rise to the level of
impropriety.” 651 F. 3d, at 506.
As we explained in correcting an identical error
by the Sixth Circuit two Terms ago, see Renico, 559
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11–12), circuit precedent
does not constitute “clearly established Federal law, as
determined by the Supreme Court,” 28 U. S. C.
§2254(d)(1). It therefore cannot form the basis for habeas
relief under AEDPA. Nor can the Sixth Circuit’s reliance on
its own precedents be defended in this case on the ground that they
merely reflect what has been “clearly established” by
our cases. The highly generalized standard for evaluating claims of
prosecutorial misconduct set forth in Darden bears scant
resemblance to the elaborate, multistep test employed by the Sixth
Circuit here. To make matters worse, the Sixth Circuit decided
Gall II under pre-AEDPA law, see 231 F. 3d, at 283,
n. 2, so that case did not even purport to reflect
clearly established law as set out in this Court’s holdings.
It was plain and repetitive error for the Sixth Circuit to rely on
its own precedents in granting Matthews habeas relief.
* * *
The petition for a writ of certiorari and
respondent’s motion to proceed in forma pauperis are
granted. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Notes
1
An ambiguously worded
footnote in the Sixth Circuit’s opinion, see 651 F.3d 489,
504, n. 5 (2011), suggests that the court may have found an
additional due process violation. The court referred to a statement
in the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision in Gall v.
Commonwealth 607
S.W.2d 97, 109 (1980), that “[u]nless the evidence
raising the issue [of extreme emotional disturbance] is of such
probative force that otherwise the defendant would be entitled as a
matter of law to an acquittal on the higher charge (murder), the
prosecution is not required to come forth with negating evidence in
order to sustain its burden of proof.” Relying on its own
opinion in Gall’s federal habeas proceeding, Gall v.
Parker,
231 F.3d 265 (CA6 2000) (Gall II), the Sixth Circuit
suggested that the quoted statement “require[d] a defendant
to bear the heavy burden of disproving an element of a crime beyond
a reasonable doubt,” 651 F. 3d, at 504, n. 5, in
violation of this Court’s decision in Mullaney v.
Wilbur, 421 U.S.
684 (1975). That is not so. The statement explicitly
acknowledges that the burden of proof rests with the prosecution,
but merely asserts that when the burden of production is assigned
to the defendant the jury may find the prosecution’s burden
of proof satisfied without introduction of negating evidence,
unless the defendant’s evidence is so probative as to
establish reasonable doubt as a matter of law. That seems to us a
truism. See 2 J. Strong, McCormick on Evidence §338, pp.
419–420 (5th ed. 1999). Our opinion in Mullaney
addressed a situation in which the burden of persuasion was
shifted to the defendant, see 421 U. S., at 702, and n. 31; it
does not remotely show that the Kentucky Supreme Court’s
truism contravened clearly established federal law.
2
The full text of the
section the Sixth Circuit found objectionable is as follows:
“He’s arraigned, he meets with his attorney and either
he tells his at-torney, I did it or I didn’t do it. One or
the other. But, the attorney knows what the evidence is. By the
way, the defendant knows what the evidence is, because while
he’s giving this statement, it’s sitting right in front
of him at the Homicide Office. Here’s the gun. Here’s
the shoes, David. ‘Nah, nah, I never saw it before. I never
borrowed a gun. I never borrowed any money. I wasn’t there. I
was at home in bed asleep.’ He’s denying it there.
“And what does his attorney think? His attorney sees all this
evidence, and he’s going through his mind, what kind of legal
excuse canI have? What is this man’s defense? Self
protection? No, there’s no proof of a gun found at that house
on 310 North 24th Street. No proof of that. Protection of another?
The defendant’s mother is at home on Lytle Street. He
isn’t protecting her over there on North 24th Street.
Intoxication? Yeah, well, he was drinking that night. Maybe that
will mean something. “But that isn’t enough, Ladies and
Gentlemen. Mr. Busse has to contact a psychiatrist to see his
client, and he comes in and sees his client one month after the day
of his arrest, one month to the day, and by that time, Mr. David
Eugene Matthews sees his defense in the form of Doctor Chutkow, and
do you think this guy is aware of what’s going on? He’s
competent. He can work with his attorney, and he enhances his story
to Doctor Chutkow. Yeah, I was drinking. I was drinking a lot. I
was taking a lot of pills, too, and let me tell you about the pills
I was taking. “Don’t you think he has a purpose in
enhancing his story to the psychiatrist? Don’t you think he
would exaggerate his fears about his wife, his mother-in-law, and
all these other things about what other people might be doing to
his mother? Don’t you think he would overstate the extent of
his intoxication to his psychiatrist? It’s the defense of
last resort, Ladies and Gentlemen. He has no excuse for his
conduct, but that’s his only way out.” 7 Record
673–674.
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