Charlton v. FranklinCharlton v. Franklin
ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY
Clаrence Charlton seeks a Certificate of Appealability (COA) to appeal the denial by the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma of his аpplication for relief under
I. BACKGROUND
The offenses for which Mr. Chаrlton was convicted occurred on February 25, 2002. He had lived with Sandra Carter, their son, and Ms. Carter’s daughter for about two years. During the last six months of this period, their relationship had been volatile and Mr. Charlton had physically abused her on several occasions. In an effort to end her relationship with Mr. Charlton, she and her children had moved into a different unit in the same apartments. On February 25, shortly after the move, Ms. Carter met with a lawyer about obtaining sole custody of their son. After she returned from the meeting, she was heading to Mr. Charlton’s apartment to make a phone call when he arrived. She had been with their son, and he had been with her daughter. They all entеred his apartment. Mr. Charlton demanded to know where she had been. She told him, and he began hitting her. When he stopped, she went to the bathroom to clean up the blood. He ripped the phone cord from the wall and attempted to choke her with it. He also held a box knife to her throat and told her to get cleаned up because they were going to her apartment. They continued to argue in her apartment until he told her to accompany him to return a car thаt he had borrowed. When they got back to Ms. Carter’s apartment, she and Mr. Charlton again argued. He
Mr. Charlton filed a pretrial motion to exclude evidence of his prior aggressive acts; the motion was deniеd. He also moved to exclude as hearsay a conversation with-a police officer in which he admitted guilt. The court said that the statement would not be hearsay but deferred ruling until a Jackson v. Denno,
At trial Ms. Carter testified to the events described above. In addition, a witness testified about an incident at his mother’s house in August 1999 when Mr. Charlton unexpectedly arrived to pick up his children. The witness’s sister had been married to Mr. Charlton and had custody of their children. When the witness asked where Mr. Charlton was taking the children, Mr. Charlton got angry, began cursing, and hit the witness. Another acquaintance of Mr. Charlton’s testified that he had broken her nose in November 1999 when she tried to intervene in a dispute betwеen him and her sister.
Sergeant Gamille Shockley of the Oklahoma City Police Department testified that while she was booking another prisoner at the jail on Februаry 26, 2002, Mr. Charl-ton began talking to her. Without her asking him any questions, he said that he had choked Ms. Carter with a belt while Ms. Carter held a knife to his neck. She said: “Stop talking to me. Why are you telling me this?” He responded, “Because I did it and they’re going to find me guilty anyway.” R. Tr. Vol. 3 at 100. Mr. Charl-ton raised no objections to this testimony and the trial court did not hold a Denno hearing.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) affirmed Mr. Charlton’s convictions, although it remanded for correction of clerical errors in his sentence. The OCCA ruled that the evidеnce of prior assaults was properly admitted to “counter claims that the instant assaults were accidental in nature.” Charlton v. State, No. F-2003-1098 (Okla.Crim.App. Feb. 2, 2005). It also denied relief for failure to hold a Denno hearing or to instruct the jury on the voluntariness of Mr. Charlton’s confession because he had not argued that his confession was involuntary, just that he had never made it. Finally, it denied Mr. Charlton’s claim of cumulative error because there had been no error.
II. DISCUSSION
A COA will issue “only if the applicant has made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right.”
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) provides that when a claim has been adjudicated on the merits in state court, a federаl court will grant habeas relief only when the applicant establishes that the state-court decision was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable aрplication 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
[u]nder the “contrary to” clause, we grant relief only if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Supreme Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than the [Supreme] Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable faсts. Under the “unreasonable application” clause, relief is provided only if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from thе Supreme Court’s decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner’s case. Thus we may not issue a habeas writ simply because we conclude in our independent judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established federal law erroneously or inсorrectly. Rather, that application must also be unreasonable.
Gipson v. Jordan,
The magistrate judge’s report rejected Mr. Charlton’s argument that admission of evidence of his prior bad acts denied him due process, saying that the evidence did not render Mr. Charlton’s trial fundamentally unfair. See Revilla v. Gibson,
As to Mr. Charlton’s claim that he should have been аfforded a Denno hearing, he did not challenge at trial the volun-tariness of his confession, arguing only that he never made the confession. Moreover, there is no evidеnce in the record to suggest that his confession was involuntary. Mr. Charlton points to no Supreme Court decision or any other authority that can support his contention that the OCCA’s ruling on this claim was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. No reasonable jurist could dispute the district court’s denial of this claim.
Mr. Charlton also claims that the trial judge’s refusal to instruct the jury on the voluntariness of his confession denied him due process. Again, hоwever, he points to no established federal law requiring such an instruction when he did not request an instruction, he made no claim of involuntariness at trial, and there was nо evidence that his statement was involuntary. No reasonable jurist could debate the district court’s resolution of this issue.
Finally, Mr. Charlton argues that cumulative error rendered his trial fundamentally unfair. But his brief on appeal fails to assert any specific errors, not even the ones claimed earlier in his brief. No reasonable jurist could debate the district court’s denial of this claim.
III. CONCLUSION
We DENY Mr. Charlton’s application for a COA and DISMISS the appeal.