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FILED
United States Court of Appeals
PUBLISH Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS January 26, 2023
Christopher M. Wolpert
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court
_________________________________
TABERON DAVE HONIE,
Petitioner - Appellant,
v. No. 19-4158
ROBERT POWELL, Warden, Utah State
Prison,
Respondent - Appellee.
_________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Utah
(D.C. No. 2:07-CV-00628-JAR-EJF)
_________________________________
Jon M. Sands, Federal Public Defender (Therese M. Day and Eric Zuckerman, Assistant
Federal Public Defenders, with him on the briefs), Phoenix, Arizona, for PetitionerAppellant.
Melissa Holyoak, Utah Solicitor General (Andrew F. Peterson, Assistant Solicitor
General, and Sean D. Reyes, Utah Attorney General, on the brief), Salt Lake City, Utah,
for Respondent-Appellee.
_________________________________
Before HOLMES, Chief Judge, LUCERO, Senior Circuit Judge, and PHILLIPS,
Circuit Judge.
_________________________________
PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge.
_________________________________
One evening twenty-four years ago, Taberon Honie called his ex-girlfriend on
the telephone, demanded that she immediately visit him, and threatened to kill
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several of her family members if she didn’t. When she went to work instead, Honie
made good on his threat, brutally murdering her mother hours later. As Honie tried to
leave through the garage at the murder scene, police noticed blood covering his hands
and forearms and asked him about it. Honie confessed to the murder and kept
confessing the next day.
About two weeks before trial, following his lawyer’s advice, Honie waived his
Utah statutory right to jury sentencing in favor of sentencing by the trial judge. But
years later, Honie alleged (1) that soon after he waived jury sentencing, a fellow
inmate told him that he had made a mistake in doing so; (2) that a week before trial,
Honie asked his trial counsel to withdraw the waiver; and (3) that counsel told him it
was too late.
During the defense’s opening statement at the murder trial, Honie’s counsel
conceded that Honie was guilty of the aggravated-murder charge, telling the jury that
the case would be about punishment. After hearing the evidence, a Utah state jury
convicted him of aggravated murder. Then after considering the parties’ evidence
presented at the penalty phase, the trial judge imposed a sentence of death. On direct
appeal, the Utah Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence.
In seeking state postconviction relief, Honie argued under the Sixth
Amendment that his trial counsel performed deficiently in two ways: (1) by
inadequately explaining his right to jury sentencing, and (2) by not following his
direction to retract his waiver. The Utah Supreme Court rejected Honie’s first claim,
concluding that Honie’s counsel had performed competently. On the second, the
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court didn’t rule on the deficient-performance question. For both claims, the court
ruled that Honie had suffered no prejudice.
In evaluating Honie’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, the Utah
Supreme Court began by reciting the general standard from Strickland v. Washington,
466 U.S. 668 (1984). To show prejudice under that standard, Honie needed to show
“a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of
the proceeding would have been different.” Honie v. State (Honie II),
342 P.3d 182,
192 (2014) (quoting Strickland,
466 U.S. at 694). In applying this general standard to
Honie’s prejudice argument, the Utah Supreme Court treated “the result of the
proceeding” as meaning the result of the sentencing proceeding.
Id. Tracking how
Strickland applied its general prejudice standard to require a reasonable probability
of a change in the case’s substantive outcome, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that
Honie could show prejudice only if “the sentencer, in this case the trial judge, ‘would
have concluded that the balance of aggravating and mitigating circumstances did not
warrant death’ in the absence of counsel’s deficient performance.”
Id. (quoting
Strickland,
466 U.S. at 695). The court concluded that Honie had failed to make that
showing.
Now before us on federal habeas review, Honie argues that the Utah Supreme
Court’s application of Strickland’s substantive-outcome test for prejudice was
contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established law. He
argues that the holdings of three more-recent Supreme Court cases required the Utah
Supreme Court to instead use the process-based test as done in Hill v. Lockhart, 474
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U.S. 52 (1985). If Hill’s standard applied, Honie would have instead needed to show
a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s errors, he would have chosen jury
sentencing.
Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”),
we may grant Honie relief only if the Utah Supreme Court’s adjudication on the
merits was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly
established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.”
28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). The general standard provided in Strickland provides Honie
a first level of clearly established law for prejudice. Under that level, Honie can meet
the general prejudice test if he shows that “the result of the proceeding would have
been different.” Strickland,
466 U.S. at 694. But for Honie’s claim, that simply
invites another legal question—what does “the result of the proceeding” mean?
As mentioned, depending on the context, the Supreme Court cases give two
possible meanings: (1) the substantive outcome of the case, that is, the underlying
conviction or sentence, or instead (2) the procedural outcome of the decision, that is,
whether the defendant would have chosen to plead or go to trial. The key point here
is that no one contends that, absent the Hill line of cases, the Utah Supreme Court
either would have acted contrary to or unreasonably applied Strickland’s
general-prejudice standard by choosing the substantive-outcome test over the
process-based test. For Honie, all depends on Hill and its line of cases.
That leads us to the issue before us. In cases like Honie’s, which contest the
state court’s choice of the two applications of Strickland’s general standard for
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prejudice, the defendant must provide a second level of clearly established law that
requires courts to apply the application he advocates for his circumstances. Here, that
means Honie must identify a Supreme Court holding that requires courts applying
Strickland to use a process-based test in evaluating whether counsel’s deficient
performance leading to a state jury-sentencing waiver prejudices the defendant. To
do so, Honie relies on the three Supreme Court cases Judge Lucero lists in the
Certificate of Appealability (“COA”) question—Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler.
BACKGROUND
I. Factual Background
In 1995, Honie began dating Carol Pikyavit.1 The relationship ran about two
years before sputtering over another year or so. Somewhere along the way, the couple
had a daughter, T.H. But by 1998, Honie was living with a new girlfriend, and Carol
and T.H. were living with Carol’s mother, Claudia Benn. Also living with Claudia
were Carol’s sister, Benita, and Benita’s two preschool-aged daughters, D.R. and
T.R.
1
Along with the record submitted by the Utah District Court covering Honie’s
federal habeas petition, we have also received two separate records related to Honie’s
conviction and postconviction-relief efforts in Utah’s courts. The first state record
covers Honie’s jury trial and judge sentencing—Utah Fifth Judicial District Case No.
981500662. We cite that record as “Tr. R.” Because the record isn’t consecutively
paginated, all citations refer to the PDF page number. The second state record covers
Honie’s postconviction-relief efforts—Utah Fifth Judicial District Case No.
030500157. We cite that record as “PC R.” Because that record is consecutively
paginated, our citations refer to the Bates-stamped page numbers handwritten on the
bottom of each page.
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On July 9, 1998, Honie murdered Claudia. That evening, Honie called Carol
several times, demanding that she immediately visit him at his girlfriend’s house. At
least partly because Carol was soon due at work, she refused. Agitated, Honie
reinforced his demand with a threat—if she disobeyed his command, he would kill
Claudia and Carol’s young nieces and steal away with T.H. Carol disregarded
Honie’s threat. After all, this wasn’t the first time Honie had threatened violence. He
called twice more before Carol and Benita left for work at 10:30 p.m. While the two
mothers worked, Claudia tended the three granddaughters at her house. About an
hour after his last telephone call, Honie called a cab and made his way there.
At about 12:20 a.m., police arrived at Claudia’s house in response to a
neighbor’s 911 call. The police saw that someone had smashed a rock through a
sliding glass door to gain entry. They ordered everyone inside the house to come
outside and soon saw Honie leaving through the garage. After ordering Honie to raise
his hands, officers noticed that his hands and forearms were covered in blood. When
they asked him about this, Honie responded, “I stabbed her. I killed her with a knife.”
Honie v. Crowther (Honie III), No. 2:07-CV-628 JAR, 2019 WL 2450930, at *1 (D.
Utah June 12, 2019) (citation omitted).
The officers arrested Honie and went inside. In the living room, they found
Claudia’s partially nude body lying face down, a bite mark visible on her left arm.
Next to her body lay a large, blood-covered butcher knife. Blood had pooled on the
floor under her neck. Honie had slit Claudia’s throat from ear to ear, beginning with
four “start marks” under her left ear. State v. Honie (Honie I), 57 P.3d 977, 982
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(Utah), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 863 (2002). The cut was so deep that the knife reached
her backbone.
Honie had also mutilated Claudia’s lower body and genitalia by repeatedly
stabbing her vagina and anus. Two stab wounds penetrated her vagina so deeply that
they pierced the pelvic cavity of her abdomen. The medical examiner who performed
the autopsy testified that Honie may have inflicted the vaginal injuries before he cut
Claudia’s throat. Honie later admitted that he had attempted to penetrate Claudia’s
anus with his penis but “decided not to after realizing the victim had died.” Honie II,
342 P.3d at 187.
As the officers continued to investigate, Claudia’s three granddaughters, aged
twenty-two months to four years, ventured from the back of the house to where
Claudia’s body lay. Though the girls all had blood on them, D.R., Honie’s four-year-
old niece, “was covered, literally, head to toe with blood.” Id. at 187. D.R. had been
wearing underwear when her mother left for work, but she now wore only a T-shirt.
After D.R. was again dressed in clean underwear, someone noticed that she was
bleeding into the underwear. At trial, an expert testified that D.R.’s bleeding came
from abrasions on her genitals caused by rubbing or fondling within the past twenty-
four hours. During the penalty phase, Honie’s expert witness, a psychologist, testified
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that Honie had admitted to sexually molesting D.R. that night by digitally penetrating
her.2
The morning after the murder, an officer interrogated Honie three separate
times. In each interview, Honie expressed remorse for killing Claudia, repeatedly
stating that she wasn’t meant to die.
II. Procedural History
A. Trial, Sentencing, and Direct Appeal
The State of Utah charged Honie with aggravated murder. During a pretrial
conference about two weeks before trial, Honie’s trial counsel informed the trial
judge that Honie wished to waive his Utah statutory right to jury sentencing. See
Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-207(1)(c)(i) (LexisNexis 1995). Further, Honie’s counsel told
the court that he and Honie had discussed the “whole process” of the
jury-sentencing-waiver issue “on several occasions,” Tr. R. at 996, including the
night before the pretrial conference. Honie’s counsel advised the court of “[Honie’s]
desire” to waive his statutory right to jury sentencing, id. at 1003.
Before consenting to Honie’s waiver, the prosecuting attorney asked if, on a
proper evidentiary showing, the trial judge would be able to impose the death
penalty. Though the judge stated that imposing the death penalty was “the last thing a
judge would want to do,” he confirmed that he would impose that sentence if the
2
Though these facts are painfully graphic, they are relevant to Honie’s choice
between jury or judicial sentencing and to his claim that in the end he indeed would
have sought to withdraw his jury-sentencing waiver.
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facts and circumstances of the case warranted it. Honie III, 2019 WL 2450930, at *10
(citation omitted). Satisfied with the judge’s answer, the State consented to Honie’s
waiver of jury sentencing. See
Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-207(1)(b).
The court then took a brief recess so Honie’s counsel could complete a written
“Waiver of Jury in Penalty Phase.” The waiver stated that Honie was “knowingly and
intelligently” waiving his right to have a jury determine his sentence. Honie III, 2019
WL 2450930, at *11. It also stated that Honie had discussed the waiver with his
attorney; that he had “been advised of the full scope of options and ramifications” of
waiving a sentencing jury; that he had waived “the right to have a jury of twelve
persons determine the penalty”; and that he understood that if he opted for a jury
sentencing, “it would only take one (1) juror to dissent or vote against imposing the
death penalty, and that ten (10) jurors are sufficient to impose a sentence of life
without the possibility of parole.”
Id. (emphasis added) (citation omitted). After
privately conferring further with Honie, his counsel orally reviewed the waiver with
Honie point by point in open court, asking Honie if he had any questions about it and
if he understood it. Counsel highlighted that Honie was “giving up [his] right to have
a jury of 12 people decide the penalty,” Tr. R. at 1002–03, and that, with a jury, he
would avoid the death penalty if one person dissented. Honie stated that he had no
questions and that he understood the right he was giving up.
After Honie’s counsel reviewed the waiver with him, the trial court asked
additional follow-up questions to further ensure that Honie understood the right he
was waiving. Specifically, the trial court verified that Honie understood he was
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waiving the right to have twelve jurors decide his sentence. Honie confirmed that he
was voluntarily waiving the right to have a jury decide his punishment and that his
decision was based on counsel’s advice but was his decision alone. Honie highlights
one brief portion of this lengthy colloquy:
THE COURT: And then, do you understand that to not receive the death
penalty you would have to have—I don’t know quite how to put this in
layman’s terms and still be accurate legally—but with a judge, there is
just one person you would have to convince. There is a reasonable doubt
with 12 jurors, you got 12 chances to convince somebody that there is a
reasonable doubt there. So do you understand that you are reducing your
field there for 12 down to one?
HONIE: Yes.
THE COURT: I don’t want to insult your intelligence, but do you
understand that?
HONIE: Yes, I do.
THE COURT: And you still want to go ahead with the waiver of the jury
for the penalty phase?
HONIE: Yes, sir.
Tr. R. at 1005.
At trial, during opening statement, Honie’s counsel acknowledged that Honie
had committed the charged aggravated murder, telling the jury, “I know in this case
there is no question of Mr. Honie’s guilt. You are going to find him guilty. The
question in this case is going to be one of punishment.” Honie III, 2019 WL 2450930,
at *2. The jury later found Honie guilty of aggravated murder. On a special-verdict
form, the jurors found that five aggravators supported Honie’s conviction, including
burglary, object rape, and forcible sodomy. Those same aggravators also qualified as
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“aggravating circumstances” supporting the death penalty. See Utah Code Ann.
§ 76-3-207(3) (defining “aggravating circumstances” as those listed in Utah’s
aggravated-murder statute,
id. § 76-5-202).
During the two-day sentencing hearing, the State emphasized both Honie’s
crime and the harm it had caused Claudia’s family and community. Honie, in turn,
presented mitigating evidence, including his limited criminal history, his intoxication
during the crime, and his youth (Honie was twenty-two years old when he killed
Claudia). After concluding that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the
mitigating circumstances, the trial judge imposed the death penalty.
Honie appealed his conviction and sentence. In 2002, the Utah Supreme Court
upheld both.
B. Postconviction Relief Efforts
1. Utah Courts
In 2003, Honie sought postconviction relief in Utah district court. He based his
sprawling petition on dozens of alleged errors committed by his trial and appellate
counsel and by the trial court. Relevant here, Honie faulted trial counsel for failing to
“adequately advise [him] regarding his right to have the jury decide [his] sentence.”
PC R. at 68. In 2005, Honie submitted an affidavit in opposition to the State’s
summary-judgment motion. In this affidavit, he asserted for the first time that he
hadn’t understood “what aggravators and mitigators were” or the process for
determining his sentence. Honie III, 2019 WL 2450930, at *12 (citation omitted).
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He further recounted—also for the first time—an attempt to withdraw his
jury-sentencing waiver about a week after he entered it. According to Honie, a
“jailhouse lawyer” had convinced him that he made a mistake by opting for judicial
sentencing—on grounds that he needed only one holdout juror to get a life sentence.
Id. But when Honie allegedly asked his trial counsel to withdraw his waiver, his
lawyer told him it was “too late” even though a week remained until trial. Id.; see
also id. at *17. Honie represented that if he “had understood the differences between
a judge determination and a jury determination, [he] would have gone with the jury in
the penalty phase and not waived the jury.” Id. at *12 (citation omitted).
In 2011, after a round of summary-judgment briefing, discovery, and then
another full round of summary-judgment proceedings, the district court denied relief
on each of Honie’s claims.
Honie appealed the postconviction-relief denial to the Utah Supreme Court.
Citing Strickland, Honie argued that his counsel had provided ineffective assistance
in violation of the Sixth Amendment. As for the first prong of Strickland’s general
standard for ineffective assistance of counsel—that his counsel had performed
deficiently—Honie alleged two constitutional deficiencies. First, he argued that his
counsel had failed to advise him adequately about what waiving his right to jury
sentencing meant, making his waiver unknowing and involuntary. Second, he argued
that his trial counsel had failed to try to withdraw the waiver of jury sentencing, even
after Honie asked him to do so.
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Addressing the second prong of Strickland’s general standard—that his
counsel’s deficient performance had prejudiced him—Honie didn’t argue that a jury
would have spared him the death penalty. Instead, he argued that if competently
represented he would have opted for jury sentencing. In response, the State argued
that the proper prejudice inquiry was whether Honie could show a reasonable
probability that the jury would have spared him the death penalty: “Strickland
ordinarily requires proving that counsel’s mistake undermines confidence in the
outcome of the proceeding, meaning Honie must show that waiving the jury
undermines confidence in his death sentence.” State Ct. Appellee’s Br. at 58, Honie
II (No. 20110620). The State further faulted Honie for citing no authority applying a
different prejudice standard. In reply, Honie cited Hill as support for his argument
that he had been prejudiced by waiving his right to jury sentencing, regardless of
whether he could show a reasonable probability that the jury would have instead
imposed life imprisonment.
The Utah Supreme Court found no merit in Honie’s first ineffective-assistance
claim related to his jury-sentencing waiver. In adjudicating the merits of this claim,
the court ruled that Honie’s counsel hadn’t performed deficiently by advising him to
waive his right to jury sentencing and that, based on the record, Honie’s waiver had
been knowing and voluntary.
Addressing Honie’s second ineffective-assistance claim—his counsel’s failure
to try to withdraw Honie’s waiver of jury sentencing—the court skipped the
deficient-performance prong and rejected Honie’s claim based on his failure to
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satisfy the prejudice prong: “We need not decide if trial counsel’s failure to move to
withdraw Mr. Honie’s waiver amounts to ineffective assistance of counsel because,
even if trial counsel’s performance was objectively unreasonable, Mr. Honie cannot
show that he was prejudiced.” Honie II, 342 P.3d at 201. The court applied
Strickland’s general prejudice standard—which asks whether there was a reasonable
probability that the result of the proceeding would have been different—by focusing
on the outcome of Honie’s sentencing, that is, the decision between the death penalty
or life imprisonment. Concluding that Honie had not shown a reasonable probability
that the jury would have spared him from the death penalty, the court found no
prejudice. The court didn’t discuss Hill’s prejudice standard.
2. Federal Courts
In May 2015, Honie petitioned for federal habeas relief in the District of Utah,
raising fourteen claims for relief. This appeal relates to Claim Three, one of the eight
claims that the district court determined Honie had properly exhausted. Again, Honie
argued two ways in which his trial counsel had performed deficiently: (1) by failing
to advise him adequately about his right to a jury sentencing and (2) by failing to
move to withdraw his jury-sentencing waiver. Specifically, Honie maintained that
Hill provided clearly established law that required the Utah Supreme Court to apply
the process-based prejudice standard, not Strickland’s substantive-outcome-based
one. R. vol. 2, at 439 (quoting Hill and concluding that Honie “only needed to
demonstrate that if not for counsel’s deficient performance, he would have withdrawn
his jury waiver and proceeded with a jury during the penalty phase of his trial”).
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The federal district court denied all of Honie’s claims for relief. Addressing
the two deficient-performance claims, the court first concluded that the Utah
Supreme Court’s determination that trial counsel had adequately advised Honie on
the jury-waiver decision was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of
clearly established federal law. Next, the district court ruled that “[t]here is no clearly
established federal law extending the Hill prejudice standard to jury trial waivers.”3
Honie III, 2019 WL 2450930, at *18 (citation omitted).
Honie then moved this court for a COA. Judge Murphy denied Honie’s request
for a COA but granted him leave to file a renewed request to the merits panel. Honie
did so, and Judge Lucero granted a COA on the following issue:
In assessing whether an attorney’s deficient performance in connection
with a waiver of the right to a jury sentencing prejudiced a habeas
petitioner, is it clearly established under Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52
(1985); Roe v. Flores-Ortega, 528 U.S. 470 (2000); and Lafler v. Cooper,
566 U.S. 156 (2012), that the relevant inquiry is whether the petitioner
would have waived his jury right but for counsel’s ineffectiveness?
Order Granting Certificate of Appealability at 1. Our jurisdiction lies under 28 U.S.C.
§ 2253. And as the COA question reveals, this appeal turns on whether the three
Supreme Court holdings clearly establish that the Utah Supreme Court needed to
3
Alternatively, the district court concluded that Honie couldn’t meet his
burden even if it were to apply the Hill prejudice standard. It found insufficient
Honie’s bare assertion that he would have withdrawn his waiver had his counsel
asked the court to do so. The court agreed with the Utah Supreme Court that “a
defendant will often fare better with a trained jurist than a lay jury, especially when
the crime is particularly heinous.” Honie III, 2019 WL 2450930, at *19 (quoting
Honie II,
342 P.3d at 201). In other words, Honie failed to persuade the district court
that he had shown any good reasons why he would really have withdrawn his
jury-sentencing waiver. We do not reach that issue.
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apply Hill’s process-based prejudice standard beyond their underlying claims
regarding pleas and appeals, all the way to Honie’s waiver of jury sentencing.
Critically, we evaluate these cases within the constraints of federal habeas review, 28
U.S.C. § 2254(d).
DISCUSSION
This appeal involves the law governing ineffective-assistance-of-counsel
claims and whether Honie can prevail on such a claim under AEDPA, 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(d)(1). Specifically, Honie claims that the Utah Supreme Court violated clearly
established law in its application of Strickland’s general prejudice standard. At a first
level of clearly established law, Honie can easily show that Strickland’s general
standard for ineffective-assistance claims governs his claim. But because courts still
must apply that general prejudice standard to his circumstances, he must show a
second level of clearly established law that would have required the Utah Supreme
Court to apply a process-based prejudice test in evaluating his deficient-performance
claims arising from his jury-sentencing waiver.
Our COA question pertains to this second level of clearly established law. We
invited Honie to show that the holdings of Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler required
the Utah Supreme Court to apply the general prejudice standard as requiring a
process-based prejudice test to his two deficient-performance claims. If he could do
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so, we would then determine whether the Utah Supreme Court acted contrary to or
unreasonably applied that clearly established law.4
But before we can consider those questions, we must address some preliminary
matters. First, the State argues that we lack jurisdiction because no case or
controversy exists. Second, the State argues that Honie has failed to preserve his Hill
prejudice argument for appeal. After rejecting those arguments, we resolve the merits
of this appeal: whether the Utah Supreme Court’s decision was contrary to or
involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law.
I. Jurisdiction
To meet Strickland’s general ineffective-assistance-of-counsel standard, Honie
needed to show (1) that his counsel performed deficiently and (2) that this deficiency
prejudiced him. 466 U.S. at 687. But because of the COA’s wording, Honie
understandably limited his argument to whether the Utah Supreme Court had applied
the wrong prejudice standard. With the case in this posture, the State argues that any
decision we issue would be advisory: that is, even if we conclude that clearly
established law required the Utah Supreme Court to apply the Hill prejudice standard,
4
Though we adopt the parties’ moniker of “Hill prejudice,” we acknowledge
that the Hill Court merely applied Strickland’s general standard, including its
prejudice prong, to the factual context and challenge raised before the Court (an
accepted plea offer). See Lee v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 1958, 1965 n.1 (2017)
(noting that in Hill the Court did not “depart from Strickland’s requirement of
prejudice. The issue is how the required prejudice may be shown.”).
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Honie still couldn’t obtain relief, because the court also ruled that he had failed to
show that his counsel had performed deficiently.5
But the State concedes that our precedents permit us to “expand a COA to
cover the necessary but omitted Strickland element.” Resp. Br. 14. Indeed, in United
States v. Shipp, 589 F.3d 1084 (10th Cir. 2009), we recognized our authority “to
expand the COA to cover uncertified, underlying constitutional claims asserted by an
appellant.”
Id. at 1087–88 (collecting cases); see also United States v. Lozado,
968
F.3d 1145, 1150 n.1 (10th Cir. 2020) (“The government’s position on appeal also
presents a question regarding the scope of the certificate of appealability previously
issued by a judge of this court. . . . To the extent it might . . . be construed as limited
to the assault conviction, we expand the scope of the certificate of appealability to
include the parties’ arguments respecting the other convictions relied on by the
district court at sentencing.”). We now exercise our discretion to expand the COA to
cover the “uncertified, underlying constitutional claims” that Honie asserts—whether
his trial counsel performed deficiently under Strickland. Under our expanded COA,
we have jurisdiction to resolve the full controversy presented here.
II. State-Court Exhaustion and Preservation of Honie’s Jury-Waiver Claim
Next, the State raises two more reasons that we shouldn’t reach the merits.
First, the State argues that Honie has defaulted his claim by not fairly presenting the
5
This argument ignores that the Utah Supreme Court didn’t rule on Honie’s
deficient-performance claim related to his counsel’s not seeking to withdraw the
jury-sentencing waiver after Honie asked counsel to do so.
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Utah courts with his argument that Hill’s process-based prejudice standard applies.
Second, because Honie didn’t cite Flores-Ortega and Lafler in the district court, the
State argues that Honie failed to preserve his argument that those cases reinforce that
the Hill process-based prejudice standard governs ineffective-assistance claims based
on counsel’s alleged deficient performance tied to jury-sentencing waivers. We reject
both arguments.
A. Honie fairly presented his prejudice argument to the Utah Supreme
Court.
In asserting that Honie didn’t fairly present his Hill prejudice argument to the
Utah Supreme Court, the State notes that he didn’t cite Hill until his reply brief.
Because Utah courts generally refuse to consider issues raised for the first time in a
reply brief, see Brown v. Glover, 16 P.3d 540, 545 (Utah 2000), the State insists that
Honie didn’t fairly present that argument. We disagree.
“For a federal court to consider a federal constitutional claim in an application
for habeas, the claim must be ‘fairly presented to the state courts’ . . . .” Prendergast
v. Clements, 699 F.3d 1182, 1184 (10th Cir. 2012) (quoting Picard v. Connor,
404
U.S. 270, 275 (1971)). Thus, we recognize that we must afford state courts “the
‘opportunity to pass upon and correct’ alleged violations of its prisoners’ federal
rights,” which those courts cannot do unless they have been “alerted to the fact that
the prisoners are asserting claims under the United States Constitution.” Duncan v.
Henry,
513 U.S. 364, 365–66 (1995) (per curiam) (quoting Picard,
404 U.S. at 275).
A petitioner “need not cite ‘book and verse on the federal constitution.’” Bland v.
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Sirmons, 459 F.3d 999, 1011 (10th Cir. 2006) (quoting Picard,
404 U.S. at 278). But
he must do “more than present[] ‘all the facts necessary to support the federal claim’
to the state court or articulat[e] a ‘somewhat similar state-law claim.’”
Id. (quoting
Anderson v. Harless,
459 U.S. 4, 6 (1982) (per curiam)). At bottom, “the crucial
inquiry is whether the ‘substance’ of the petitioner’s claim has been presented to the
state courts in a manner sufficient to put the courts on notice of the federal
constitutional claim.” Prendergast,
699 F.3d at 1184 (emphasis added) (citations
omitted).
No one disputes that Honie squarely presented to Utah’s courts an
ineffective-assistance claim that he based on his jury-sentencing waiver. Rather, the
State maintains that Honie failed to fairly present a subcomponent of his claim—one
before us now—that Hill’s process-based prejudice standard applies to waivers of
jury sentencing in capital cases. Certainly, Honie’s opening brief in the Utah
Supreme Court could have done a better job of this. Even so, we can still make out
the substance of his process-based prejudice argument.
He argued as follows: “Honie was prejudiced because he was not informed of
his right to be sentenced by a jury free from bias and prejudice. Because of this, he
waived jury sentencing in favor of the judge.” State Ct. Opening Br. of Appellant at
75, Honie II (No. 20110620). In other words, Honie asserted that his waiver decision
was based on poor advice—and that if he had understood what he was giving up, he
would have chosen jury sentencing. Key here, Honie didn’t argue prejudice based on
grounds that the jury would have spared him from the death penalty. Instead, Honie
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argued prejudice on grounds that absent counsel’s deficient performance, he wouldn’t
have waived jury sentencing. That argument mirrors Hill’s prejudice standard.
And that’s not just our reading of his argument. The State understood it that
way too. In its response brief, the State explained that Honie’s argument “necessarily
assume[d] that merely showing that counsel’s advice caused him to forfeit a
sentencing jury meets his burden to prove Strickland prejudice.” State Ct. Resp. Br.
of Appellee at 58, Honie II (No. 20110620). The State then faulted Honie for not
supporting his argument with legal authority and further argued against applying the
Hill prejudice standard. So even accepting that Honie’s opening brief presented only
a bare-bones version of his prejudice argument, we can see that the State
comprehended it and responded.
That Honie didn’t cite Hill until his reply brief doesn’t change the result. The
State argues that because a Hill prejudice argument wasn’t clear until Honie’s reply
brief, the Utah Supreme Court could have considered it waived. See Brown, 16 P.3d
at 545. Putting aside that the Utah Supreme Court never ruled that Honie had waived
this argument, the State ignores the rationale for the rule. “When an appellant saves
an issue for the reply brief, he deprives the appellee of the chance to respond. And
that leaves us without a central tenet of our justice system—adversariness.” Kendall
v. Olsen,
424 P.3d 12, 15 (Utah 2017). That didn’t happen here. The State wasn’t
deprived of the chance to respond; in fact, it devoted two pages of its brief to explain
why Strickland’s prejudice standard should apply instead of Hill’s. And Honie in turn
spent four pages of his reply brief clarifying his prejudice argument under Hill. Given
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that background, we would have been surprised if the Utah Supreme Court ruled that
Honie had waived the point.
In short, we’re comfortable that once briefing was completed, “the substance
of [Honie’s] claim ha[d] been presented to [Utah’s] courts in a manner sufficient to
put the courts on notice of the federal constitutional claim.” See Prendergast, 699
F.3d at 1184 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
B. Honie preserved his prejudice argument in federal district court.
The State next contends that Honie failed to preserve his argument that
Flores-Ortega and Lafler further support his position that the Hill prejudice standard
extends to a defendant’s waiver of jury sentencing. It notes that Honie cited neither
Flores-Ortega nor Lafler in the federal district court, instead first doing so in his
COA application. Because of this timing, the State contends that Honie has waived
reliance on those cases. We understand the State as arguing that Honie has failed to
preserve any argument built on Flores-Ortega and Lafler.
We conclude that Honie preserved his argument. His theory on appeal mirrors
his theory in the district court. In the district court, Honie argued that the Utah
Supreme Court contravened clearly established federal law by applying the wrong
prejudice standard in assessing his ineffective-assistance claim. He argues the same
thing on appeal: “The Utah Supreme Court violated clearly established federal law
when it applied the wrong prejudice standard to Honie’s claim that trial counsel was
ineffective for failing adequately to advise Honie of his right to have a jury determine
his sentence . . . .” Opening Br. 6.
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The State can’t preclude Honie from relying on Flores-Ortega and Lafler
without at least citing authority barring parties from bolstering established arguments
with additional reasoning and authority on appeal. And to the contrary, we have
acknowledged that “once a federal claim is properly presented, a party can make any
argument in support of that claim; parties are not limited to the precise arguments
they made below.” United States v. Johnson, 821 F.3d 1194, 1199 (10th Cir. 2016)
(brackets omitted) (quoting Lebron v. Nat’l R.R. Passenger Corp.,
513 U.S. 374, 379
(1995)). This surely includes citing more legal authorities, provided the litigant’s
reliance on the new authorities doesn’t change its underlying legal theory. Fish v.
Kobach,
840 F.3d 710, 730 (10th Cir. 2010) (“Theories—as opposed to the
overarching claims or legal rubrics that provide the foundation for them—are what
matters.” (citing Richison v. Ernest Grp., Inc.,
634 F.3d 1123, 1127 (10th Cir.
2011))). Here, though Honie initially cited just Hill, he later cited Flores-Ortega and
Lafler as further support for his argument that the Utah Supreme Court didn’t just
make a mistake in ruling on his ineffective-assistance claims—but that it ignored
clearly established federal law. Because those cases support the same theory
advanced in the district court, he may rely on them on appeal.
Moreover, this isn’t a case in which the district court was denied a chance to
pass on the issue now before us. See Johnson, 821 F.3d at 1199–1200 (declining to
consider the defendant’s newly raised argument in part because “the district court
never ruled on” it). In seven pages of analysis, the district court squarely considered
the question now before us, rejecting Honie’s argument that the Utah Supreme
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Court’s decision contravened clearly established federal law. And, as Honie points
out, the district court even discussed Lafler in assessing whether the Utah Supreme
Court had applied the correct prejudice standard. We thus have the benefit of the
district court’s carefully reasoned decision on this point. And because the State fails
to persuade us that Honie has failed to preserve his argument, we now turn to the
merits of Honie’s claim.
III. The Deficient-Performance Prong: The Utah Supreme Court’s decision
rejecting Honie’s arguments that counsel inadequately advised him about
the jury-sentencing waiver and that his plea was unknowing and
involuntary wasn’t contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly
established federal law.
A. Waiver of Utah Statutory Right to Jury Sentencing
In the Utah Supreme Court on post-conviction relief, Honie argued that “trial
counsel improperly advised him to waive his right to a jury at sentencing and that his
waiver was not knowing and voluntary.” Honie II, 342 P.3d at 200. Specifically,
Honie claimed that “the colloquy with trial counsel and the court was inadequate in
that it failed to make clear that Mr. Honie had a right to be sentenced by an impartial
jury, failed to clarify that the jurors would be required to weigh the aggravating and
mitigating factors, and failed to ensure that Mr. Honie understood what mitigating
and aggravating factors were.”
Id.
The Utah Supreme Court held that “trial counsel’s advice to waive a jury at
sentencing was not objectively unreasonable under the first prong of Strickland.” Id.
The court noted that “[i]f counsel had a reasonable basis for advising a client to
waive a jury at sentencing, we will not second-guess that decision.”
Id. (citing
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Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 523 (2003)). After noting that “the jury was
confronted with [the details of the crime] during the State’s case-in-chief,” the court
ruled that “[i]t was not unreasonable for trial counsel to conclude, in light of the
overwhelming evidence of Mr. Honie’s guilt and the gruesome nature of the crime
itself, that Mr. Honie would fare better at sentencing with a judge than with a jury.”
Id. at 200–01. Particularly in view of the trial judge’s comment that “the last thing a
judge would want to do” would be to impose the death penalty, the court noted that
“we cannot fault counsel’s advice to waive jury sentencing in favor of sentencing by
the trial judge.” Id. at 201. The court summarized that “[i]ndeed, absent specific
allegations of personal bias, we cannot conceive of any situation in which choosing a
judge over a jury would not constitute a legitimate tactical decision.” Id. at 200
(quoting Taylor v. Warden,
905 P.2d 277, 284 (Utah 1995)).
Next, the court addressed “Mr. Honie’s second claim relating to his waiver of
jury sentencing” on his asserted grounds that “his waiver was not knowing and
voluntary.” Id. at 201. Here, the court recounted Honie’s arguments that “he was
never informed of his right to an impartial jury, was never informed that the jury
would be required to weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors, and was never
properly instructed as to what aggravating and mitigating factors actually are.” Id.
The court agreed with the State that these matters were “not relevant to his choice
between a judge and a jury in terms of sentencing.” Id. As the relevant consideration
regarding the jury-sentencing waiver, the court identified “the difference between a
single judge and a twelve-person jury.” Id. The court then reviewed the trial court’s
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extensive communications with Honie before he waived jury sentencing, concluding
that “[w]e cannot say, on this record, that Mr. Honie’s waiver was not knowing and
voluntary.” Id.
On review under § 2254(d)(1), the federal district court agreed with Honie that
he had supplied clearly established law by which he could proceed with this claim.
As such, it relied on Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann “for the proposition that
a defendant may waive the right to a jury trial when ‘there is an intelligent,
competent, self-protecting waiver’ and an ‘exercise of a free and intelligent choice.’”
Honie III, 2019 WL 2450930, at *12 (quoting
317 U.S. 269, 272–73 (1942)).
From there, the federal district court recounted the steep climb required by
§ 2254(d)(1). Addressing what qualifies as an objectively unreasonable application of
clearly established law, the court stated as follows:
The Tenth Circuit said it this way: “[u]nder the test, if all fairminded
jurists would agree the state court decision was incorrect, then it was
unreasonable and the habeas corpus writ should be granted. If, however,
some fairminded jurists could possibly agree with the state court decision,
then it was not unreasonable and the writ should be denied.” Frost v.
Pryor, 749 F.3d 1212, 1225 (10th Cir. 2014). The court notes that under
§ 2254(d), “the question is not whether counsel’s actions were
reasonable. The question is whether there is any reasonable argument that
counsel satisfied Strickland’s deferential standard.” Harrington, 562 U.S.
at 105. Thus, for Honie to get relief, he must show that no fairminded
jurist would agree that the state court’s decision was correct.
Id. (alteration in original).
With that in mind, the court later turned to the Utah Supreme Court’s decision.
It noted that “[t]he state court began its analysis with a strong presumption that trial
counsel acted competently.” Id. at *13. It cited Strickland’s direction that “a court
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must indulge a strong presumption that counsel’s conduct falls within the wide range
of reasonable professional assistance.” Id. (quoting 466 U.S. at 689). The court
agreed with the Utah Supreme Court that counsel’s advice to waive jury sentencing
was objectively reasonable: “A defense counsel’s decision to advise a defendant to
waive his right to jury and proceed with a non-jury trial is a ‘classic example of
strategic trial judgment’ for which Strickland requires highly deferential judicial
scrutiny.”
Id. at *14 (quoting Hatch v. Oklahoma,
58 F.3d 1447, 1459 (10th Cir.
1995), overruled on other grounds by Daniels v. United States,
254 F.3d 1180, 1188
n.1 (10th Cir. 2001)). For counsel’s advice to be constitutionally ineffective, “the
decision to waive a jury must have been completely unreasonable, not merely, wrong,
so that it bears no relationship to a possible defense strategy.”
Id. (internal quotation
marks and citation omitted). Because the Utah Supreme Court had a strong basis for
concluding that the advice was premised on a possible defense strategy, the federal
district court concluded that “[t]he state court’s analysis recognized and correctly
applied Strickland’s performance prong.”
Id.
Next, the federal district court reviewed Honie’s claim that “his waiver was
not knowing and voluntary.” Id. Here, Honie asserted that the written waiver and
colloquies in the courtroom “were inadequate to ensure that his waiver of jury
sentencing was made knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily, in contravention of
the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.”
Id. The
court recited the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling that “the relevant distinction between
sentencing by a jury or judge was explained to Mr. Honie and he affirmed to the
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court that he understood the distinction and wanted to proceed with the judge at
sentencing.” Id. (quoting Honie II,
342 P.3d at 201). The federal district court
concluded that “the facts of this case show that Honie’s jury waiver was knowing and
voluntary, and thus the state-court decision was not contrary to or an unreasonable
application of clearly established Federal law.” Id. at *15 (citation omitted). The
court highlighted some of Honie’s involvements in approving the jury-sentencing
waiver in the state trial court. Id. Further, the federal district court noted that “Honie
cites no Supreme Court precedent that a defendant must be specifically apprised of
his right to an impartial jury or of the burden of proof in order to knowingly and
intelligently waive his right to a jury for sentencing.” Id.
Reviewing the district court’s decision de novo, we agree with its analysis and
conclusions. For Honie’s deficient-performance claim pertaining to his counsel’s
advice regarding waiver of the jury-sentencing right, Honie has not surmounted the
“double deference” owed when reviewing a state court’s Strickland ruling on
deficient performance under AEDPA, § 2254(d)(1).6 See Dunn v. Reeves, 141 S. Ct.
2405, 2410 (2021) (noting that the deficient-performance analysis “is ‘doubly
6
Addressing Honie’s second claim of deficient performance—that his counsel
didn’t try to withdraw the waiver of jury sentencing as Honie requested—the Utah
Supreme Court chose to rule solely on Strickland’s prejudice prong. With the case
before it on a grant of summary judgment, the Utah Supreme Court treated as true
Honie’s statement that he had asked his counsel to try to withdraw the waiver of jury
sentencing. But the court ruled that “even if trial counsel’s failure to move to
withdraw Mr. Honie’s waiver constituted deficient performance, we hold Mr. Honie
was not prejudiced under the second prong of Strickland.” Honie II, 342 P.3d at 200.
As did the federal district court, we will assume counsel’s performance was deficient
and simply resolve that claim on the prejudice prong alone.
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deferential’ when, as here, a state court has decided that counsel performed
adequately” (citation omitted)). We defer to the state court’s Strickland determination
and doubly defer in applying its merits adjudications under AEDPA, § 2254(d)(1).
Harris v. Sharp, 941 F.3d 962, 973–74 (10th Cir. 2019) (“When a habeas petitioner
alleges ineffective assistance of counsel, deference exists both in the underlying
constitutional test (Strickland) and the AEDPA’s standard for habeas relief, creating
a ‘doubly deferential judicial review.’” (citation omitted)). Honie hasn’t shown that
all fairminded jurists would conclude that the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling on this
deficient-performance-claim test was unreasonable, let alone even as mistaken or
wrong.
IV. The Prejudice Prong: The Utah Supreme Court’s decision applying a
substantive-outcome-based test to Honie’s ineffective-assistance claims
wasn’t contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established
federal law.
A. Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Under the Sixth Amendment
1. The General Standard for Ineffective-Assistance Claims
In Strickland, the Supreme Court announced a general two-pronged test for
analyzing ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims. First, “the defendant must show
that counsel’s performance was deficient.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687. Second, “the
defendant must show that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense.”
Id. To
show prejudice, “[t]he defendant must show that there is a reasonable probability
that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have
been different. A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine
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confidence in the outcome.” Id. at 694. Honie asserts an ineffective-assistance-of-
counsel claim, so Strickland’s general standard applies to it. But whether Honie’s
claim prevails depends on how the general standard for prejudice applies to his
claim.7
2. The Two Different Applications of Strickland’s General
Standard for Prejudice
a. Substantive-Outcome-Based Prejudice Standard
After announcing its general two-pronged standard, the Court in Strickland
next needed to apply that standard to the ineffective-assistance claim made in that
case. In Strickland, the defendant contended that his counsel had performed
deficiently by presenting an insufficient mitigation case in a capital case. Id. at
699–700. In evaluating prejudice, the Court determined that “[g]iven the
overwhelming aggravating factors, there is no reasonable probability that the omitted
evidence would have changed the conclusion that the aggravating circumstances
outweighed the mitigating circumstances and, hence, the sentence imposed.”
Id. at
700 (emphasis added). Thus, in the context of that case, the Court “consider[ed] the
proper standards for judging a criminal defendant’s contention that the Constitution
requires a conviction or death sentence to be set aside because counsel’s assistance at
trial or sentencing was ineffective.”
Id. at 671 (emphasis added).
7
For instance, if a court ruled that the defendant must show prejudice by a
preponderance or higher, instead of a reasonable probability of prejudice, that would
be contrary to Strickland. But Honie’s prejudice claim is not of that preliminary sort.
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b. Process-Based Prejudice Standard
A year after Strickland, the Court decided Hill v. Lockhart. There, the
defendant’s counsel allegedly misadvised him about the length of his statutorily
required parole term. Hill, 474 U.S. at 55. The defendant asked the court to “reduce
his sentence to a term of years that would result in his becoming eligible for parole in
conformance with his original expectations.”
Id.
The Court began by holding “that the two-part Strickland v. Washington test
applies to challenges to guilty pleas based on ineffective assistance of counsel.” Id. at
58. But in applying Strickland’s general standard on prejudice in the plea setting, the
Court departed from Strickland’s own application of its general prejudice standard as
requiring a substantive-outcome test (a test asking whether the guilt or sentencing
determination would have differed absent any deficient performance) for the
mitigation-evidence claim. Instead, in Hill, the Court applied a process-based
prejudice test—which allowed the defendant to prevail on a showing of “a reasonable
probability that, but for counsel’s errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would
have insisted on going to trial.”
Id. at 59.
The Court noted that the two different applications have commonalities. It
observed that “[i]n many guilty plea cases, the ‘prejudice’ inquiry will closely
resemble the inquiry engaged in by courts reviewing ineffective-assistance challenges
to convictions obtained through a trial.” Id. For instance, for guilty-plea cases
involving counsel’s deficient performance in failing to discover favorable evidence,
the Court stated that the success of a claim of prejudice for causing the defendant to
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plead guilty will depend on “the likelihood that discovery of the evidence would have
led counsel to change his recommendation as to the plea.” Id. That assessment “will
depend in large part on a prediction whether the evidence likely would have changed
the outcome of a trial.”
Id. And along the same line, the Court stated that prejudice
from counsel’s failing to advise a defendant of an affirmative defense “will depend
largely on whether the affirmative defense likely would have succeeded at trial.”
Id.
(citation omitted).
The Court stated that “these predictions of the outcome at a possible trial,
where necessary, should be made objectively, without regard for the ‘idiosyncrasies
of the particular decisionmaker.’” Id. at 59–60 (quoting Strickland,
466 U.S. at 695).
Ultimately, because the defendant hadn’t alleged “he would have pleaded not guilty
and insisted on going to trial” if correctly informed of his parole-eligibility date, the
Court ruled that he had failed to allege prejudice sufficiently “to satisfy the second
half of the Strickland v. Washington test.” Id. at 60.
Fifteen years later, in Roe v. Flores-Ortega, the Court addressed an
ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim that was “based on counsel’s failure to file a
notice of appeal without respondent’s consent.” 528 U.S. 470, 473 (2000). As in Hill,
the Court ruled that Strickland’s general two-pronged standard for
ineffective-assistance claims applied.
Id. at 476–77. Addressing counsel’s
performance, the Court held that “counsel has a constitutionally imposed duty to
consult with the defendant about an appeal when there is reason to think either
(1) that a rational defendant would want to appeal (for example, because there are
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nonfrivolous grounds for appeal), or (2) that this particular defendant reasonably
demonstrated to counsel that he was interested in appealing.” Id. at 480. As a “highly
relevant factor,” the Court pointed to “whether the conviction follows a trial or a
guilty plea, both because a guilty plea reduces the scope of potentially appealable
issues and because such a plea may indicate that the defendant seeks an end to
judicial proceedings.”
Id. The object is to determine “whether a rational defendant
would have desired an appeal or that the particular defendant sufficiently
demonstrated to counsel an interest in an appeal.”
Id.
Turning to the prejudice prong, the Court, as it did in Hill, applied a
process-based prejudice standard. It held that “to show prejudice in these
circumstances, a defendant must demonstrate that there is a reasonable probability
that, but for counsel’s deficient failure to consult with him about an appeal, he would
have timely appealed.” Id. at 484. In this regard, the Court noted that “[w]e believe
this prejudice standard breaks no new ground, for it mirrors the prejudice inquiry” in
Hill and Rodriquez v. United States,
395 U.S. 327 (1969). Flores-Ortega,
528 U.S. at
485.8 In extending the process-based prejudice test to this new setting, the Court
compared a defendant’s plea and appeal decisions this way: “Like the decision
whether to appeal, the decision whether to plead guilty (i.e., waive trial) rested with
the defendant and, like this case, counsel’s advice in Hill might have caused the
defendant to forfeit a judicial proceeding to which he was otherwise entitled.”
Id.
8
In Rodriquez, counsel failed to file a notice of appeal after being instructed to
do so by the defendant. 395 U.S. at 328.
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In assessing prejudice in the failure-to-appeal context, the Court characterized
as “highly relevant” all “evidence that there were nonfrivolous grounds for appeal or
that the defendant in question promptly expressed a desire to appeal.” Id. at 472. Yet
“a defendant’s inability to ‘specify the points he would raise were his right to appeal
reinstated,’ will not foreclose the possibility that he can satisfy the prejudice
requirement where there are other substantial reasons to believe that he would have
appealed.”
Id. at 486 (quoting Rodriquez,
395 U.S. at 330).
Twelve years later, the Court decided Lafler v. Cooper, 566 U.S. 156 (2012).
In that case, the parties stipulated that counsel had performed deficiently by advising
the defendant not to accept a plea offer.
Id. at 163. After a trial, the defendant
received a harsher sentence than the prosecutor had offered.
Id. at 160. As with its
earlier cases, the Court applied Strickland’s two-pronged general standard for
ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims. The issue lay in deciding “how to apply
Strickland’s prejudice test where ineffective assistance results in a rejection of the
plea offer and the defendant is convicted at the ensuing trial.”
Id. at 163 (emphasis
added).
For a declined-plea-offer situation, the Court described the asserted prejudice
as “[h]aving to stand trial, not choosing to waive it.” Id. at 163–64. To show
prejudice in this circumstance, the Court required a defendant to “show that but for
the ineffective advice of counsel there is a reasonable probability that the plea offer
would have been presented to the court (i.e., that the defendant would have accepted
the plea and the prosecution would not have withdrawn it in light of intervening
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circumstances), that the court would have accepted its terms, and that the conviction
or sentence, or both, under the offer’s terms would have been less severe than under
the judgment and sentence that in fact were imposed.” Id. at 164. Though the
defendant had received a fair trial, the Court emphasized that the Sixth Amendment’s
guarantee “applies to pretrial critical stages that are part of the whole course of a
criminal proceeding, a proceeding in which defendants cannot be presumed to make
critical decisions without counsel’s advice.”
Id. at 165.
Reviewing de novo and unconstrained by § 2254(d)(1)—because the state
court had misapplied Strickland—the Court ruled that the defendant “ha[d] satisfied
Strickland’s two-part test.” Id. at 174. In finding a reasonable probability that the
defendant and the trial court would have accepted the offered plea, the Court noted
that the defendant’s ultimate sentence was “3 & half[] times greater” than he would
have received under the offered plea agreement. Id. As the “correct remedy,” the
Court ordered “the State to reoffer the plea agreement.” Id. Once that was done, the
trial court could exercise its “discretion in all the circumstances of the case.” Id. at
175.
As we turn to Honie’s appeal, we must remember that unlike the above trio of
Supreme Court cases, Honie’s case is subject to the stringent dictates of 28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(d)(1). Accordingly, we are not free to extend Supreme Court holdings as if on
direct appeal. Instead, AEDPA’s tightly turned screws limit our review. See White v.
Woodall,
572 U.S. 415, 417 (2014) (referring to § 2254(d) as “a provision of law that
some federal judges find too confining, but that all federal judges must obey”).
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B. AEDPA: General Principles
In reviewing AEDPA claims, the standard of review “depends on how that
claim was resolved by the state courts.” Byrd v. Workman, 645 F.3d 1159, 1165 (10th
Cir. 2011) (citation omitted). Where, as here, the state court has adjudicated a claim
on the merits, we may grant habeas relief only if the state court’s decision “was
contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal
law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.”9
28 U.S.C.
§ 2254(d)(1).
We begin by determining whether clearly established law applies to Honie’s
claim. Marshall v. Rodgers, 569 U.S. 58, 61 (2013) (per curiam) (“The starting point
for cases subject to § 2254(d)(1) is to identify the clearly established Federal law, as
determined by the Supreme Court of the United States that governs the habeas
petitioner’s claims.” (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)); House v.
Hatch,
527 F.3d 1010, 1015 (10th Cir. 2008) (“Whether the law is clearly established
is the threshold question under § 2254(d)(1).” (citation omitted)); see also House,
527 F.3d at 1017 (“[W]ithout clearly established federal law, a federal habeas court
need not assess whether a state court’s decision was contrary to or involved an
unreasonable application of such law.” (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted)).
9
Petitioners may also challenge state-court rulings as being “based on an
unreasonable determination of the facts.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). Here, Honie makes
no such challenge.
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Under § 2254(d)(1), clearly established Federal law “refers to the holdings, as
opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme] Court’s decisions as of the time of the relevant
state-court decision.” Carey v. Musladin, 549 U.S. 70, 74 (2006) (quoting Williams v.
Taylor,
529 U.S. 362, 412 (2000)).10 If we determine that a petitioner has identified
clearly established law governing his claim, we next consider whether the state-court
decision was “contrary to” or an “unreasonable application” of that law. See House,
527 F.3d at 1018.
“A state court decision is ‘contrary to’ the Supreme Court’s clearly established
precedent ‘if the state court applies a rule different from the governing law set forth
in [Supreme Court] cases, or if it decides a case differently than [the Supreme Court
has] on a set of materially indistinguishable facts.’” Frost v. Pryor, 749 F.3d 1212,
1223 (10th Cir. 2014) (alterations in original) (quoting Bell v. Cone,
535 U.S. 685,
694 (2002)). In making that assessment, we ask whether the Supreme Court’s cases
have confronted “the specific question presented by this case”; otherwise, “the state
court’s decision could not be ‘contrary to’ any holding from [the Supreme] Court.”
Woods v. Donald,
575 U.S. 312, 317 (2015) (per curiam) (quoting Lopez v. Smith,
574 U.S. 1, 6 (2014) (per curiam)). Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly
“cautioned the lower courts . . . against ‘framing [its] precedents at . . . a high level of
10
So we may consider only Supreme Court decisions issued before May 30,
2014, when the Utah Supreme Court decided the merits of Honie’s
ineffective-assistance claim.
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generality.’” Lopez, 574 U.S. at 6 (quoting Nevada v. Jackson, 569 U.S. 505, 512
(2013) (per curiam)).
“A state court decision is an ‘unreasonable application’ of Supreme Court
precedent if ‘the state court identifies the correct governing legal rule from [the]
Court’s cases but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular state prisoner’s
case.’” Frost, 749 F.3d at 1223 (alteration in original) (quoting Williams,
529 U.S. at
407). Notably, “an unreasonable application of federal law is different from an
incorrect application of federal law.” Harrington v. Richter,
562 U.S. 86, 101 (2011)
(quoting Williams,
529 U.S. at 410). “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.”
Id. (quoting Yarborough v. Alvarado,
541 U.S. 652, 664 (2004)); see also Brown v. Davenport,
142 S. Ct. 1510, 1525
(2022) (ruling that “to prove the state court’s decision was unreasonable,” a habeas
petitioner “must persuade a federal court that no ‘fairminded juris[t]’ could reach the
state court’s conclusion under this Court’s precedents” (alteration in original)
(citation omitted)).
AEDPA’s highly deferential standard is “difficult to meet.” White, 572 U.S. at
419 (citation omitted). And that’s by design. Harrington,
562 U.S. at 102 (“If this
standard is difficult to meet, that is because it was meant to be.”). After all, federal
habeas review exists principally to correct “extreme malfunctions in the state criminal
justice systems, not a substitute for ordinary error correction through appeal.”
Id. at
102–03 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
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Finally, we review de novo the district court’s legal analysis of the state-court
decision and any factual findings for clear error. Byrd, 645 F.3d at 1166–67.
C. Honie fails to surmount AEDPA’s bar.
1. Clearly Established Law: General Ineffective-Assistance-of-Counsel Standard Under Strickland
We begin by identifying whether clearly established law applies to Honie’s
claim. On this point, “[i]t is past question that the rule set forth in Strickland qualifies
as clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United
States.” Williams, 529 U.S. at 391 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also
Padilla v. Kentucky,
559 U.S. 363, 366 (2010) (declaring that “Strickland applies to
Padilla’s claim,” which was based on counsel’s failure to advise the defendant of the
negative immigration consequences of a guilty plea).
Thus, Honie meets § 2254(d)(1)’s clearly-established-law requirement,
because Strickland’s general, two-pronged ineffective-assistance-of-counsel standard
applies to his claim. But for Honie’s particular claim to succeed, he must show that,
at the time of its ruling, the Utah Supreme Court unreasonably applied Strickland’s
general prejudice standard in the context of ineffective-assistance claims stemming
from a defendant’s waiver of his right to jury sentencing in a capital case. See
§ 2254(d)(1). Or, put differently, the question is whether the Utah Supreme Court
was obliged, under clearly established federal law, to apply Hill’s process-based
approach to Strickland’s general prejudice standard when deciding Honie’s
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ineffective-assistance claim based on his waiver of jury sentencing in his capital case,
rather than the substantive-outcome approach originally applied in Strickland.11
This court’s COA question zeroed in on that precise question. As the COA
question foretold, Honie’s claim rises or falls on whether Hill, Flores-Ortega, and
Lafler hold that the process-based prejudice standard applies to waivers of jury
sentencing. As spelled out next, none of those cases do.
In Hill, the Court held “that the two-part Strickland v. Washington test applies
to challenges to guilty pleas based on ineffective assistance of counsel.” 474 U.S. at
58. The Court continued by stating that the “second, or ‘prejudice,’ requirement, on
the other hand, focuses on whether counsel’s constitutionally ineffective performance
affected the outcome of the plea process. In other words, in order to satisfy the
‘prejudice’ requirement, the defendant must show that, but for counsel’s errors, he
would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial.”
Id. at 59.
As seen, the holding is a narrow one about pleas.
In Flores-Ortega, the Court began by holding that Strickland’s general
standard for ineffective assistance of counsel “applies to claims, like respondent’s,
that counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to file a notice of appeal.” 528
U.S. at 477. The Court next held that “to show prejudice in these circumstances, a
11
Under § 2254(d), defendants alleging that deficient performance prejudiced
them in the plea context are able to show this second level of clearly established law,
because the Supreme Court has already applied a process-based prejudice test in the
plea context. See, e.g., Premo v. Moore, 562 U.S. 115, 129, 131–32 (2011) (applying
Hill’s process-based prejudice test in a § 2254(d) case involving a plea situation). But
Honie offers nothing similar in the jury-sentencing-waiver context.
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defendant must demonstrate that there is a reasonable probability that, but for
counsel’s deficient failure to consult with him about an appeal, he would have timely
appealed.” Id. at 484 (emphasis added). The Court further held that “when counsel’s
constitutionally deficient performance deprives a defendant of an appeal that he
otherwise would have taken, the defendant has made out a successful ineffective
assistance of counsel claim entitling him to an appeal.” Id. As seen, these holdings
narrowly apply to appeals.
Finally, in Lafler, the Court ruled that “[t]he standard for ineffective assistance
under Strickland has thus been satisfied,” after concluding that “[a]s to prejudice,
respondent has shown that but for counsel’s deficient performance there is a
reasonable probability he and the trial court would have accepted the guilty plea.”
566 U.S. at 174 (citation omitted). After that, the Court ordered “the State to reoffer
the plea agreement.”
Id. As seen, the holding is a narrow one about declined plea
offers.
The holdings in the three cases are precise to the claims raised—they govern
pleas and appeals. Nothing in the holdings addresses a waiver of a state-statutory
right to jury sentencing in a capital case. And we may not follow Honie’s suggested
course and tease out general principles from cases to fashion the needed clearly
established law. See Opening Br. 16 (arguing that, read together, Hill, Flores-Ortega,
and Lafler “clearly establish[] that where ineffective assistance of counsel causes a
defendant to forfeit a fundamental right that occurs prior to or after trial, the proper
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prejudice inquiry is whether the defendant can demonstrate a reasonable probability
that but for counsel’s ineffectiveness, he would have opted to exercise that right”).
Honie’s theory for clearly established law goes far beyond the holdings in
these three cases. He says that those cases hold that a process-based prejudice
standard applies whenever counsel’s deficient performance “result[s] in forfeiture of
the decision to exercise a fundamental right that is reserved to the defendant, such as
the right to jury sentencing in a capital case.”12 Id. at 7. As spelled out above, the
cases are far more precise in their holdings.
We acknowledge that in Flores-Ortega, the Court states that applying the
process-based prejudice test in the appeal context “breaks no new ground, for it
mirrors the prejudice inquiry applied in Hill v. Lockhart, and Rodriquez v. United
States.” 528 U.S. at 485 (internal citations omitted). But we read this as the Court
merely recognizing—in a collateral proceeding—that the process-based prejudice test
is not a “new” rule under Teague v. Lane,
489 U.S. 288 (1989). See Chaidez v.
United States,
568 U.S. 342, 353–55, 358 (2013) (concluding that “[t]his Court
announced a new rule in Padilla” because that case “had to develop new law,
establishing that the Sixth Amendment applied at all [to failure to advise about
deportation consequences of a conviction], before it could assess the performance of
Padilla’s lawyer under Strickland” (citation omitted)). Because the process-based
12
We do not decide whether a jury-sentencing right under Utah statutes
amounts to a fundamental right.
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prejudice was not “new” law in Flores-Ortega, the Court had no issue applying it in a
new setting.
On the heels of this discussion, Flores-Ortega notes that “[l]ike the decision
whether to appeal, the decision whether to plead guilty (i.e., waive trial) rested with
the defendant and, like this case, counsel’s advice in Hill might have caused the
defendant to forfeit a judicial proceeding to which he was otherwise entitled.” 528
U.S. at 485. But that doesn’t mean that process-based prejudice applies universally
whenever deficient performance causes a defendant to forfeit a fundamental right in
the defendant’s control. If the Court in Hill had wanted such a broad holding, it could
have said so. And had it done so, the Court in Flores-Ortega could simply have cited
and applied the broad rule. But it did not.
Finally, we note that Honie’s claim differs in important ways from those
presented in Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler. First, Honie doesn’t complain that his
counsel’s deficient performance caused him to forfeit or participate in a proceeding.
He acknowledges the need for a sentencing proceeding and merely complains about
who was the sentencer. Second, Honie claims that his counsel refused to try to
withdraw his waiver of jury sentencing. Those situations differ from the situations in
Hill, Flores-Ortega, or Lafler. Honie cites no Supreme Court holding requiring that
the process-based prejudice standard apply in those circumstances.
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Apart from the three cases listed in the COA question, Honie also cites Jones
v. Barnes, 463 U.S. 745 (1983).13 As he notes, that case left for counsel the
trial-management decisions and for the defendant the decisions regarding
fundamental rights. As fundamental rights, Honie lists these mentioned in Jones: a
defendant’s decision “whether to plead guilty, waive a jury, testify in his or her own
behalf, or take an appeal.” Reply Br. 9 (quoting Jones,
463 U.S. at 751). But Jones
provides Honie little help. If it set the all-encompassing ruling Honie relies on it for,
Hill and later cases could just have cited Jones and been finished. They didn’t.
Further, we note (1) that Jones preceded Strickland so isn’t applying it, and (2) that
Jones didn’t have to navigate the shoals of AEDPA, § 2254(d)(1).
In our view, Honie argues as if his case is on direct appeal. If his case were in
that posture, he could certainly argue that the next logical step after Hill,
Flores-Ortega, and Lafler would be for the Supreme Court to apply the
process-based prejudice standard to his ineffective-assistance claim and
jury-sentencing waiver. And he might prevail. But AEDPA deference bars federal
courts from second-guessing state court decisions until a Supreme Court holding
applies the relevant legal rule to the new context applicable to the petitioner.14 See
Wellmon v. Colo. Dep’t of Corr., 952 F.3d 1242, 1250 (10th Cir. 2020).
13
On the same point, he also relies on McCoy v. Louisiana, 138 S. Ct. 1500
(2018), but that case was decided after the Utah Supreme Court’s decision.
14
Thus, though Vickers v. Superintendent Graterford SCI, 858 F.3d 841 (3d
Cir. 2017), might carry weight if Honie’s case were before us on de novo review, it
didn’t involve AEDPA review so isn’t on point here.
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The Supreme Court emphasized this point in White. There, the petitioner,
having pleaded guilty to capital murder, called character witnesses at the
penalty-phase portion of the trial but declined to testify himself. 572 U.S. at 418. He
asked the trial judge “to instruct the jury that ‘[a] defendant is not compelled to
testify and the fact that the defendant did not testify should not prejudice him in any
way.’”
Id. (alteration in original) (citation omitted). The trial court refused, and the
Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed.
Id.
The Kentucky Supreme Court and the Sixth Circuit identified three Supreme
Court decisions “as the relevant precedents”: Carter v. Kentucky, 450 U.S. 288
(1981), Estelle v. Smith,
451 U.S. 454 (1981), and Mitchell v. United States,
526 U.S.
314, 319 (1999). White,
572 U.S. at 420. Carter established the Fifth Amendment
right to a no-adverse-inference instruction at the guilt phase of a trial.
Id. at 420
(citing 450 U.S. at 294–95). Estelle recognized that the Fifth Amendment applies
equally to the penalty phase and the guilt phase of a capital trial.
Id. (citing 451 U.S.
at 456–57). And Mitchell “disapproved a trial judge’s drawing of an adverse
inference from the defendant’s silence at sentencing ‘with regard to factual
determinations respecting the circumstances and details of the crime.”
Id. (quoting
526 U.S. at 317–30). Based on those three cases, the Sixth Circuit ruled that the state
trial court needed to give a no-adverse-inference instruction at the penalty phase just
as it would in the guilt phase.
Id.
The Supreme Court reversed. It explained:
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Perhaps the logical next step from Carter, Estelle, and Mitchell would be
to hold that the Fifth Amendment requires a penalty-phase no-adverseinference instruction in a case like this one; perhaps not. Either way, we
have not yet taken that step, and there are reasonable arguments on both
sides—which is all Kentucky needs to prevail in this AEDPA case. The
appropriate time to consider the question as a matter of first impression
would be on direct review, not in a habeas case governed by § 2254(d)(1).
Id. at 427.
Though White applied § 2254(d)’s “unreasonable application” prong, that case
applies with equal force here. The Supreme Court may eventually apply the Hill
prejudice standard in cases involving jury-sentencing waivers. But it hasn’t done so
yet, and it may never. The Court has applied process-based prejudice incrementally
and outside of § 2254(d)(1). Until the Court issues a holding extending process-based
prejudice to jury-sentencing waivers, we can’t say that Utah’s applying Strickland’s
substantive-outcome prejudice standard was contrary to or an unreasonable
application of the Supreme Court’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel cases.
Nor does the Supreme Court’s decision in Marshall v. Rogers boost Honie’s
claim. Honie cites that case for the proposition that “a decision framed in general
terms can be deemed to have ‘clearly established’ a rule with respect to a variety of
fact-specific situations that come within the general rule.” Opening Br. 16. Though
conceding that the Supreme Court has never applied Hill prejudice to an ineffective-
assistance claim involving a jury-sentencing waiver, Honie implies that a broader
rule derived from Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler can be applied to the novel context
presented here. But Marshall cannot carry that load.
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In Marshall, the petitioner waived his right to counsel three times in the
interval between his arraignment and trial in California state court. 569 U.S. at 59.
Ultimately, he elected to represent himself at trial but then sought representation to
help him file a motion for a new trial. Id. The trial court denied the request for
counsel and later denied the pro se motion for a new trial. Id. at 60. The petitioner
then sought habeas relief, asserting that California’s courts had violated his Sixth
Amendment right to counsel. Id. The Ninth Circuit agreed and granted him relief. Id.
at 60–61.
The Supreme Court reversed. The parties disputed whether the Supreme
Court’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel caselaw constituted clearly established law
that resolved “whether, after a defendant’s valid waiver of counsel, a trial judge has
discretion to deny the defendant’s later request for reappointment of counsel.” Id. at
61. The Court began by noting that the Ninth Circuit had correctly concluded that
“the Supreme Court ha[d] never explicitly addressed” that issue. Id. at 62.
The Court then reaffirmed that the inquiry doesn’t necessarily end simply
because it hasn’t yet passed on a question of law: “[The Ninth Circuit] (also
correctly) recognized that the lack of a Supreme Court decision on nearly identical
facts does not by itself mean that there is no clearly established federal law, since ‘a
general standard’ from this Court’s cases can supply such law.” Id. (quoting
Yarborough, 541 U.S. at 664). Even so, the Court reversed the Ninth Circuit’s grant
of habeas relief.
Id. at 64–65. In reviewing its Sixth Amendment caselaw, the Court
recognized the “tension” between a defendant’s constitutional right to counsel and
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the right to proceed pro se. Id. at 63. California resolved that tension by giving trial
judges broad discretion to assess post-waiver requests for counsel based on the
totality of the circumstances. Id. at 62–63. And because the Supreme Court’s
holdings don’t require state courts to resolve the tension by appointing counsel in
these circumstances, the Court reasoned that “it cannot be said that California’s
approach is contrary to or an unreasonable application of the ‘general standard[s]’
established by the Court’s assistance-of-counsel cases.” Id. at 63 (alteration in
original) (quoting Alvarado, 541 U.S. at 664).
So too here. Because the Supreme Court hasn’t held that the process-based
prejudice standard governs jury-sentencing waivers in capital cases, “it cannot be
said that the state court ‘unreasonably applied’” Strickland in applying the outcome-
based prejudice test. Musladin, 549 U.S. at 77 (alterations omitted) (quoting
§ 2241(d)(1)).
In summary, Honie’s claim fails for two primary reasons. First, the Supreme
Court has never applied Strickland’s general prejudice standard in a case involving a
waiver of jury sentencing in a capital case. And second, the Supreme Court has never
held—including in Hill, Flores-Ortega, or Lafler—that a process-based prejudice test
applies to jury-sentencing waivers.
CONCLUSION
For all these reasons, we affirm.
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19-4158, Honie v. Powell,
LUCERO, Senior Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part:
In 2002, the Supreme Court declared in Ring v. Arizona that the constitutional
right to a fair trial in capital cases inherently and fundamentally includes a jury
determination of aggravating factors for sentencing. 536 U.S. 584 (2002) (striking down
alternative schemes of sentencing that required judicial determination of aggravating
factors). In doing so, the Court was unequivocal: “The guarantees of jury trial in the
Federal [] Constitution[] reflect a profound judgment about the way in which law should
be enforced and justice administered. . . . If the defendant prefer[s] the common-sense
judgment of a jury to the more tutored but perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single
judge, he [i]s to have it.”
Id. at 609. It further declared: “The Sixth Amendment jury trial
right [] does not turn on the relative rationality, fairness, or efficiency of potential
factfinders.”
Id. at 607.
Three Supreme Court cases, Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52 (1985), Roe v. Flores-
Ortega,
528 U.S. 470 (2000), and Lafler v. Cooper,
566 U.S. 156 (2012), establish that
when counsel’s deficient performance deprives a criminal defendant of a right that only a
defendant personally can waive, the proper prejudice inquiry is if, but for counsel’s
errors, the defendant would have exercised the right at issue. Petitioner Taberon Honie
asserts that his trial attorney’s deficient performance deprived him of his statutory right to
have a jury, not a judge, decide if he should be sentenced to death. In denying Honie
relief, both the state court and my respected colleagues erroneously interpret and apply
the holdings of Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler. Because my majority colleagues also
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erroneously conclude that the prejudice standard clarified by the foregoing cases fails to
provide “clearly established Federal law” applicable to Honie’s ineffective assistance
claim,
28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), I must respectfully dissent.
I would hold that the Utah Supreme Court’s application of a purely outcome-
focused prejudice inquiry—requiring Honie to show he would have received a lesser
sentence, but for counsel’s ineffectiveness—was “contrary to” clearly established law,
§ 2254(d)(1), and that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) does
not preclude us from granting relief. That court applied an incorrect legal standard when
it deviated from the clear requirements of Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler. These cases, in
turn, are applications of the Supreme Court’s command in Strickland v. Washington, 466
U.S. 668 (1984), that the prejudice inquiry in an ineffective assistance case must be tied
to the proceeding in which counsel’s alleged error occurred.
Id. at 694. The Utah court
did the opposite, imposing an impossible, outcome-focused prejudice standard that
categorically turns the deprivation of Honie’s structural and fundamental choice of a
capital sentencer into a harmless error inquiry. Honie could not possibly show that a
hypothetical jury would have spared him the death penalty when the trial judge did not,
nor is he required to do so under Hill and cases that follow.
I further conclude, on de novo review pursuant to Byrd v. Workman, 645 F.3d
1159, 1166-67 (10th Cir. 2011), Honie has demonstrated a violation of his Sixth
Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel under Hill. Honie’s unrebutted
affidavit and corresponding record evidence establish a reasonable probability that, if not
for counsel’s improper refusal to withdraw Honie’s jury sentencing waiver, he would
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have exercised his statutory right to have a jury decide his capital sentence. The error is
of a structural nature. I would therefore reverse the decision of the district court, grant a
writ of habeas corpus, and remand for a new sentencing proceeding in state court in front
of a jury.1
I
The facts of the murder for which Honie was convicted are not in dispute. But
their serious nature does not alter our analysis because the Constitution guarantees rights
“to the innocent and the guilty alike.” Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365, 380
(1986). For criminal defendants, these rights include the right to effective assistance of
counsel throughout all critical stages of a criminal proceeding, Lafler,
566 U.S. at 165,
and the right to make certain fundamental decisions regarding one’s representation, see
Jones v. Barnes,
463 U.S. 745, 751 (1983); McCoy v. Louisiana,
138 S. Ct. 1500, 1508
(2018). Such decisions include “whether to plead guilty, waive a jury, testify in his or
her own behalf, or take an appeal.” Jones,
463 U.S. at 751 (emphasis added). Utah law
provides capital defendants with the right to be sentenced by a jury. See
Utah Code Ann.
§ 76-3-207(1)(c)(i) (1998).2 All twelve jurors must find that the death penalty is justified
beyond a reasonable doubt, otherwise the punishment may not be imposed. § 76-3-
1
I agree with my colleagues that we have authority to expand the certificate of
appealability in this case to consider Honie’s full ineffective assistance claim. I also
agree that Honie’s claims were preserved below. I therefore join these parts of the
majority opinion.
2
While I cite to the statute as it existed when Honie was tried, a substantially
identical version remains in effect. See generally Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-207 (2021).
3
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207(4)(b)-(c). Utah’s capital jury sentencing right may be waived by the defendant with
the consent of the judge and prosecutor. § 76-3-207(1)(c)(i).
Prior to trial and on his attorney’s advice, Honie signed a waiver of his statutory
right to a jury sentencing. Honie was convicted, and the trial judge sentenced him to
death. But in a 2005 affidavit, Honie claimed that his attorney failed to adequately
explain what he was giving up by waiving his jury sentencing right. Honie averred that
he asked his attorney to withdraw the jury sentencing waiver a week after he signed it and
before the start of trial. However, Honie’s trial counsel told him it was “too late” and
made no effort to withdraw the waiver—even though the judge and prosecutor repeatedly
had stated their intention to defer to Honie’s choice of sentencer.
At the post-conviction relief stage, the Utah Supreme Court rejected Honie’s
ineffective assistance claims. See Honie v. State, 342 P.3d 182, 200-02 (Utah 2014).
Applying Strickland, it concluded that Honie’s waiver of his jury sentencing right was
knowing and voluntary.
Id. at 201. It then assumed as true Honie’s claim that he asked
counsel to withdraw his waiver.
Id. Yet it held that, even if Honie’s trial counsel
performed deficiently, Honie could not establish prejudice because he had “offered no
evidence tending to establish that the outcome of his sentencing would have been
different had he opted for jury sentencing.”
Id. (emphasis added). Never mind that such
a showing was impossible: Honie’s trial jury was dismissed before sentencing and did
not hear his mitigating evidence, including Honie’s young age (22 years old at the time of
the crime), his lack of criminal history, his struggles with drug abuse and depression, and
his statements of remorse. See California v. Ramos,
463 U.S. 992, 1008 (1983)
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(explaining that, while trials are narrowly focused on guilt or innocence, jurors at capital
sentencing proceedings are “free to consider a myriad of factors to determine whether
death is the appropriate punishment”).3 This purely outcome-focused approach runs
counter to the Supreme Court’s commands, beginning in Strickland itself, as to the proper
prejudice inquiry in cases like Honie’s. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 693-94 (rejecting a
categorical rule requiring defendants to show that counsel’s errors “likely . . . altered the
outcome in the case,” and instead holding that defendants must establish “a reasonable
probability that . . . the result of the proceeding would have been different”) (emphasis
added). The error is patent. Instead of analyzing if the factual issues were presented to
the correct (i.e., structural) forum—a jury of twelve or a judge of one—it substituted a
harmless error inquiry. In doing so, it also implicitly assumed the trial court would have
granted the withdrawal motion.
Utah asks us to bless its state court’s adjudication of Honie’s claim. But as I
explain below, not even AEDPA can justify that court’s departure from Supreme Court
precedent clearly establishing that a process-focused prejudice test applies to ineffective
3
The impossibility of this task is relevant in two ways. First, it amounts to a
determination that ineffective assistance depriving a defendant of a fundamental right—in
this case, the right to a capital jury sentencing—is categorically harmless. If proving
prejudice under Strickland is functionally impossible, Sixth Amendment relief will never
be available for these types of claims. Second, the Utah Supreme Court’s approach
highlights the absurdity of using an incorrect, outcome-focused prejudice inquiry for
these types of rights, given that the autonomy of the defendant to make certain choices in
our criminal justice system is seen as necessary for a fair trial. See McCoy, 138 S. Ct. at
1508-09. As a result, deprivation of the defendant’s autonomy to make fundamental
decisions renders the trial unfair. See Strickland,
466 U.S. at 686 (in giving meaning to
the constitutional requirement of effective assistance, courts “must take its purpose—to
ensure a fair trial—as the guide”).
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assistance claims related to the loss of a fundamental right that only a criminal defendant
personally may waive.
II
AEDPA limits our ability to grant habeas relief from a state court’s adjudication
on the merits unless the state court’s decision was “contrary to, or involved an
unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the
Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). When a state court
applies a rule that contradicts Supreme Court precedent, its decision is “contrary to”
clearly established law and not entitled to AEDPA deference. Lockett v. Trammell,
711
F.3d 1218, 1231 (10th Cir. 2013). “The starting point for cases subject to § 2254(d)(1) is
to identify the clearly established Federal law . . . that governs the habeas petitioner’s
claims.” Marshall v. Rodgers,
569 U.S. 58, 61 (2013) (quotations omitted).
The majority argues that Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler fail to clearly establish
that a process-based prejudice standard applies to ineffective assistance claims arising out
of capital jury sentencing waivers. Only by ignoring the clear language of these cases, of
Strickland and of Ring, could my colleagues hope to support such a conclusion. As I
proceed to elaborate, Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler leave no doubt a prejudice standard
which focuses on process leading to waiver of the right in question applies to Honie’s
claim. I then show why, contrary to the view of my respected colleagues, such a standard
was “clearly established” at the time of the Utah Supreme Court’s decision.
§ 2254(d)(1). Because that court failed to apply the correct prejudice standard to Honie’s
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claim, its decision was “contrary to” governing Supreme Court caselaw and not entitled
to AEDPA deference. Id.
A
Strickland provides the starting point for our analysis. That case established the
two-pronged standard for ineffective assistance claims. It requires a defendant to show
both (1) that counsel performed deficiently and (2) that the deficient performance
prejudiced the defendant. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688, 694. Because the petitioner in
Strickland challenged the actions of his attorney at his sentencing hearing, the Supreme
Court framed the prejudice inquiry as being whether, but for counsel’s errors, the
sentencing outcome would have been different.
Id. at 695. But the Court cautioned that
“the principles we have stated do not establish mechanical rules.”
Id. at 696. Indeed, it
specifically declined to adopt a prejudice standard that required a defendant to “show that
counsel’s deficient conduct more likely than not altered the outcome in the case.”
Id. at
693. Rather, the “ultimate focus of inquiry must be on the fundamental fairness of the
proceeding whose result is being challenged.”
Id. at 696 (emphasis added).
Thus, while the context of the petitioner’s claim in Strickland dictated that the
prejudice inquiry hinge on the outcome of his sentencing, the opinion made clear that the
nature of the prejudice inquiry will vary based on a claim’s context and the proceeding in
which the attorney’s relevant conduct occurred. See id. at 695 (“The governing legal
standard plays a critical role in defining the question to be asked in assessing the
prejudice from counsel’s errors.”). And the Supreme Court has repeatedly heeded this
command when faced with ineffective assistance claims involving the deprivation of a
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fundamental right which only a criminal defendant may choose to exercise. In each case,
the Court has focused the prejudice inquiry not on the ultimate trial or sentencing
outcome, but rather on the process leading to the loss of the right in question.
Nothing can be more fundamental to process than the right to trial by jury, which
extends to the right to be sentenced by a jury in capital cases. Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S.
584, 609 (2002). In Hill, the Supreme Court applied Strickland to a claim that counsel’s
deficient performance caused the defendant to accept a plea bargain he otherwise would
have rejected. Hill,
474 U.S. at 55-56. In analyzing prejudice, the Court did not ask
whether, but for counsel’s errors, the substantive result of the trial or sentencing would
have been different. Nor could it, because accepting the plea caused the defendant to
forego these proceedings altogether. Rather, the Court asked “whether counsel’s
constitutionally ineffective performance affected the outcome of the plea process.”
Id. at
59 (emphasis added). It focused, in other words, on the process that led to the waiver of
the defendant’s right to a voluntary, knowing, and intelligent plea. Accordingly, the
petitioner in Hill could demonstrate prejudice if “but for counsel’s errors, he would not
have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial.”
Id.
Flores-Ortega subsequently clarified that the prejudice standard in Hill applied
beyond the plea-bargaining context. That case involved the waiver of a right to direct
appeal due to counsel’s failure to file the appropriate notice. Flores-Ortega, 528 U.S. at
474. Recognizing that it would be “unfair to require a[] . . . defendant to demonstrate that
his hypothetical appeal might have had merit,” the Court held that, to show prejudice, the
petitioner need only establish a reasonable probability that “but for counsel’s deficient
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conduct, he would have appealed.” Id. at 486. Crucially, the Court emphasized that “this
prejudice standard breaks no new ground, for it mirrors the prejudice inquiry applied in
Hill.”
Id. at 485. This was so, because “the decision whether to appeal, [like] the
decision whether to plead guilty (i.e., waive trial) rested with the defendant,” and
counsel’s actions “might have caused the defendant to forfeit a judicial proceeding to
which he was otherwise entitled.”
Id.
Finally, in Lafler, the Supreme Court applied this proceeding-focused prejudice
approach when a defendant forfeited a fundamental right prior to trial, but thereafter
received a fair adjudication. The petitioner in that case claimed ineffective assistance
when his counsel erroneously advised him against accepting a guilty plea he should have
taken. See Lafler, 566 U.S. at 163-64. The Court explicitly rejected the argument that a
fair adjudication “wipe[d] clean any deficient performance” prior to trial.
Id. at 169-70.
Rather, it held that the petitioner could establish prejudice by showing that, but for
counsel’s unreasonable errors, the guilty plea would have been presented to and accepted
by the court.
Id. at 164. As in Hill and Flores-Ortega, the focus of the Court’s prejudice
inquiry was “the fairness and regularity of the processes” surrounding trial “which caused
the defendant to lose benefits he would have received in the ordinary course but for
counsel’s ineffective assistance.”
Id. at 169.
Lafler “made explicit the principle underlying [the Supreme Court’s] decisions in
Hill and Flores-Ortega.” Vickers v. Superintendent Graterford SCI, 858 F.3d 841, 856
(3d Cir. 2017) (applying Hill’s prejudice standard to the waiver of the right to a jury
trial). That principle requires that when a defendant claims ineffective assistance arising
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out of the waiver of a fundamental right that only the defendant can personally waive, the
proper prejudice inquiry is whether the defendant can demonstrate a reasonable
probability that, but for counsel’s ineffectiveness, they would have opted to exercise that
right. See Vickers, 858 F.3d at 857. Moreover, this rule is merely a specific application
of Strickland itself, which emphasized that the focus of the prejudice inquiry must be on
the “fundamental fairness of the [challenged] proceeding,” Strickland,
466 U.S. at 697,
including, in Honie’s case, a pre-trial process which results in the waiver of a jury right.
In all important respects, Honie’s claim is closely analogous to those at issue in
Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler. Like decisions to accept a plea or file a direct appeal, the
choice of whether to waive a capital jury sentencing is structural and fundamental—only
the defendant can make it. See Jones, 463 U.S. at 751; see also State v. Maestas,
299
P.3d 892, 959 (Utah 2012) (recognizing in a capital case that the defendant “has the right
to make . . . fundamental decision[s] that go[] to the very heart of the defense”). And as
in Hill and its progeny, Honie could not plausibly establish prejudice under Strickland by
asking solely whether the attorney’s errors altered the court’s determination of guilt or
the punishment imposed at sentencing. Asking Honie to offer evidence of how a
hypothetical jury would have sentenced him makes no more sense than requiring the
petitioner in Flores-Ortega to “demonstrate that his hypothetical appeal might have had
merit.” Flores-Ortega,
528 U.S. at 486. Nor, as Lafler instructs, can the fairness of
Honie’s ultimate sentencing hearing cure the deprivation of his right to have twelve
peers—rather than a judge—decide whether he should be condemned to death. The focus
of the prejudice inquiry must be on the process surrounding his jury waiver, which
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caused Honie “to lose benefits he would have received in the ordinary course but for
counsel’s ineffective assistance.” Lafler, 566 U.S. at 169. To require Honie to speculate
about a hypothetical jury’s sentence, as the state court did in this case, not only defies
logic and relegates the deprivation of a fundamental right to a categorical harmless
error—it outright ignores the clear collective command of the Supreme Court’s
ineffective assistance caselaw.
The Third Circuit’s reasoning in Vickers—the only circuit opinion to consider in-
depth the application of Hill to jury waivers following Lafler—is instructive. In Vickers,
trial counsel improperly failed to ensure that the petitioner, who was convicted following
a bench trial, knowingly waived his right to a jury trial. See Vickers, 858 F.3d at 850-52.
The Third Circuit determined that, after Lafler, there was “no longer any ambiguity” that
Hill’s prejudice standard applies to ineffective assistance claims arising out of jury trial
waivers—even if the defendant’s adjudication in front of a judge is ultimately fair.
Id. at
857. The court emphasized it was not extending or creating law, but merely “align[ing its
prejudice test] with the Supreme Court’s [] decision in Lafler.”
Id. at 857 n.15. While
the Third Circuit was not constrained by AEDPA in its analysis,
id. at 849,4 we have said
that we may “consult the precedent of lower courts . . . to ascertain the contours of clearly
established Supreme Court precedent.” Littlejohn v. Trammell,
704 F.3d 817, 828 n.3
(10th Cir. 2013). Thus, Vickers’ reasoning—and its conclusion that it merely aligned its
4
Prior to analyzing the merits, the Third Circuit determined that the state court
had failed to apply Strickland altogether in evaluating the petitioner’s claim, resulting in a
decision that was contrary to clearly established law. See Vickers, 858 F.3d at 849.
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prejudice test with the Supreme Court’s—is persuasive in our determination of the scope
of clearly established law at the time of Honie’s claim.5
B
My colleagues acknowledge that Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler have applied
Strickland’s prejudice requirement to the procedural contexts in which they arose—guilty
pleas, notices of appeal, and plea offers. But the majority nonetheless concludes that,
under AEDPA, these cases fail to provide clearly established law applicable to ineffective
assistance claims involving waivers of a right to capital jury sentencing. I not only
disagree, I consider such a determination both unreasonable and unfair.
We have said that clearly established law under AEDPA is limited to “Supreme
Court holdings in cases where the facts are at least closely-related or similar to the case
sub judice.” House v. Hatch, 527 F.3d 1010, 1016 (10th Cir. 2008). Utah and my
colleagues take this to mean that AEDPA requires us to ignore the essential reasoning of
Hill and its progeny, cabining our analysis to rote recitations of these cases’ narrow
holdings. Thus, the majority states that “[u]ntil the [Supreme] Court issues a holding
extending [Hill] process-based prejudice to jury-sentencing waivers, we can’t say that
5
The majority brushes aside Vickers by noting that it “didn’t involve AEDPA
review so [it] isn’t on point here. Nonetheless, a case that isn’t on point can serve as an
illustrative persuasive authority. See Clark v. Murphy, 331 F.3d 1062, 1069 (9th Cir.
2003), overruled on other grounds by Lockyer v. Andrade,
538 U.S. 63 (2003) (“circuit
law may be ‘persuasive authority’ [in AEDPA cases] for purposes of determining
whether a state court decision is an unreasonable application of Supreme Court law” even
though “only the Supreme Court’s holdings are binding on the state courts”); see also
Littlejohn,
704 F.3d at 828 n.3.
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Utah’s appl[ication of] Strickland’s substantive-outcome prejudice standard was contrary
to or an unreasonable application of the Supreme Court’s assistance-of-counsel cases.”
Again, I respectfully disagree and consider that language unreasonable, unfaithful to clear
Supreme Court jurisprudence, and unfair.
Respectfully, I believe the majority oversimplifies AEDPA’s clearly established
inquiry in this case. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that a holding based
on “identical facts” is not required to find clearly established law. Marshall, 569 U.S. at
62; Panetti v. Quarterman,
551 U.S. 930, 953 (2007); see also Carey v. Musladin,
549
U.S. 70, 81 (2006) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (“AEDPA does not require state and federal
courts to wait for some nearly identical factual pattern before a legal rule must be
applied.”). Rather, a “general standard” set forth by the Court can supply clearly
established law to a variety of factual scenarios. Marshall,
569 U.S. at 62. Strickland is
the paramount example of this. See Murphy v. Royal,
875 F.3d 896, 922 (10th Cir. 2017)
(“Although claims of lawyer ineffectiveness are each unique and require fact-intensive
analysis, Strickland’s framework still applies, and the variety of fact patterns obviates
neither the clarity of the rule nor the extent to which the rule must be seen as established
by [the Supreme] Court.” (internal quotations omitted)). Our circuit has recognized the
difficult judgments inherent in AEDPA’s clearly established law analysis. In House, for
example, we cautioned against “mechanistically seek[ing] to determine whether there are
Supreme Court holdings that involve facts that are indistinguishable from the case at
issue.” House,
527 F.3d at 1015 n.5. Instead, judges must “exercise a refined judgment
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and determine the actual materiality of the lines (or points) of distinction between
existing Supreme Court cases and the particular case at issue.” Id.
Relatedly, the Supreme Court has distinguished between extending clearly
established law to new contexts absent a Supreme Court holding—which AEDPA
forbids—and applying a clearly established rule to fact patterns it already encompasses.
See Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 666 (2004). “The difference between
applying a rule and extending it is not always clear, but certain principles are
fundamental enough that when new factual permutations arise, the necessity to apply the
earlier rule will be beyond doubt.” White v. Woodall,
572 U.S. 415, 427 (2014) (cleaned
up). The Supreme Court has thus recognized that a standard can be clearly established
even if it has not been previously applied to the specific claim at issue. Williams v.
Taylor,
529 U.S. 362, 390-91 (2000); Yarborough,
541 U.S. at 666. For present purposes
there can be no distinction among the right to a jury trial for sentencing, and the right to a
jury trial on guilt itself. Honie asks us to apply an existing legal rule, employed
consistently across a specific type of ineffective assistance case (those involving the
waiver of fundamental trial rights), to a claim substantially analogous to those the
Supreme Court has considered previously. See Ring,
536 U.S. at 609.
The majority pays lip service to the Supreme Court’s command that clearly
established law does not require a case consisting of “identical facts.” Marshall, 569 U.S.
at 62. But my colleagues all but demand as much by holding that the Supreme Court
must address a claim identical to Honie’s before it finds Hill’s rule clearly established as
to jury sentencing waivers. Nor does the majority consider the consequences of its
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mechanical approach to ineffective assistance claims under AEDPA. Imagine a
defendant unknowingly and unintelligently waived their right to a jury trial due to
counsel’s deficient performance. See Vickers, 858 F.3d at 845 (presenting such a
scenario). Under the majority’s rationale, a state court could deny postconviction relief
unless the petitioner could make the utterly impossible showing that a hypothetical jury
would have found them innocent. This illogical result—which renders the deprivation of
a constitutional right as harmless error—contravenes Strickland and is exactly what Hill
and its progeny avoided by clarifying the prejudice standard for ineffective assistance
claims involving the waiver of fundamental rights belonging to a criminal defendant.
Of course, we have never required the Supreme Court to apply Strickland to a
specific ineffective assistance theory before finding its two-part test clearly established as
to a claim based on that theory. Williams, 529 U.S. at 390-91; Murphy,
875 F.3d at 922.
Rather, it is “past question” that Strickland provides clearly established law for all
ineffective assistance claims—even those based on theories of attorney error not
previously considered by the Supreme Court. Williams,
529 U.S. at 390. Hill is itself an
application of Strickland. And the Supreme Court has made clear that Hill’s rule was
never limited purely to the plea-bargaining context. This is why the Court in Flores-
Ortega emphasized that its application of Hill’s prejudice standard to a waiver of the right
to direct appeal “[broke] no new ground.” Flores-Ortega,
528 U.S. at 485. Rather, Hill’s
rule applies to scenarios involving a trial decision that “rest[s] with the defendant,” and
where counsel’s actions lead to the waiver of trial rights “to which [the defendant] was
otherwise entitled.”
Id. In other words, it applies to a claim like Honie’s.
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In short, the Supreme Court has clearly established a rule that squarely answers
“the specific question presented by this case.” Woods v. Donald, 575 U.S. 312, 317
(2015) (quotation omitted). Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler together make clear that when
counsel’s errors cause the waiver of a fundamental right which can be waived only by a
criminal defendant personally, the appropriate prejudice standard is whether, but-for
counsel’s errors, the defendant would have exercised the right in question. As explained
more below, there is no doubt that the choice Honie faced in this case—whether a jury or
judge should decide if he ought to be condemned to die—implicated a fundamental right
that, once vested, only the defendant could choose to exercise. See Jones,
463 U.S. at
751. Honie merely asked the Utah Supreme Court to apply the rule clarified by Hill and
its progeny, and rooted in Strickland, to a set of facts clearly within its ambit. The court’s
failure to do so was “contrary to . . . clearly established Federal law.” § 2254(d)(1).
C
Because Hill’s prejudice standard provides clearly established law as to Honie’s
claim, I am compelled to conclude that the Utah court’s opinion was “contrary to”
Supreme Court precedent and therefore not entitled to AEDPA deference.6 As described
6
Unlike my colleagues, I believe the state court’s failure to analyze trial counsel’s
pre-waiver conduct under Strickland was contrary to clearly established law and not
entitled to AEDPA deference. The state court concluded that because Honie’s waiver
was “knowing and voluntary,” his attorney’s performance prior to the waiver’s signing
was not deficient under Strickland. See Honie, 342 P.3d at 201. In Lafler, however, the
Supreme Court held that merely asking whether the rejection of a plea was knowing and
voluntary “is not the correct means by which to address a claim of ineffective assistance
of counsel.” Lafler,
566 U.S. at 173 (citing Hill,
474 U.S. at 57). The state court’s
failure in that case to analyze trial counsel’s conduct under Strickland was therefore
contrary to clearly established law, and its opinion was not entitled to AEDPA deference.
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above, a state court decision is “contrary to . . . clearly established Federal law” when it
applies a rule that contradicts the Supreme Court’s governing caselaw. Lockett, 711 F.3d
at 1231; see also Trammell v. McKune,
485 F.3d 546, 550 (10th Cir. 2007) (“AEDPA’s
deferential standard does not apply if the state court employed the wrong legal standard
in deciding the merits of the federal issue.” (quotation omitted)).
My colleagues and I agree that Honie fairly presented to the Utah Supreme Court
his argument that Hill’s prejudice standard should apply to his ineffective assistance
claim. That court nonetheless rejected Honie’s claim because he failed to offer “evidence
tending to establish that the outcome of his sentencing would have been different” with a
jury. Honie, 342 P.3d at 201 (emphasis added). As I explain above, Hill and its progeny
clearly establish that the correct prejudice standard in this case—and the one the Utah
court was bound to apply—required asking whether, but for his attorney’s unreasonable
conduct, Honie would have exercised his right to a capital jury sentencing. In fact, he did
so. He told his attorney he insisted on being sentenced by a jury and asked his attorney to
take the necessary steps to bring the matter to the trial judge’s attention and withdraw his
waiver. His attorney refused to do so. This is ineffective assistance of counsel. Because
the state court applied the wrong legal standard, AEDPA does not bar our ability to grant
habeas relief in this case.
Id.; see also Vickers,
858 F.3d at 849 (holding that a state court violated Strickland and
Lafler by summarily concluding that the defendant’s jury trial waiver was “knowing and
voluntary”). The same result should apply here.
Ultimately, however, I need not reach this issue. Rather, I conclude that the state
court’s prejudice analysis was contrary to clearly established law and, further, that Honie
is entitled to relief based on his attorney’s failure to seek withdrawal of his jury waiver.
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III
Having concluded that the Utah Supreme Court’s decision was not entitled to
AEDPA deference, I would proceed to the final step of the habeas inquiry: de novo
review of Honie’s federal claim to determine whether relief is warranted. See Panetti,
551 U.S. at 953-54. Because this review is de novo, the habeas court “can determine the
principles necessary to grant relief.” Lafler,
566 U.S. at 173. For the reasons described
above, I would hold the appropriate legal standard Honie must satisfy to demonstrate
ineffective assistance of counsel is Hill’s two-part test. That test requires Honie to show
that (1) his attorney performed deficiently and (2) a reasonable probability exists that, but
for his attorney’s ineffective assistance, Honie would have exercised the fundamental
right in question. See Hill,
474 U.S. at 58-59. I consider these requirements in turn,
determining that Honie is indeed entitled to habeas relief based on his trial attorney’s
failure to petition the court to withdraw his jury sentencing waiver.
A
To assess deficient performance under Strickland, we consider whether counsel’s
performance “fell below an objective standard of reasonableness” under “prevailing
professional norms.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688. This inquiry requires us to analyze
“the facts of the particular case, viewed as of the time of counsel’s conduct.”
Id. at 690.
Honie satisfies this standard because, given the importance of the capital sentencing right
and the timing and circumstances of his withdrawal request, his attorney was obligated to
petition the court to withdraw his jury sentencing waiver.
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Longstanding professional rules and norms require defense counsel to allow
clients to make certain fundamental decisions regarding their defense. See Criminal
Justice Standards § 4-5.2 (Am. Bar Ass’n 1993, 3d ed.); accord Jones, 463 U.S. at 751.
At the time of Honie’s trial, those decisions reserved to the defendant included whether to
waive a jury trial. See Criminal Justice Standards § 4-5.2(a)(iii); 7 see also Utah Rules of
Pro. Conduct 1.2(a) (1999) (“[A] lawyer shall abide by the client’s decision . . . to waive
jury trial . . . .”). And the Supreme Court has emphasized that capital sentencing
proceedings resemble a trial and require commensurate substantive and procedural
protections. See Strickland,
466 U.S. at 686 (calling capital sentencing proceedings
“sufficiently like a trial”); Bullington v. Missouri,
451 U.S. 430, 445-46 (1981)
(extending the double jeopardy clause to capital sentencing determinations). Take
Honie’s case. Utah law required that his sentencer weigh aggravating and mitigating
evidence and determine whether the death penalty was justified beyond a reasonable
doubt.
Utah Code Ann. § 76-3-207(4)(b)-(d) (1998). Honie’s choice of a sentencer was
therefore just as fundamental as the choice of a factfinder at trial. In fact, the choice of
the sentencing forum was arguably more important, given that Honie conceded his guilt
at trial. For Honie, the sentencing was the whole ballgame. Clearly his lawyer thought
Honie’s best chance at saving his life was before the judge. At first, Honie agreed. But
7
The ABA’s standards have been updated to include among those fundamental
decisions reserved to the defendant “any . . . decision that has been determined in the
jurisdiction to belong to the client.” Criminal Justice Standards § 4-5.2(b)(ix) (Am. Bar
Ass’n 2017, 4th ed.). This would include, in Honie’s case, Utah’s law reserving to
capital defendants the decision of whether to waive jury sentencing.
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well before trial, he changed his mind. Honie unequivocally and unimpeachably asked
that his hearing be held before a jury. In declining to make this request to the court,
counsel arrogated unto himself the ultimate decision. It was not his decision to make.
Professional rules required counsel to carry out Honie’s wishes regarding his desired
sentencer. Counsel’s obligation is not altered by the above fact that Honie had previously
signed a waiver of his capital jury sentencing right. See Garza v. Idaho, 139 S. Ct. 738,
746 (2019) (holding that counsel performs deficiently by not complying with a
defendant’s request to file a notice of appeal, even when a defendant has waived
appellate rights as an express condition of a plea agreement).
The record contradicts counsel’s explanation to Honie that it was “too late” to
withdraw his jury sentencing waiver. See Criminal Justice Standard 4.5-1(a) (requiring
that defense counsel “advise the accused with complete candor”). Nothing before us
contradicts Honie’s declaration that he requested withdrawal of the waiver a week before
jury selection and nearly two weeks before trial was to begin. A prompt request would
have allowed the trial court to honor Honie’s wishes without causing undue delay. See
United States v. Mortensen, 860 F.2d 948, 950 (9th Cir. 1988) (withdrawal of a jury trial
waiver “is timely [if] granting the motion would not unduly interfere with or delay the
proceedings.”); Zemunski v. Kenney,
984 F.2d 953, 954 (8th Cir. 1993) (same). It well
could have been inconvenient to do so. But inconvenience is not the appropriate measure
to balance against a defendant’s life. In addition, the judge and prosecutor repeatedly
stated their intent to defer to Honie’s choice of sentencer. At the pre-trial hearing where
Honie signed his waiver, the prosecutor emphasized that his intent “in a case of this
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magnitude is to give the defendant the benefit of the doubt on every request,” and that
“the only reason the state has consented and stipulated and agreed to [waiving jury
sentencing] is because it is this defendant’s choice and desire.” The judge responded that
Honie’s wishes were “partly why I am going in this direction too,” and added “[i]t’s the
state’s case and your case. But it’s your life that’s on the line, if you are convicted . . . .”
Given these facts, counsel’s stated reasoning for not petitioning the court was unfounded,
at best.
Taking the above into account, the refusal by Honie’s attorney to seek withdrawal
of his jury sentencing waiver, despite Honie’s express request, clearly “fell below an
objective standard of reasonableness.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688. Honie therefore has
shown deficient performance under Strickland and Hill.
B
Turning to the prejudice inquiry under Hill, we ask whether the petitioner has
shown a reasonable probability that “counsel’s constitutionally ineffective performance
affected the outcome of the . . . process” which resulted in the waiver of a fundamental
right. Hill, 474 U.S. at 59. In other words, has Honie demonstrated a reasonable
probability that, but for his counsel’s deficient performance, he would have exercised his
right to capital sentencing by a jury? Given that Honie claims his attorney’s inaction
deprived him of a jury right he previously waived,8 Honie must show a reasonable
8
I assume for the sake of argument in this section that Honie’s jury sentencing
waiver was in fact voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. See Adams v. U.S. ex rel.
McCann, 317 U.S. 269, 276-77 (1942) (stating such a requirement for jury trial waivers).
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probability that (1) he would have petitioned to withdraw the waiver, and (2) the court
would have assented. See Lafler, 566 U.S. at 163-64 (requiring the petitioner show that,
but for counsel’s ineffectiveness, his erroneously rejected plea would have been
presented to and accepted by the court). Honie has met this burden.
In assessing a claim of prejudice under Hill, we consider “all of the factual
circumstances” to determine whether a criminal defendant would have in fact chosen to
exercise a fundamental right but for counsel’s errors. Heard v. Addison, 728 F.3d 1170,
1183 (10th Cir. 2013) (quotation omitted). This includes, as an initial matter, asking
whether the exercise of that right was objectively “rational under the circumstances.”
Id.
at 1184 (quoting Padilla v. Kentucky,
599 U.S. 356, 372 (2010)). A “mere allegation”
that a defendant would have exercised a fundamental right is insufficient to show
prejudice under Hill. Miller v. Champion,
262 F.3d 1066, 1072 (10th Cir. 2001).
However, a court will not “blind [itself] to the individual defendant’s statements and
conduct” if the exercise of that right would have been objectively rational. Heard,
728
F.3d at 1184.
At the post-conviction stage, the federal district court determined that Honie could
not show a reasonable probability under Hill that he would have withdrawn his waiver.
See Honie v. Crowther, 2019 WL 2450930, at *19 (D. Utah June 12, 2019). In doing so,
the court effectively concluded it would be irrational for Honie to seek withdrawal of his
waiver because his waiver was knowing and intelligent—meaning he had a sufficient
understanding of the difference between judge and jury sentencing. I cannot agree.
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As an initial matter, and as the district court noted, the fact that a waiver of a right
is knowing and intelligent does not imply that a defendant knows every detail about that
right. See Honie, at *16 (citing United States v. Ruis, 536 U.S. 622, 629-30 (2002)). A
waiver of a constitutional right may “satisf[y] the constitutional minimum” even if a
defendant “lack[s] a full and complete appreciation of all of the consequences flowing
from [a] waiver.” Patterson v. Illinois,
487 U.S. 285, 294 (1988) (quotation omitted).
Even if Honie’s initial waiver of his jury sentencing right was knowing and intelligent,
this does not render irrational his decision to seek to withdrawal based on an enhanced
understanding of this right.
Moreover, Honie’s briefing and the record offer credible reasons to believe he did
not understand all aspects of his jury sentencing right at the time it was waived. Honie
claims he did not know that he would have an opportunity to participate in selecting the
jury, that the jury’s role at sentencing would be to weigh aggravating and mitigating
factors, or that the state would need to convince all twelve jurors beyond a reasonable
doubt that the totality of the aggravating factors justified imposing the death penalty.
These assertions are not contradicted by Honie’s waiver or his in-court colloquy. If
anything, confusion about the burden of proof was likely exacerbated by the trial judge’s
statement implying that it would be the defense’s task to “convince” jurors that the death
penalty was not warranted.9 But Utah law places the burden on the prosecution to
9
Specifically, the trial judge stated during Honie’s colloquy:
“[D]o you understand that to not receive the death penalty you would have
to have—I don’t know quite how to put this in layman’s terms and still be
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“persuad[e] the sentencer beyond a reasonable doubt” that the death penalty is justified.
State v. Lafferty, 749 P.2d 1239, 1260 (Utah 1988). In short, it is hardly a stretch that,
after speaking with a jailhouse lawyer, Honie gained a better understanding of the
advantages of jury sentencing. I therefore conclude that Honie’s decision to withdraw his
waiver was rational. See Heard,
728 F.3d at 1184. Having surpassed this “objective
floor,” Honie’s sworn affidavit establishes a reasonable probability that he would have
sought withdrawal of the waiver but for counsel’s unreasonable refusal to do so.
Id.
Finally, had Honie’s counsel petitioned the court for withdrawal of the waiver, the
record indicates a reasonable probability that the trial court would have granted the
request. As noted above, both the prosecutor and the judge had expressed a desire to
defer to Honie’s choice of sentencer, see supra at 20-21, and Honie’s request would have
been timely.
I would hold, therefore, that Honie has shown a reasonable likelihood that, but for
his attorney’s ineffectiveness, (1) the request to withdraw the waiver would have been
filed, and (2) the court would have granted the request. As stated above, the Utah
Supreme Court assumed as true Honie’s claim that he asked counsel to withdraw his
accurate legally—but with a judge, there is just one person you would have
to convince. There is reasonable doubt with 12 jurors, you got 12 chances to
convince somebody there is a reasonable doubt there.” (Emphasis added.)
By contrast, Honie’s affidavit stated that a jailhouse lawyer informed him
that he only needed one juror to “hold out” to avoid the death penalty. This is
consistent with the notion that, after the waiver, Honie gained a better
understanding of the benefits of jury sentencing—including that it would be the
state’s burden to convince all twelve jurors that the death penalty was justified.
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waiver, and in utilizing what essentially amounts to harmless error review, the Utah
Supreme Court implicitly assumed grant of the motion to withdraw the waiver. Because
Honie was denied his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, he is
entitled to habeas relief. In this case, the proper remedy is to remand for a new state
capital sentencing proceeding by a jury. See United States v. Morrison, 449 U.S. 361,
364 (1981) (stating that Sixth Amendment remedies should be “tailored to the injury
suffered from the constitutional violation”); see also Ring,
536 U.S. at 609 (determining
right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment was violated and “remand[ing]
for further proceedings”).
IV
By ignoring Hill, Flores-Ortega, and Lafler, the Utah Supreme Court’s decision
defied governing Supreme Court caselaw and forced upon Honie an impossible, purely
outcome-based prejudice standard incompatible with precedent and logic alike. Hill and
its progeny clearly establish that when an attorney’s deficient performance deprives a
criminal defendant of a fundamental right that only the defendant personally can waive,
the proper prejudice standard is whether, but for the attorney’s errors, the defendant
would have exercised that right. The right that Utah reserved to Honie in this case—to
choose the forum which will decide whether he should be sentenced to death—was
undoubtedly fundamental. Therefore, the Utah court’s failure to apply the prejudice
standard clarified by Hill and its progeny was “contrary to . . . clearly established Federal
law,” § 2254(d)(1), and AEDPA does not preclude our ability to grant relief.
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On de novo review, I would hold that Honie has established a reasonable
probability that, but for his attorney’s deficient performance in failing to withdraw his
waiver, he would have exercised his statutory right to have a jury decide his capital
sentence. I would therefore reverse the district court, grant a writ of habeas corpus, and
remand for a new sentencing proceeding in state court before a jury of his peers.
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