Askew v. BradshawAskew v. Bradshaw
- Reporters:
- , , ,
- Before:
- Boggs
In 2004, an Ohio grand jury indicted appellant Sero Duvall Askew on counts of possession of cocaine and trafficking in cocaine. After the trial court denied Askew’s pretrial motions to suppress evidence, Askew entered a plea of no contest. The trial court sentenced Askew to a term of imprisonment of fifteen years. After Askew was denied a writ of habeas corpus in federal court, an Ohio court vacated Askew’s sentence on state-law grounds,
I
On April 26, 2004, a Stark County, Ohio, grand jury indicted Askew on three counts of trafficking in cocaine and three counts of possession of cocaine,. in violation of Ohio law. Askew moved to suppress physical evidence obtained during a consent search of his girlfriend’s house, as well as an inculpatory statement that he had made to officers, contending that his girlfriend’s consent and his own statement were both given involuntarily. After the Ohio Court of Common Pleas denied Askew’s motions, Askew entered a plea of no contest to the indictment. The court accepted Askew’s plea and sentenced him to an aggregate term of fifteen years of imprisonment, suspended his driver’s license for five years, and ordered him to pay a fine of $10,000. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed and the Supreme Court of Ohio declined to hear Askew’s appeal. In 2005, the Court of Common Pleas rejected Askew’s untimely petition for state postconviction relief.
In 2006, Askew turned to the federal courts for relief and filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Northern District of Ohio. Askew brought two claims for relief. First, he argued that the Ohio courts should have suppressed evidence seized as a result of an illegal search of his mobile phone. Second, Askew argued that the Ohio courts had imposed a sentence in violation of Blakely v. Washington,
In 2008, Askew returned to state court, where he moved to modify his sentence and withdraw his plea of no Contest. The court denied both motions. Askew appealed the court’s denial of his motion to withdraw his plea. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed on the ground that the Court of Common Pleas lacks jurisdiction to rule on a motion to withdraw a guilty plea after an appellate court has affirmed the related conviction on direct appeal.
Askew then filed a motion to revise his sentencing journal entry on the ground that the trial court’s 2004 journal entry never made a finding of guilt as to Askew’s nó-contest plea. Because the Ohio Supreme Court had held in State v. Baker,
Though the Ohio trial court could have corrected the Baker violation with a nunc pro tunc order amending Askew’s journal entry of conviction, see State v. Lester,
Askew appealed, arguing that the Court of Common Pleas should have allowed him to withdraw his plea during the re-sentencing proceeding. Askew also directly challenged his undisturbed conviction in three ways, arguing that the Court of Common Pleas erred in 2004 when it denied his motion to suppress evidence, accepted his plea of no contest without advising him of the correct term of post-release control, and failed to merge his convictions for trafficking in cocaine and possession of cocaine. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed. State v. Askew, NO.2010CA00069,
Askew then filed his second federal ha-beas petition in the Northern District of Ohio, asserting three grounds for relief. First, Askew argued that the Ohio courts denied him due process of law in his resen-tencing hearing and appeal by refusing to allow him to withdraw his plea of no contest and by refusing to consider any of his arguments that “were or could have been raised in his initial appeal to” the Ohio Court of Appeals. Second, Askew argued that appellate counsel was ineffective in his direct appeal from resentencing because appellate counsel did not argue that Askew’s trial counsel was ineffective in the initial proceedings in 2004, allegedly because of trial counsel’s failure to argue that a warrantless search of Askew’s mo
In his Report and Recommendation, the magistrate judge interpreted Askew’s petition as presenting a question explicitly left open by the Supreme Court in Magwood v. Patterson,
This court then granted Askew a certificate of appealability to determine whether Askew’s petition is “second or successive” within the meaning of AEDPA. Askew v. Bradshaw, No. 13-4171, slip op. at 2-3 (6th Cir. Apr. 28, 2014) (order). We now hold that it is not.
II
After reviewing de novo the question of whether Askew’s petition is “second or
A
AEDPA does not define the term “second or successive.” See, e.g., Slack v. McDaniel,
In Magwood, however, the Court clarified that the text of AEDPA requires courts to interpret “the phrase ‘second or successive’ ... with respect to the judgment challenged.” Magwood,
If the petitioner is not challenging the same state-court judgment that he did in an earlier habeas application, the application is not “second or successive” and the restrictions imposed by
Applying the above-described framework, the Magwood Court held that Billy Joe Magwood’s second-in-time habeas application, which attacked a new sentence that Alabama courts had imposed as a direct consequence of Magwood’s first-in-time habeas application, was not “second or successive.” Id, at 342,
B
In her appellate brief, the Warden urges that Magwood does not apply to Askew’s case because, in the Warden’s view, “Askew’s grounds for relief were challenges to his conviction rather than his resentenc-ing.” Appellee Br. 25. The Magwood Court explicitly left open the question of whether a habeas petitioner may challenge his undisturbed conviction through a second-in-time habeas application that follows a resentencing proceeding without having to overcome
King involved an Ohio prisoner, DeLaw-rence King, whose first federal habeas corpus application was denied in 2006. King,
On appeal, this court reversed. Following the Second, Third, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits, see In re Brown,
C
Although our opinion in King eliminated the distinction between second-in-time ha-beas applications that challenge a new sentence and those that challenge an underlying conviction, we did not exclude the possibility that minor amendments to a judgment, such as those that correct clerical or technical errors while leaving a petitioner’s conviction and sentence intact, may not create a new “judgment” within the meaning of Magwood. Indeed, in In re Mackey, No. 133072 (6th Cir. June 26, 2014), we held in an unpublished order that an Ohio court’s reopening of a petitioner’s sentence merely to enter post-release conditions of control was a simple “correct[ion] [o'f] a technical error” that did not save the petitioner’s subsequent second-in-time habeas application from the requirements of
The Warden argues that Askew’s resen-tencing proceeding, as in Mackey, did not create a new “judgment” that “trigger[s] the operation of Magwood” and King. Lampton,
We need not revisit the question of whether an order entering conditions of post-release control, without more, creates a new judgment that is capable of resetting the “second or successive” count because the resentencing proceeding in Askew’s case went Well beyond such a minor amendment: The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed in full the judgment of the Court of Common Pleas after that court vacated Askew’s sentence, conducted a de novo sentencing hearing, and entered a new sentence. Unlike other post-Fischer appeals involving defendants resentenced pursuant to Singleton before Fischer was decided, in which state appellate courts vacated trial-court judgments that purported to impose entirely new sentences, the Ohio Court of Appeals never held or implied that the trial court’s de novo re-sentencing hearing in Askew’s case was void, or that the imposition of a new sentence in the case was inconsistent with Fischer. On the contrary, the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of the Court of Common Pleas without qualification. Compare Askew,
Though the Warden correctly points out that the Ohio Court of Appeals mentioned Fischer in the course of its opinion dismissing Askew’s assignments of error, the court did not do so to explain the then-novel proposition that the trial court could not vacate a defendant’s sentence when entering conditions of post-release control. On the contrary, the court cited Fischer as “validation]” of its own pre-Fischer holding that “resentencings do not allow a defendant to challenge anew his conviction [s ] as such is barred under the principles of law of the case and/or res judicata.” Askew,
In this case, the Ohio Court of Common Pleas’s decisions to vacate Askew’s sentence, conduct a de novo sentencing hearing, and resentence Askew, all of which were affirmed on appeal, created a new judgment within the meaning of Magwood. Because Magwood and King provide that the first timely federal habeas application that attacks a new judgment is not “second or successive” for purposes of AEDPA, the district court erred when it dismissed Askew’s petition — which was the first to fol
Ill
This case is not one in which the Court of Common Pleas amended a judgment merely to add conditions of post-release control. Nor does Askew’s petition present a situation in which the Ohio Court of Appeals invalidated a trial court’s imposition of a new sentence pursuant to Singleton on the ground that imposing a new sentence is inconsistent with Fischer. Whether or not a limited amendment creates a new “judgment” within the meaning of Magwood is thus a question for another day. Based on the facts of this case, we hold only that Askew’s petition is not “second or successive.”
Because the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed in full Askew’s new sentence, which the Court of Common Pleas imposed after vacating Askew’s first sentence, reviewing a new sentencing memorandum, and conducting a de novo resentencing hearing, Askew’s instant petition challenges a new judgment. And because Magwood and King dictate that a habeas petitioner’s second-in-time application is not “second or successive” if it challenges a new judgment, the district court had jurisdiction to consider Askew’s application. Accordingly, we REVERSE the district court’s dismissal of Askew’s petition and REMAND this case to the district court for further consideration.
Notes
. In In re Sims,