Hall v. Haws, No. 14-56159 (9th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CasePetitioner, convicted of first degree murder, sought habeas relief, raising an instructional error claim regarding California Jury Instruction Criminal 2.15, which allowed the jury to infer guilt of murder from evidence that defendants were in possession of recently stolen property plus slight corroborating evidence. Petitioner quit pursuing his petition because he believed that he "co-submitted" another habeas petition with his codefendant. The codefendant was granted habeas relief. The district court subsequently granted petitioner's motion to reopen his original habeas proceedings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) and granted petitioner habeas relief. The Ninth Circuit affirmed and held that the 60(b) motion was not inconsistent with the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's (AEDPA) bar on second or successive petitions, AEDPA's statute of limitations, or AEDPA's exhaustion requirement; the district court did not err in reviewing petitioner's Rule 60(b) motion and it did not abuse its discretion in reopening the case under Rule 60(b)(6); and habeas relief was warranted.
Court Description: Habeas Corpus. The panel affirmed the district court’s order granting Willard James Hall’s motion to reopen his habeas proceedings under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(6) and its order conditionally granting Hall’s first amended habeas corpus petition challenging his California state-court conviction for first-degree murder unless the State of California grants Hall a new trial within 90 days. The panel held that Hall’s Rule 60(b) motion was not inconsistent with AEDPA’s bar on second or successive petitions, AEDPA’s statute of limitations, or AEDPA’s exhaustion requirement. The panel held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in reopening Hall’s case under Rule 60(b)(6), in this extraordinary case involving a petitioner whose habeas petition was dismissed without reaching the merits of his claim, while his co-defendant was granted habeas relief on the same claim based on the same error from the same trial. The panel could not find fault with the district court’s determination that Hall, a pro se litigant, proceeded diligently or that the delay between the dismissal of his petition and the filing of his motion to reopen was reasonable. The panel also held that habeas relief is warranted. The panel held that the trial court’s use of California Jury Instruction Criminal 2.15, which allowed the jury to infer HALL V. HAWS 3 guilt of murder from evidence that the defendants were in possession of recently stolen property plus slight corroborating evidence, is an error of constitutional magnitude, and that the California Court of Appeal’s determination otherwise was objectively unreasonable. The panel held that it was an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law for the California Court of Appeal to evaluate harmlessness under the less stringent standard set forth in People v. Watson, 46 Cal.2d 818 (1956), rather than under the more stringent Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967), standard for reviewing errors of constitutional magnitude. Analyzing harmlessness pursuant to Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993), the panel concluded that the state court’s harmless error determination was also unreasonable because the instructional error resulted in actual prejudice, as there are grave doubts about whether the jury would have found Hall guilty beyond a reasonable doubt without the unconstitutional instruction. Judge Callahan dissented. She wrote that the majority repeats the error of Sherrors v. Woodford, 425 F. App’x 617 (9th Cir. 2011), which granted the habeas petition of Hall’s co-defendant based on the same supposed error, even in the face of additional facts demonstrating Sherrors was wrongly decided. She wrote that the majority ignores that the co- defendant was retried without the suspect instruction and convicted, and invents an error of constitutional magnitude where none exists, brushing aside AEDPA standards and the Supreme Court’s repeated instructions to defer to reasonable state court decisions. She also wrote that Hall is not deserving of Rule 60(b) relief, which impermissibly rewards his inaction and gamesmanship, and unfairly imposes the cost of his retrial on the state. 4 HALL V. HAWS
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