Lambert v. Stegall

Filing 88

ORDER denying 71 Amended Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus filed by Andrew Lambert and denying Certificate of Appealability. Signed by District Judge Arthur J. Tarnow. (MLan)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
ANDREW LAMBERT,
Petitioner,

Case No. 2:00-cv-72099
Hon. Arthur J. Tarnow

v.
CONNIE HORTON,
Respondent.
___________________________________/
OPINION AND ORDER (1) DENYING PETITION FOR WRIT OF
HABEAS CORPUS, AND (2) DENYING CERTIFICATE OF
APPEALABILITY
On May 9, 1995, when Andrew Lambert (“Petitioner”) was eighteen years
old, he shot to death  Kelvin Murphy and injured another man. In 1996, a Detroit
Recorder’s Court jury found Petitioner guilty of first-degree murder, assault with
intent to murder, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. The
trial court, as it was required to do by Michigan law, sentenced Lambert to life
imprisonment without the possibility of parole for his murder conviction.
After direct appeal in the state courts, Petitioner’s first federal habeas petition
was denied by this Court in 2001. See ECF No. 39.
In 2012, the Supreme Court found that Eighth Amendment forbids sentencing
a child to a non-parolable life term of imprisonment. See Miller v. Alabama, 567

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U.S. 460 (2012). In 2016, the Supreme Court held that Miller was retroactively
applicable to cases on collateral review. Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718,
734 (2016).
Montgomery having opened the door to a new round of collateral review,
Petitioner unsuccessfully sought relief in the state courts. In 2018, he filed for
permission in the Sixth Circuit to file this successive petition for writ of habeas
corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2)(A). Petitioner asserted that his mandatory life
sentence for first-degree murder is subject to Eighth Amendment review though he
was chronologically an eighteen-year-old adult when he committed the crime
because modern medical science tells us that a youth of eighteen years of age may
nevertheless possess the developmental maturity of a child. The Sixth Circuit issued
an order determining that Petitioner made a prima facie showing of an Eighth
Amendment violation warranting authorization to file his successive habeas petition.
In re Lambert, 18-1726 (6th Cir. September 5, 2018).
For the reasons that follow, the Court finds that Petitioner has failed to
demonstrate entitlement to review of his Eighth Amendment claim. The Court will
also deny Petitioner a certificate of appealability.
I. Background
Briefly, Anthony Sutton testified at Petitioner’s 1996 jury trial that Petitioner,
whom he knew, came over to his residence on the date of the shooting. Kelvin
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Murphy and Michael James were asleep on couches in the living room. Sutton
briefly left the room, and a few second later he heard gunshots. Sutton returned to
the living room and saw Murphy sprawled on the floor and James lying on a couch
with blood coming from his forehead. Sutton called 9-1-1.
Police officers soon thereafter arrested Petitioner at his home. Officer Frazer
Adams testified that he questioned Petitioner, and Petitioner admitted shooting
Murphy and James. Petitioner explained to Adams that he went to the residence to
collect a debt of $2,000 owed to him by Murphy. Petitioner said that when he asked
for the money, Murphy reached his hand under a sofa cushion. Petitioner feared
Murphy was reaching for a gun, so he fired all of the bullets in his gun at Murphy
and James. The jury rejected the self-defense claim and found Petitioner guilty of
the offenses indicated above.
At sentencing, without considering the individual circumstances of the crime
or Petitioner’s age, maturity, or background, the court imposed the non-discretionary
life sentence for the first-degree murder conviction as mandated by Michigan law.
See ECF No. 83-13, at 9.
Petitioner’s counsel sets forth a summary of Petitioner’s personal history that
might have been considered by the trial court had it possessed discretion to
individualize Petitioner’s first-degree murder sentence. See ECF No. 82, at 7-10. In
brief summary, the circumstances of Petitioner’s childhood were tragically typical.
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He was one of nine children. His father was a heroin addict. Petitioner was regularly
beaten by his parents with an extension cord and belt. As a child, Petitioner
committed a series of petty juvenile offenses, and at fourteen he joined a
neighborhood gang to avoid being jumped. Shortly thereafter, Petitioner dropped out
of high school and was kicked out of his home. He turned eighteen on August 13,
1994, and he had a firearm charge pending when he committed the instant offense.
In contrast, Petitioner is now a 43-year-old man. Despite his non-parolable
life sentence, Petitioner obtained a GED in prison. He has completed vocational and
business education programs. He has engaged in self-improvement classes,
including acting as a co-facilitator, and he has participated in the Inside/Out Prison
Exchange program. Since the time of his incarceration one of his brothers was shot
and killed. Petitioner has served as a tutor, barber, and minister to other inmates. He
participates in the American Friends Service Committee’s Good Neighbor Project,
an organization that pairs inmates with a high school student in a co-mentoring
relationship. Finally, in October of 2016, as part of the Michigan Parole Board’s lifer
review (and despite the fact that they will never have the authority to grant him
parole), a COMPAS risk assessment nevertheless determined that Petitioner
presented a low risk of reoffending on both the general and violent recidivism scales.
See ECF No. 82, at 10.

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II. Discussion
In Pepper v. United States, 562 U.S. 476 (2011), the Supreme Court observed:
“It has been uniform and constant in the federal judicial tradition
for the sentencing judge to consider every convicted person as an
individual and every case as a unique study in the human failings that
sometimes mitigate, sometimes magnify, the crime and the punishment
to ensue.” Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 113 (1996). Underlying
this tradition is the principle that “the punishment should fit the
offender and not merely the crime.” Williams, 337 U.S. at 247; see also
Pennsylvania ex rel. Sullivan v. Ashe, 302 U.S. 51, 55 (1937) (“For the
determination of sentences, justice generally requires consideration of
more than the particular acts by which the crime was committed and
that there be taken into account the circumstances of the offense
together with the character and propensities of the offender”).
562 U.S. at 487-88.
Despite this tradition, Petitioner was sentenced to die in prison by the brute
fact that he committed the crime of first-degree murder. As a result of the sentencing
scheme it created, the Michigan Legislature prevented the state sentencing court
from exercising any discretion in determining the length of Petitioner’s first-degree
murder sentence. Similarly, as a result of AEDPA, Congress has prevented this
Court from determining whether a mandatory life sentence is cruel and unusual in
violation of the Eighth Amendment where it might be the case that Petitioner
possessed the psychological maturity of a child at the time of his crime. These two
overlapping legislative schemes have therefore prevented any judicial body from
ever addressing the appropriateness of Petitioner’s sentence despite the fact it rested
on outdated notions about adulthood.
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As Judge Stranch observed in a recent opinion:
In a series of cases starting with Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551
(2005), the Supreme Court made clear that children are different from
adults for purposes of the Eighth Amendment. First, in Roper, the Court
held that the Eighth Amendment’s “evolving standards of decency”
prohibit the imposition of death sentences on those who were under 18
at the time of their crimes. Id. at 561, 571. Next, in Graham v. Florida,
the Court concluded that juvenile offenders who commit non-homicide
offenses could not constitutionally be sentenced to life without parole.
560 U.S. 48, 74-75 (2010). Then, in Miller v. Alabama, the Court
determined that even juvenile homicide offenders could be sentenced
to life without parole only after an individualized sentencing hearing
and a finding that their crime was not the product of “unfortunate yet
transient immaturity.” 567 U.S. 460, 479-80 (2012). Finally, in
Montgomery v. Louisiana, the Court held that Miller was retroactively
applicable because it announced a new substantive rule—namely, “that
sentencing a child to life without parole is excessive for all but ‘the rare
juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.’” 136 S.
Ct. 718, 734 (2016) (quoting Miller, 567 U.S. at 479-80). Taken as a
whole, these cases stand for the principle that “[b]ecause juveniles have
diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform . . . , ‘they are
less deserving of the most severe punishments.’” Miller, 567 U.S. at
471 (quoting Graham, 560 U.S. at 68).
This line of cases relied on three findings about the “significant
gaps between juveniles and adults” that make children “constitutionally
different from adults for purposes of sentencing.” Id. “First, children
have a ‘lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility,’
leading to recklessness, impulsivity, and heedless risk-taking. Second,
children ‘are more vulnerable . . . to negative influences and outside
pressures’ . . . . And third, a child’s character is not as ‘well formed’ as
an adult’s . . . .” Id. (quoting Roper, 543 U.S. at 569-70). These
conclusions “rested not only on common sense . . . but on science and
social science as well.” Id.; see also id. at 472 n.5 (“The evidence
presented to us in [Miller] indicates that the science and social science
supporting Roper’s and Graham’s conclusions have become even
stronger.”).

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Recent research in neuroscience and developmental psychology
indicates that individuals between the ages of 18 and 21 share many of
these same characteristics. Since Roper was decided, scientists have
established that “biological and psychological development continues
into the early twenties.” Elizabeth S. Scott et al., Young Adulthood as
a Transitional Legal Category: Science, Social Change, and Justice
Policy, 85 Fordham L. Rev. 641, 642 (2016). Brain-imaging studies
“have shown continued regional development of the prefrontal cortex,
implicated in judgment and self-control[,] beyond the teen years and
into the twenties.” Alexandra O. Cohen et al., When Does a Juvenile
Become an Adult?, 88 Temp. L. Rev. 769, 783 & n.63 (2016)
(collecting articles). Researchers have found that in “negative
emotional situations,” such as conditions of threat, young adults
between the ages of 18 and 21 perform significantly worse than adults
in their mid-20s—and more like those under 18. Alexandra O. Cohen
et al., When Is an Adolescent an Adult? Assessing Cognitive Control
in Emotional and Nonemotional Contexts, 27 Psychol. Sci. 549, 55960 (2016). “It is also well established that young adults, like teenagers,
engage in risky behavior, such as . . . criminal activity, to a greater
extent than older adults.” Scott et al., supra, at 642. In short, empirical
research has found that “[a]lthough eighteen to twenty-one-year-olds
are in some ways similar to individuals in their midtwenties, in other
ways, young adults are more like adolescents in their behavior,
psychological functioning, and brain development.” Id. at 646.
Pike v. Gross, 936 F.3d 372, 384-385 (6th Cir. 2019) (Stranch J., concurring).
Here, as elsewhere, science has outpaced the law. AEDPA makes no
allowance for claims based on new scientific developments. The relevant section of
AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2), curtails the circumstances under which a
successive habeas petition may be considered, and scientific development (that is
more accurate knowledge about how the World works) is not one of them:
A claim presented in a second or successive habeas corpus application
under section 2254 that was not presented in a prior application shall
be dismissed unless-7 

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(A) the applicant shows that the claim relies on a new rule of
constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the
Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable; or
(B)(i) the factual predicate for the claim could not have been discovered
previously through the exercise of due diligence; and
(ii) the facts underlying the claim, if proven and viewed in light of the
evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear and
convincing evidence that, but for constitutional error, no reasonable
factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying
offense.
The Sixth Circuit’s order authorizing the instant petition was only a
determination that Petitioner made a prima facie showing that the application
satisfied the requirements of this section. See Ferrazza v. Tessmer, 36 F. Supp. 2d
965, 973 (E.D. Mich. 1999). “‘Prima facie’ in this context means simply sufficient
allegations of fact together with some documentation that would ‘warrant a fuller
exploration in the district court.’” In re Lott, 366 F.3d 431, 433 (6th Cir. 2004)
(internal quotation omitted). Such a “‘prima facie showing’ . . . is not a difficult
standard to meet.” Id. at 432.
The question whether Petitioner’s claim actually satisfies the standard for
consideration of his successive habeas petition must still be answered by this Court
under § 2244(b)(4), which requires the district court to dismiss any claim that does
not ‘satisf[y] the requirements of this section,’” despite the order of authorization
from the Court of Appeals. See Clark v. Nagy, 934 F.3d 483, 490-91 (6th Cir. 2019);
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In re McDonald, 514 F.3d 539, 543 (6th Cir. 2008); Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656,
661, n. 3 (2001).
Despite its intuitive force, Petitioner’s Eighth Amendment claim simply does
not satisfy the requirements of § 2244(b)(2). In Miller, supra, the case upon which
Petitioner rests his claim, the Supreme Court held that a mandatory sentence of life
imprisonment without parole for defendants who were under eighteen years old
when they committed their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment. The Miller Court
was concerned about “imposing a State’s harshest penalties” without considering the
mitigating factors of youth. Miller, 567 U.S. at 477.
The insurmountable problem for Petitioner is that by its own terms Miller
applies only to cases where the defendant was under the chronological age of
eighteen years old when the crime occurred, and Petitioner was eighteen at time of
his crime. Though Petitioner asserts that he did not have the maturity of an adult
when he committed the crime, “[u]nder the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence
concerning juveniles and the Eighth Amendment, the only type of ‘age’ that matters
is chronological age.” United States v. Marshall, 736 F.3d 492, 498 (6th Cir. 2013).
Although “[d]rawing the line at 18 years of age is subject . . . to the objections always
raised against categorical rules[,] . . . a line must be drawn. . . . The age of 18 is the
point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and
adulthood.” Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 574 (2005). Because Petitioner was
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eighteen years old when he committed the crimes, “he does not qualify for the Eighth
Amendment protections accorded to juveniles” under clearly established Supreme
Court law. Marshall, 736 F.3d at 500. Therefore, although Petitioner’s claim may
be strengthened by modern scientific developments, he cannot point to a new rule of
constitutional law made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme
Court to support his claim. Petitioner has therefore not satisfied the requirements of
§ 2244(b)(2) for filing a successive habeas petition.
The Court is therefore powerless to inquire whether despite his chronological
age Petitioner was developmentally a child when he committed his crime resulting
in his life sentence. Supreme Court law as it exists now does not allow a court to
look to an individual’s developmental age when determining whether a nonparolable life sentence was imposed on a child. Accordingly, Petitioner’s successive
petition for writ of habeas corpus is denied.
III. Certificate of Appealability
In order to appeal the Court’s decision, Petitioner must obtain a certificate of
appealability. 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2). The applicant is required to show that
reasonable jurists could debate whether the petition should have been resolved in a
different manner, or that the issues presented were adequate to deserve
encouragement to proceed further. Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 483-84 (2000).
A federal district court may grant or deny a certificate of appealability when the
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court issues a ruling on the habeas petition. Castro v. United States, 310 F.3d 900,
901 (6th Cir. 2002). Here, jurists of reason would not debate the Court’s conclusion
that Petitioner has failed to demonstrate entitlement to review of his successive
habeas petition under § 2244(b)(2).
The Court notes that since the time Petitioner was granted permission to file
his successive petition, the Sixth Circuit in a number of cases identical to Petitioner’s
has gone as far as denying authorization to file the successive petitions. See In re
McDonald, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 4850, *3 (6th Cir. Feb. 14, 2020) (denying
permission to file successive petition based on extension of Miller where petitioner
was over eighteen at time of crime); In re Brown, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS (6th Cir.
Dec. 26, 2019) (same); In re Maclin, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS (6th Cir. Oct. 30, 2019)
(same); In re Hurt, 2019 U.S. LEXIS 25507 (6th Cir. Aug. 23, 2019) (same); In re
Bryant, 2019 U.S. LEXIS 19018 (6th Cir. June 25, 2019) (same).
Therefore, a certificate of appealability is denied.
IV. Conclusion
Accordingly, the Court 1) DENIES WITH PREJUDICE the petition for a
writ of habeas corpus, and 2) DENIES a certificate of appealability.
SO ORDERED.
s/Arthur J. Tarnow
Hon. Arthur J. Tarnow
United States District Judge
Dated: October 22, 2021
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