AEDPA deference and the undeveloped state factual record: Monroe v. Angelone and new evidence.

• Author: Wheeler, Rachel E.
• Position: Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996

INTRODUCTION

In 1992, Beverly Anne Monroe was convicted in a Virginia state court of murdering her boyfriend. (1) She exhausted the appeals process in the Virginia court system and filed a petition for habeas corpus with the Virginia Supreme Court. (2) Her most compelling claim alleged prosecutorial suppression of evidence. (3) Among other allegations, she accused the prosecution of failing to disclose that its chief witness was a career informant who received a sentence reduction in exchange for her testimony. (4) The Virginia Supreme Court denied Monroe's petition, summarily ruling that those claims that had not been procedurally defaulted were without merit. (5) The court also summarily denied Monroe's motion for additional discovery, through which she might have uncovered more evidence and further developed her claim. (6)

Petitioner then filed for habeas relief in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, again claiming prosecutorial suppression of evidence. (7) The district court reviewed her claims in accordance with the precepts of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). (8) AEDPA mandates that federal courts reviewing state court dispositions of habeas petitions "adjudicated ... on the merits"--those decided on substantive rather than procedural grounds (9)--must defer to those dispositions unless the state court's decision is "contrary to, or involve[s] an unreasonable application of, clearly established" Supreme Court precedent. (10) Petitioner was able to show good cause that she would be entitled to relief were she able to develop fully the factual basis for her claim, and therefore, the federal court granted petitioner's motion for additional discovery. (11) During federal discovery, petitioner uncovered a "wealth of exculpatory evidence that the prosecution had suppressed." (12) The district court and, on appeal, the Fourth Circuit reviewed all "new evidence" discovered in the federal proceeding independently and the Brady claim itself de novo, reasoning that if the state court had never considered the new evidence, there was no way to apply AEDPA deference to findings regarding such evidence. (13) The Fourth Circuit then proceeded to review the entire record cumulatively, affording a presumption of correctness only to those evidentiary items on which the state court had made explicit findings. (14) It affirmed the district court's grant of habeas relief primarily on the strength of the "new evidence" on which deference did not operate. (15)

The Fourth Circuit's decision to review the evidence independently and the claim in totality de novo seems unassailable. Logically, a state court cannot rule on a claim when the facts supporting it did not surface until the federal proceeding. (16) However, the federal courts have not uniformly applied the same principle in similar circumstances: when evidence is available to a state court but the state court does not actually consider that evidence during its proceedings--for example, if the state court rules on a petitioner's claim without granting her an evidentiary hearing to develop the factual basis of her claim, (17) or if the state court loses evidence during habeas proceedings and rules without considering that evidence. (18) In such circumstances, federal circuits are split as to whether to apply AEDPA deference to any state court decision made on the merits of the claim.

This Note argues that courts should treat all material evidence not considered by the state courts as "new evidence"--whether it surfaces during state or federal proceedings--and that courts should review the claim as supported by the new evidence de novo, as the Fourth Circuit did in Monroe. (19) Part I of this Note briefly discusses AEDPA and the manner in which this legislation has changed federal habeas review. (20) This Part also examines recent Supreme Court precedent regarding the application of AEDPA standards in federal court and argues that despite these opinions, uncertainty persists as to how federal courts must apply deference. Part II argues that this uncertainty manifests itself most obviously in cases like Monroe, in which a petitioner is unable to develop fully the factual basis for her claim in state court. It discusses the stark split between the Fifth and Tenth Circuits regarding evidentiary hearings and the application of deference in this area. (21) Like a grant of federal discovery, an evidentiary hearing at the federal level allows a petitioner to develop fully the factual basis for her claim; however, some courts effectively ignore the full factual record as developed pursuant to an evidentiary hearing and continue to defer to the undeveloped state record. (22) Finally, Part III discusses the need for a uniform standard of review regarding undeveloped factual records that are completed during a federal proceeding. Fundamental fairness and judicial efficiency support the idea that evidence available to, but not actually considered by, state courts should be treated in the same manner as evidence revealed for the first time in federal court, without deference to the state court. Consequently, this Note argues that federal courts should review all such evidence independently to determine whether it is material to the claim, and if the court finds the evidence material, it should then review the claim de novo.

1. AEDPA AND SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT

   This Part briefly discusses pre- and post-AEDPA habeas review at the federal level. It then analyzes Williams v. Taylor, (23) the seminal Supreme Court case interpreting the [section] 2254(d)(1) standard of review, and a more recent decision, Lockyer v. Andrade, (24) neither of which has served to crystallize the process by which a federal court should apply AEDPA deference.

   1. 28 U.S.C. [section] 2254 Before and After 1996

      Prior to 1996, the main restriction on a federal court's review of a state court's disposition of a habeas petition was that the federal court had to afford a presumption of correctness to state court findings of fact. (25) At first, the Supreme Court tempered that requirement by allowing a federal court "to receive evidence and try the facts anew" if a petitioner could prove she was entitled to relief. (26) However, federal courts began to lose their comprehensive powers of review in the 1970s when the Supreme Court ordered them to abide by decisions made in accordance with state procedural rules. (27) With the passage of AEDPA in 1996, Congress further restricted independent federal review of a state court's legal conclusions. (28) Through AEDPA, Congress confined de novo review of mixed questions of law and fact to situations in which a petitioner could prove the state court had made a decision based on an "unreasonable application of' or a determination "contrary to" Supreme Court precedent, or based on an "unreasonable determination of the facts." (29)

      Before the Supreme Court interpreted the 1996 amendments, some federal courts persisted in reviewing the disposition of habeas petitions by state courts in much the same fashion as they had pre-AEDPA, because the new statute prescribed an unfamiliar standard of review they found difficult to apply. (30) While Supreme Court precedent now clearly limits federal review of state dispositions of fully developed habeas claims, (31) confusion persists as to the manner in which deference operates on undeveloped factual records. (32)

   2. Terry Williams v. Taylor: Defining [section] 2254(d)(1)'s Prongs of Deference

      Congress's desire to curb the federal habeas review process and to give force to state court decisions resulted in avoidance of the familiar "clearly erroneous" standard for appellate review in [section] 2254(d)(1). (33) Congress instead crafted a new standard: A federal court can grant a writ only when it finds the state court's disposition of a habeas petition is "contrary to" or an "unreasonable application of" Supreme Court precedent. (34) Because this standard was unfamiliar to federal court judges, the federal courts did not apply it uniformly. For instance, the Seventh Circuit read the statute as restricting the breadth of precedent on which a federal court could rely when assessing a state court's disposition of a habeas claim to Supreme Court precedent only, not a circuit's own precedent. (35) The court interpreted the statute as leaving intact a federal court's independent power of review over questions of federal law. (36) In contrast, the Fourth Circuit held that the statute curtailed a federal court's independent power of review and allowed a federal court to grant a writ only when the state court applied "relevant precedent in a manner that reasonable jurists would all agree is unreasonable." (37)

      In Terry Williams, the Supreme Court finally interpreted [section] 2254(d)(1)'s two prongs and overturned a Fourth Circuit decision requiring deference to the state habeas court's dismissal of petitioner's ineffective assistance of counsel claim. (38) Though this opinion served to alleviate some of the discrepancies among the circuits, it was unusual in that Justice O'Connor wrote for the majority in defining the standard of review, while Justice Stevens authored the section applying the standard to the facts of the case and applied a somewhat different standard to find that the Virginia Supreme Court had erroneously decided the case. (39)

      Justice O'Connor explained the standard of review first by providing examples of decisions contrary to federal law and unreasonable applications of federal law, and then by construing specific words in the statute. (40) She stated that a state court makes a decision contrary to Supreme Court precedent if it "arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by this Court on a question of law" or reaches a different outcome when faced with a set of facts identical to those the Supreme Court has faced. (41) If a state court unreasonably...