CHARBONEAU V. DAVIS, No. 20-35875 (9th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this CaseThe United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of the second federal habeas corpus petition by Jaime Dean Charboneau, who sought to overturn his conviction for the 1984 shooting death of his ex-wife in Idaho. Charboneau alleged that Idaho officials violated their obligations under Brady v. Maryland by encouraging his ex-wife's daughter, Tira, to provide false statements and testimony regarding her mother’s death and to dispose of potentially exculpatory evidence. In support of these allegations, Charboneau relied on a letter written by Tira in 1989. However, the court held that Charboneau failed to meet the threshold requirement of showing actual innocence as required by 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii) for consideration of second or successive federal habeas petitions. The court held that, even if the letter was genuine, the statements in the letter, viewed in light of all the evidence, were not sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder would have convicted Charboneau of first-degree murder. The court concluded that Charboneau’s new materials did not suffice to make the requisite showing of actual innocence. Therefore, the district court properly dismissed his petition without reaching the merits of his Brady claim.
Court Description: Habeas Corpus The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of Jaime Dean Charboneau’s second federal habeas corpus petition seeking to set aside his Idaho conviction for the 1984 shooting death of his ex-wife Marilyn Arbaugh after a trial that included inculpatory testimony from Marilyn’s daughters Tira and Tiffnie.
In the second federal habeas petition, Charboneau alleged that Idaho officials violated their obligations under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), by encouraging Tira to provide false statements and testimony regarding her mother’s death and to dispose of potentially exculpatory evidence. In support of these allegations, Charboneau relied on a letter written by Tira in 1989, four years after Charboneau’s 1985 trial and nine years before Tira’s death in 1998. According to Charboneau, the contents of that letter from Tira support his contentions that Tiffnie also fired shots at Marilyn and that, as a result, there is reasonable doubt as to whether Charboneau caused Marilyn’s death and as to whether he intended to kill Marilyn.
In order for Charboneau’s Brady claim to be considered by a federal court on the merits, he faced the threshold requirements that Congress has imposed on the consideration of any “second or successive” federal habeas petition. Under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2)(B), Charboneau was required to make a showing that (1) he could not have obtained Tira’s letter earlier through the exercise of diligence; and (2) the statements recounted in that letter, “if proven and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found [him] guilty of the underlying offense” of first-degree murder.
Like the district court, the panel found it unnecessary to address the diligence issue, because the panel concluded that the new materials, viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, do not suffice to make the showing of actual innocence required by 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii).
The applicable standard for showing actual innocence set forth in § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii) was added by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
The panel addressed several issues about how that standard is to be applied.
First, the panel held that the statutory command to view the facts underlying the claim in light of the evidence as a whole requires the court to consider the same scope of evidence as described under the test set forth in Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298 (1995)—namely, “all the evidence, old and new, incriminating and exculpatory, without regard to whether it would necessarily be admitted under rules of admissibility that would govern at trial.” Second, the panel held that a habeas court remains free, after taking the proffered “facts” underlying the actual innocence claim as “proven,” as required by § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii), to then assign little probative weight to those statements, either because they are ultimately deemed to be unreliable or because their probative force is outweighed by other evidence.
Third, the panel concluded that a presumption of correctness attaches under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1) to any specific factual findings made by the state court that bear on the reliability or authenticity of particular items of evidence that are presented to a federal court that is charged with applying § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii)’s actual innocence standard.
Applying those standards to Charboneau’s claimed showing that he is actually innocent of first-degree murder, and presuming that Tira did in fact author the letter, the panel concluded that Charboneau did not show by clear and convincing evidence that the statements recounted in Tira’s letter, considered in light of all the evidence, suffice to show that no reasonable factfinder would have convicted him of first-degree murder. Accordingly, Charboneau failed to meet the threshold requirement of § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii), and the district court properly dismissed his petition without reaching the merits of his Brady claim.
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