Case: 24-30218 Document: 131-1 Page: 1 Date Filed: 12/23/2024
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit
____________ United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
No. 24-30218 FILED
December 23, 2024
____________
Lyle W. Cayce
Jessie J. Grace, III, Clerk
Petitioner—Appellee,
versus
Tim Hooper, Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary,
Respondent—Appellant.
______________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Louisiana
USDC No. 2:02-CV-3818
______________________________
Before Southwick, Haynes, and Graves, Circuit Judges.
Leslie H. Southwick, Circuit Judge:
The State appeals the district court’s grant of federal habeas relief. It
argues the district court erred in concluding the state court’s decision violated clearly established federal law. We agree. We REVERSE and DENY
the prisoner’s application for a writ of habeas corpus.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
Jessie Grace was convicted of second-degree murder in 1994. He was
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of probation or parole. The
Louisiana Fifth Circuit affirmed his conviction in September 1994. See State
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v. Grace, 643 So. 2d 1306, 1307 (La. Ct. App. 5th Cir. 1994). Over the next
18 years, Grace filed several post-conviction relief applications. 1 Each was
denied until the district court granted Grace leave to reopen his federal proceedings in August 2012 based on allegedly newly discovered evidence. In
the process, Grace obtained a copy of the state grand jury testimony that indicated discrepancies between the grand jury testimony and the trial testimony of two witnesses: the lead investigator, Sergeant Snow, and the victim’s girlfriend, Michelle Temple.
Sergeant Snow testified to the grand jury that Darrick Hudson, who
was present the night of the crime, robbed and shot the victim in cooperation
with Grace. She told the grand jury that she would be seeking a warrant for
Hudson’s arrest, and he, like Grace, would be charged with first-degree murder. Her trial testimony, however, merely identified Hudson as a witness.
Hudson was never arrested for the murder. The trial court prevented
Grace’s counsel from alerting the jury that Hudson was in custody on unrelated charges while testifying against Grace or asking Hudson whether he had
been offered a deal in exchange for his testimony. Sergeant Snow also told
the grand jury that Temple saw Grace at the scene but could not identify him
as the shooter. At trial, Sergeant Snow testified that she showed Temple a
photo lineup that included Hudson, but not Grace, and Temple was unable
to identify the shooter from that lineup.
Temple told the grand jury that she saw the shooting and identified
the shooter from Sergeant Snow’s lineup. She immediately contradicted her
claim that she saw the shooting by saying “I seen the gun to his head and I
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1
The long procedural history of this case and Grace’s many post-conviction relief
applications are detailed in the district court’s opinion. Grace v. Cain, 723 F.Supp.3d 475,
481–83 (E.D. La. 2024). The underlying facts that led to his conviction can be found at
Grace,
643 So. 2d at 1307.
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had got out the car and he was already shot, but I had seen the gun to his
head.” She agreed with the prosecution that she “saw Jessie Grace holding
the gun to [the victim’s] head.” At trial, Temple testified that she did not
see or hear the shooting, and she never identified anyone she saw at the shooting. She stated that she saw a man kneeling next to the victim after the shooting. She testified that he had something in his hand, but she did not know
what it was. She described the man as dark with a medium build, 5’4 or 5’5,
140–150 pounds, 19 or 20 years old, and wearing blue Dickey pants with a
dark blue Raiders jacket. Importantly, the description Temple gave matches
a description of Hudson, given by another witness on the day of the shooting.
In February 2015, Grace filed a third application for post-conviction
relief in state trial court alleging Brady violations grounded in the grand jury
testimony. In July 2017, the state trial court granted Grace’s application for
relief, vacated his conviction, and ordered a new trial. The State appealed.
In November 2017, the Louisiana Fifth Circuit reversed the state trial court
and reinstated Grace’s life sentence, finding the grand jury testimony insufficient to establish a reasonable probability of a different trial outcome under
Brady. The Louisiana Supreme Court denied Grace’s subsequent writ application in 2019.
That same year, Grace filed a second supplemental application in the
federal district court asserting a Brady claim based on the grand jury testimony. The district court granted relief on Grace’s Brady claim. This court
then vacated the district court’s order and remanded for further proceedings
because the district court neglected to afford the state court the appropriate
level of deference under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). Grace v. Hooper, No. 21-
30753,
2023 WL 2810059, at *3 (5th Cir. Apr. 6, 2023). The court made no
determination on the district court’s outcome on remand.
Id.
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On remand, the district court determined “the state court erred in its
consideration of the materiality of the suppressed evidence at issue here in
three ways: (1) the court failed to properly consider the effect of the suppressed evidence on the credibility and motivation of trial witnesses, (2) it
made unreasonable factual determinations not supported by the evidence,
and (3) it failed to properly consider the cumulative materiality of the evidence.” The district court granted Grace’s second supplemental petition for
habeas relief and instructed the State to retry Grace or release him within 120
days. The State timely appealed, and the State’s motion to stay the order
pending appeal was granted.
DISCUSSION
“In a habeas corpus appeal, we review the district court’s findings of
fact for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo, applying the same standards to the state court’s decision as did the district court.” Reeder v. Vannoy,
978 F.3d 272, 276 (5th Cir. 2020) (quotation omitted). Federal courts are
prohibited from granting relief unless the state court’s adjudication, “(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme
Court; or (2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.”
28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)–(2). “A state court’s determination that
a claim lacks merit precludes federal habeas relief so long as fairminded jurists could disagree on the correctness of the state court’s decision.” Woods
v. Etherton,
578 U.S. 113, 116–17 (2016) (quotation omitted).
I. Identifying the Appropriate State Court Opinion
As a threshold matter, we must determine whether the district court
erred by looking through the one-sentence explanation in the Louisiana
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Supreme Court’s opinion and reviewing the Louisiana Fifth Circuit’s reasoning instead.
Section 2254(d) “requires the federal habeas court to train its attention on the particular reasons — both legal and factual — why state courts
rejected a state prisoner’s federal claims.” Wilson v. Sellers, 584 U.S. 122,
125 (2018) (quotation omitted). When the relevant state-court decision
“does not come accompanied with those reasons,” then “the federal court
should ‘look through’ the unexplained decision to the last related state-court
decision that does provide a relevant rationale.”
Id. The federal habeas court
should “presume that the unexplained decision adopted the same reasoning”
as the previous decision.
Id.
Here, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled on the merits of Grace’s
post-conviction relief petition in two conclusory lines: “Denied. Relator fails
to show that the state withheld material exculpatory evidence in violation of
Brady v. Maryland.” State v. Grace, 264 So. 3d 431 (Mem.) (La. 2019) (citation omitted). Although clearly a merits decision, the Louisiana Supreme
Court’s opinion does not give any reasons for a federal habeas court to evaluate. The last related state-court decision containing an explanation for the
holding is the Louisiana Fifth Circuit’s decision. State v. Grace, No. 17-KH-
451,
2017 La. App. LEXIS 2107 (La. Ct. App. 5th Cir. Nov.14, 2017). Nothing in the Louisiana Supreme Court’s brief explanation or in the briefing before that court rebuts the presumption that the Louisiana Supreme Court relied on the same reasoning as the Louisiana Fifth Circuit’s opinion. In fact,
the Louisiana Supreme Court opinion specified that the denial was based on
Grace’s failure to show the State withheld material exculpatory evidence.
Thus, it is proper to look through the Louisiana Supreme Court’s opinion
and evaluate the reasoning within the Louisiana Fifth Circuit’s opinion instead.
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II. Brady Claim Analysis
We next consider the state court’s adjudication of Grace’s Brady
claims. “The federal habeas statute, as amended by the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), imposes important
limitations on the power of federal courts to overturn the judgments of state
courts in criminal cases.” Shoop v. Hill, 586 U.S. 45, 48 (2019). “A state
court decision is deemed contrary to clearly established federal law if the state
court applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in Supreme
Court cases or if the state court confronts a set of facts that are materially
indistinguishable from a decision of the Supreme Court and nevertheless
arrives at a result different from the Court’s precedent.” Reeder,
978 F.3d at
276 (quotation and brackets omitted). “[A] federal habeas court may not
issue the writ simply because that court concludes in its independent
judgment that the relevant state-court decision applied clearly established
law erroneously or incorrectly.” Williams v. Taylor,
529 U.S. 362, 410
(2000). “This means that a state court’s ruling must be ‘so lacking in
justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in
existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.’” Hill, 586
U.S. at 48 (quoting Harrington v. Richter,
562 U.S. 86, 103 (2011)).
Grace argues the state court’s ruling was contrary to or an
unreasonable application the Supreme Court’s decision in Brady and its
progeny, particularly regarding the value of impeaching witnesses.
According to Grace, the state court violated clearly established law when it
discounted the impeachment value of the testimony that Hudson was
involved in the crime. Since Hudson was a vital witness against him, Grace
argues Brady and its progeny required the state court to grant him habeas
relief. Thus, Grace contends that the state court’s decision “is nothing more
than a tossed salad of irrelevant, unreasonable, and illogical assertions that
ultimately ignore, defy, or misapply the applicable controlling Supreme
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Court precedent, including Brady, Kyles, Davis, Wearry, Bagley, Smith, and
Napue, in ways well beyond the possibility of any fairminded disagreement.”
“[T]he suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an
accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material
either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of
the prosecution.” Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963). “To establish
a Brady violation, a defendant must show: (1) the evidence at issue was
favorable to the accused, either because it was exculpatory or impeaching;
(2) the evidence was suppressed by the prosecution; and (3) the evidence was
material.” United States v. Glenn,
935 F.3d 313, 319 (5th Cir. 2019) (quotation
omitted). “Evidence qualifies as material when there is any reasonable
likelihood it could have affected the judgment of the jury.” Wearry v. Cain,
577 U.S. 385, 392 (2016) (quotation omitted). The materiality of evidence
must be evaluated for “the cumulative effect of all such evidence.” Kyles v.
Whitley,
514 U.S. 419, 421 (1995). Further, the threshold for materiality is
“that the favorable evidence could reasonably be taken to put the whole case
in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict.”
Id. at
435. “The question is not whether the defendant would more likely than not
have received a different verdict with the evidence, but whether in its absence
he received a fair trial, understood as a trial resulting in a verdict worthy of
confidence.”
Id. at 434. Brady applies to evidence of witness credibility.
Giglio v. United States,
405 U.S. 150, 153–54 (1972).
Grace claims that the grand jury transcript contains Brady material
that warrants a new trial. The State does not dispute the suppression or
favorability of the transcript. The State only disputes the materiality of the
transcript, arguing that the testimony within it is immaterial because there is
no reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different if the
testimony was available to Grace. Grace argued before the state court that
the suppression of the grand jury testimony deprived him of the chance to
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impeach the witnesses and cast doubt on the identity of the shooter. He
argued that he almost certainly would have been acquitted if the jury knew
that Hudson, a primary witness against him, was also a suspect in the crime
and that Temple had possibly identified Hudson as the shooter.
Grace argues “[t]he materiality of the suppressed evidence, which the
State purports to be the only issue before this Court, can hardly be in doubt.”
The crux of Grace’s argument is that he was “convicted wholly on the
eyewitness testimonies of Hudson and Moses,” and thus, there was “a
reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense,
the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Grace argues that
the state court’s ruling violated clearly established federal law by failing to
consider the evidence for its cumulative effect and failing to recognize there
was a reasonable probability that the disclosure of the evidence would have
led to a different outcome at trial.
Grace’s most analogous cases are Smith and Wearry. In Smith, a single
witness linked the defendant to the crime. Smith v. Cain, 565 U.S. 73, 74
(2012). That witness testified that “he had been face to face with [the
defendant] during the initial moments of the robbery.”
Id. Yet, the police
notes from interviews with the witness after the robbery indicated that he told
investigators he could not identify the robber aside from describing him as a
black male because he could not see any faces.
Id. at 75. The Supreme Court
found those notes to be material under Brady.
Id. at 76. Similarly, the State
in Wearry did not disclose records that cast doubt on one of the prosecution’s
witnesses or medical records that contradicted the witness’s testimony. 577
U.S. at 389–390. The prosecution also failed to disclose that another witness
sought a deal to reduce his own sentence in exchange for his testimony. Id.
at 390. The Court held the evidence was material because “[e]ven if the jury
— armed with all of this new evidence — could have voted to convict Wearry,
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we have no confidence that it would have done so.” Id. at 394 (quotation
omitted).
The state court here did not unreasonably apply either case. Unlike
in Smith and Wearry, the new evidence does not undermine all the state’s
witnesses. Although the jury was unaware of the detective’s “oversight” in
failing to arrest Hudson, the state court explained that the jury “heard
testimony by Moses that Hudson acted in concert with [Grace] in the
murder-robbery.” 2 The state court emphasized the lack of evidence that
there was any deal between Hudson and the prosecution that should have
been disclosed to the jury. The state court further reasoned that “[e]ven
discounting Hudson’s testimony at trial about [Grace’s] involvement in the
crime, the jury heard Moses’ testimony that [Grace] shot the victim.” The
state court also noted that Moses testified that he saw the shooting, and his
testimony was consistent with medical evidence of the victim’s injuries. 3
While the state court could have reasonably concluded that the grand
jury testimony was material under Smith and Wearry, it was not unreasonable
to conclude the testimony was immaterial because Moses’s testimony
corroborated Hudson’s testimony. Grace’s claim that the state court
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2
Notably, Moses claimed he had smoked eight or nine marijuana cigarettes on the
day of the shooting. The jury heard that testimony, however, and could have chosen to not
believe Moses’s account of the shooting at the time.
3
Grace argues that Moses’s testimony is not “strong enough to sustain confidence
in the verdict,” because the police and the victim’s family originally suspected that Moses
was the killer. The jury heard Moses testify that he was arrested for the murder, and he
told police “I ain’t killed nobody but I knew who did it.” The jury also heard Moses testify
that he had been in a fight with the victim’s family after the shooting because they
suspected he was involved. That evidence is not new, and the jury could have chosen to
not believe Moses based on his testimony. Grace also emphasizes conflicting statements
given by Moses during his police interview where he first says, “I saw [Grace] kill him,”
and then says, “I ain’t saw it, you can put it like that, he killed him.” That evidence is also
not new; Grace’s counsel had a transcription of Moses’s statement to police during trial.
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neglected to consider the cumulative effect of the evidence also fails. After
considering all the evidence, the state court concluded that “while it
inculpates Hudson, it does not, in any way, exculpate defendant as to his
participation in the commission of the murder.”
Next, Grace argues, and the district court agreed, that the state court
misapplied Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308 (1974), by focusing on reasons the
jury may not draw certain inferences instead of focusing on the inferences the
jury could possibly draw. Grace insists the state court’s decision is contrary
to Davis because the state court believed the suppressed evidence had to be
evidence of an actual deal to be material. Although Davis is a Confrontation
Clause case, Grace argues the case provides clearly established law that the
state court violated. An examination of the state court’s decision proves that
it did not unreasonably apply any potentially relevant principles in Davis.
The state court considered the effect of the grand jury testimony on the
ultimate credibility of the witnesses and found no reasonable probability that
the testimony would lead to a different outcome.
Finally, Grace argues the state court’s decision is based, in part, on
the unreasonable factual findings that there was no evidence of a deal and that
no evidence established Hudson as the shooter. To support these assertions,
Grace offers the grand jury testimony and the state court’s assertion that the
evidence inculpates Hudson in the crime. This falls well short of the clear
and convincing evidence needed to overcome the presumption that the state
court’s factual findings are correct. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1).
While fairminded jurists might disagree on the materiality of the
suppressed evidence, that is precisely why federal habeas relief cannot be
granted. AEDPA “respects the authority and ability of state courts and their
dedication to the protection of constitutional rights.” Hill, 586 U.S. at 48. It
is not enough for the federal court to determine the state court was wrong,
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the state court’s decision must be “so lacking in justification . . . beyond any
possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Richter, 562 U.S. at 103. The state
court’s decision is not so deficient as to justify federal habeas relief.
The district court’s decision is REVERSED and Grace’s application
for habeas relief is DENIED.
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