In re Walter Leroy MOODY, Jr., Petitioner.
No. 13-12657.
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.
Jan. 10, 2014.
740 F.3d 1289
Ramona Albin, Michael B. Billingsley, U.S. Attorney‘s Office, Birmingham, AL, James Roy Houts, Henry M. Johnson, Attorney General‘s Office, Montgomery, AL, for Mandamus Respondent.
PER CURIAM:
Walter Leroy Moody, Jr., convicted under federal and state law for the 1989 murder of Eleventh Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance, has petitioned for a writ of mandamus ordering the recusal of District Judge L. Scott Coogler, who was randomly assigned to hear his federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus, see
At bottom, Mr. Moody argues that Judge Vance‘s murder, which occurred more than two decades ago, necessitates the recusal of all circuit judges on, and all district and magistrate judges within, the Eleventh Circuit. According to Mr. Moody, allowing any such judges to rule on his habeas corpus petition would create an appearance of partiality within the meaning of
I
In 1972, a federal jury in Georgia convicted Mr. Moody of possessing an unregistered destructive device. See United States v. Moody, 474 F.2d 1346 (5th Cir. 1973) (Moody I) (table decision affirming conviction). After his attempts to set aside the conviction proved unsuccessful, see, e.g., Moody v. United States, 874 F.2d 1575 (11th Cir. 1989) (Moody II) (affirming denial of coram nobis relief), Mr. Moody mailed a tear-gas package bomb to the NAACP Regional Office in Atlanta. That bomb exploded on August 21, 1989, “engulf[ing] NAACP employees in clouds of choking gas.” United States v. Moody, 977 F.2d 1425, 1428 (11th Cir. 1992) (Moody V). Mr. Moody also sent out a “Declaration of War” to the Eleventh Circuit and to television stations around the country, accusing the Circuit of deliberate misconduct and rank bias. Id.
As detailed in Moody V, 977 F.2d at 1428-29, Mr. Moody then built four powerful package bombs. He mailed the first of these bombs to Judge Vance in Alabama, with the return address of another Eleventh Circuit judge. Judge Vance was killed on December 16, 1989, when he opened the package containing the bomb, and his wife was seriously injured by the blast. The second of the bombs killed civil rights attorney Robert Robinson in Savannah, Georgia, two days later. A security officer intercepted the third bomb at the Eleventh Circuit headquarters in Atlanta, and the fourth bomb was received but not opened by employees of the Jacksonville NAACP office because they had heard about the other bombings.
In 1990, the government obtained an indictment against Mr. Moody, charging him with numerous federal offenses related to the murders of Judge Vance and Mr. Robinson. All judges then sitting on the Eleventh Circuit entered an order recusing themselves from all cases “relating to the investigation of the murder of [Judge] Vance” in which Mr. Moody was a party. See United States v. Moody, 977 F.2d 1420, 1423 (11th Cir. 1992) (Moody IV).1
All district judges in the Northern District of Georgia also recused themselves, and as a result Chief Justice Rehnquist designated Judge Edward Devitt from the District of Minnesota to preside over Mr. Moody‘s case. Judge Devitt granted Mr. Moody‘s motion for a change of venue, and moved the trial to St. Paul. See United States v. Moody, 762 F. Supp. 1485
The State of Alabama then charged Mr. Moody with the capital murder of Judge Vance. A jury found Mr. Moody guilty, and the state trial court, following the jury‘s 11-1 recommendation, sentenced him to death. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, and the Alabama Supreme Court denied review. See Moody v. State, 888 So. 2d 532 (Ala. Crim. App. 2003), writ denied, 888 So. 2d 605 (Ala. 2004) (Moody VI). When his attempt to obtain post-conviction relief in the Alabama courts failed, see Moody v. State, 95 So. 3d 827 (Ala. Crim. App. 2011) (Moody VII), Mr. Moody filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Northern District of Alabama. The petition was randomly assigned to Judge Coogler, who denied Mr. Moody‘s motion for recusal.
II
In relevant part,
Under
“[A]ny doubts must be resolved in favor of recusal.” Patti, 337 F.3d at 1321. Nevertheless, “there is as much obligation for a judge not to recuse when there is no occasion for him to do so as there is for him to do so when there is.” United States v. Burger, 964 F.2d 1065, 1070 (10th Cir. 1992) (internal punctuation and citation omitted). Indeed, “a judge, having been assigned to a case, should not recuse himself on unsupported, irrational, or highly tenuous speculation.” United States v. Greenough, 782 F.2d 1556, 1558 (11th Cir. 1986).
III
We first address Mr. Moody‘s motion for recusal of the members of this panel. Mr. Moody argues that recusal of all Eleventh Circuit judges is required because his crimes in 1989 targeted not only Judge Vance, but also the Eleventh Circuit as an institution (as well as all of its then-constituent judges). Mr. Moody notes that the judges of the Eleventh Circuit received threatening letters contemporaneously with Judge Vance‘s murder, that a bomb was delivered to the Eleventh Circuit‘s headquarters in Atlanta, that Judge Vance maintained close relationships with a number of circuit colleagues, and that two current Eleventh Circuit judges participated in his prosecution. Such facts, Mr. Moody maintains, would lead a “objective, disinterested, lay observer” to harbor a “significant doubt” about the Eleventh Circuit‘s ability to decide this matter fairly and therefore necessitate recusal under
A
Recusal decisions under ”
Mr. Moody relies heavily on the Seventh Circuit‘s sua sponte self-recusal in In re Nettles, 394 F.3d 1001 (7th Cir. 2005), but we think that case does not control here.
The Ninth Circuit distinguished Nettles in Clemens v. U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 428 F.3d 1175, 1179-80 (9th Cir. 2005). In Clemens, the defendant was charged with making threats (with intent to extort, assault, murder, or inflict harm) against three district judges who had handled his pro se cases in the Central District of California. He filed a mandamus petition asking for the disqualification of all judges in the Central District from his criminal case. The Ninth Circuit denied relief under
As we read it, Nettles stands for the proposition that, where a defendant is charged with trying to blow up (or otherwise damage) a federal courthouse, judges residing in that courthouse at the time of the alleged plot and judges belonging to the court based in that courthouse must recuse from cases involving that defendant because such judges were potential victims of the alleged attack. See also Nichols, 71 F.3d at 352 (granting mandamus relief and ordering recusal of district judge whose courthouse and chambers were damaged by bomb allegedly set off by defendants at nearby federal building). Here, consistent with the rationale of Nettles, those judges sitting on the Eleventh Circuit at the time of Judge Vance‘s murder have recused themselves from hearing all cases relating to that murder in which Mr. Moody is a party. See Moody IV, 977 F.2d at 1423. So have all other Eleventh Circuit judges, save for the members of this panel, as explained in footnote 2.
The narrow question then, is whether, 24 years after Judge Vance‘s murder, recusal is required for current Eleventh Circuit judges who had no personal connection or relationship with Judge Vance and who were not members of the Circuit at the time. The answer, we think, is no. The only fact distinguishing this panel from a randomly-assigned panel comprised of judges from another circuit is that we happen to be assigned to the Eleventh
To the extent that our hypothetical lay observer might have a possible doubt about the ability of any federal judge to fairly adjudicate the habeas corpus petition of a defendant convicted of murdering another federal judge, such a doubt would be based on the notion that federal judges might tend to view an attack on one as an attack on all. But such a doubt would extend to all federal judges—regardless of their circuit or district—and would, if disqualifying, prevent Mr. Moody from having a federal forum in which to obtain review of his state capital conviction and sentence. Cf. Bolin v. Story, 225 F.3d 1234, 1238 (11th Cir. 2000) (“Under [the] ‘rule of necessity,’ a judge is not disqualified due to a personal interest if there is no other judge available to hear the case.“).
B
Mr. Moody also contends that all judges currently sitting on the Eleventh Circuit are part of the “victim class” for the crimes of which he was convicted, and must recuse themselves because they have an “interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding” within the meaning of
As we have noted, there is little precedent on the meaning of the phrase “any ... interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome.” One commentator, however, has suggested that the word “substantial” in that phrase “should probably be read to depend on the interaction of two variables: the remoteness of the interest and its extent or degree.” Note, Disqualification of Judges and Justices in the Federal Courts, 86 Harv. L. Rev. 736, 753 (1973) (cited with approval in In re Virginia Electric & Power Co., 539 F.2d at 368). That formulation makes sense to us, and we therefore use it in our analysis. See 13D Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller, & Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice And Procedure § 3547 (3d ed. 2008) (“[T]he courts appear to weigh two factors in deciding whether to recuse under [
As previously discussed, none of the members of this panel had a close professional or personal relationship with Judge Vance or his family, sat on the Eleventh Circuit in 1989, or were members of the federal judiciary at that time. Our interest, if there is one, is remote and weak, such that it is not disqualifying, and will not, in any event, be substantially affected by the outcome of Mr. Moody‘s habeas corpus proceeding. We cannot conclude that we became prospective members of the so-called “victim class” upon our confirmation to the Eleventh Circuit 10, 21, and 23 years after Judge Vance‘s death, and we are not aware of any authority suggesting that the murder of a judge requires the recusal of all future judges on the victim‘s court for time immemorial.
IV
Having determined that we need not recuse ourselves from this matter, we now turn to Mr. Moody‘s mandamus petition. We conclude that Mr. Moody is not entitled to the recusal of Judge Coogler.
We ordinarily review a district judge‘s decision not to recuse for abuse of discretion. See Scrushy, 721 F.3d at 1303. Because Mr. Moody has petitioned for mandamus, however, our review of Judge
Mr. Moody raises many of the same arguments with respect to Judge Coogler‘s recusal as he does with respect to our own recusal. He asserts that because Judge Coogler serves on a district court in Alabama, within the Eleventh Circuit, recusal is mandated under
As we see it, Judge Coogler properly exercised his discretion in declining to recuse himself for substantially the same reasons discussed earlier. Judge Coogler, like the members of this panel, occupied no federal judicial position at the time of Judge Vance‘s death, has had no close connection to Judge Vance or his relatives, and took no part in the underlying investigation and prosecution of Mr. Moody. Judge Coogler, furthermore, was never personally subjected to the threats that were sent to Eleventh Circuit judges sitting at the time Judge Vance was murdered. See United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 169 (2d Cir. 2003) (recusal of district judge was not warranted in light of threat that “did not specify a particular judge“); Moody IV, 977 F.2d at 1423 (holding that district judge in Georgia did not have to recuse from Mr. Moody‘s perjury/obstruction of justice case because of Mr. Moody‘s alleged involvement in the murder of Judge Vance and Mr. Robinson). And to the extent that Judge Coogler could be characterized as belonging to a prospective “victim class” of district judges in this case, the same characterization would apply to all federal district judges nationwide.4
Mr. Moody also argues that we should order Judge Coogler to recuse because he teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, which in turn maintains a professorship named in Judge Vance‘s honor, and because of some perceived connection between Judge Coogler and the Robert S. Vance Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama. But the mere fact that Judge Coogler teaches at a university that has chosen to memorialize Judge Vance does not mandate recusal. See Wu v. Thomas, 996 F.2d 271, 275 (11th Cir. 1993) (holding that “no reasonable observer would assume that [the district judge] had extrajudicial knowledge of this case or otherwise question [his] impartiality” because the district judge merely served as adjunct professor (without a salary) at, and donated to, the defendant university). Nor does the presence of a federal building and courthouse named for Judge Vance in Birmingham entitle Mr. Moody to a writ of mandamus. As Judge Coogler explained, he is not stationed in Birmingham, and does not hold court there.
V
We recognize the systemic and case-specific importance of recusal in our judicial system and the grave consequences that may result from an erroneous failure to recuse. But given the unique circumstances of this case, including the many years that have passed since Judge Vance‘s death, we conclude that we are not required to recuse as a panel under
MOTION FOR RECUSAL OF PANEL DENIED; MANDAMUS PETITION DENIED.