Harris v. Cisneros

Background

Marvin Harris, a state prisoner, filed a self-represented petition under the federal statute allowing prisoners to challenge custody resulting from a state-court judgment. He challenged California state courts’ denials of petitions seeking resentencing under California Penal Code section 1170.95 and relief under the California Racial Justice Act, section 745. He also appeared to raise new or successive claims attacking his 1988 murder conviction and life-without-the-possibility-of-parole sentence.

Harris was convicted by a jury in 1988 of first-degree murder with robbery and kidnapping special circumstances and kidnapping for robbery. The opinion states that his earlier consolidated federal petitions challenging that conviction and sentence were considered on the merits and dismissed with prejudice in October 1992.

Successive claims

The court held that Harris’s new or successive challenges to the 1988 conviction and sentence could not be considered unless the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit first authorized the petition. The court therefore dismissed those claims without prejudice to filing a new petition if Harris obtained that authorization. The court agreed to consider only the claims based on the newer California provisions, which Harris could not have raised before the earlier federal petitions were decided.

Section 1170.95 resentencing claim

California Penal Code section 1170.95 allows certain people convicted of murder to seek vacatur of the murder conviction and resentencing after changes to California’s felony-murder and natural-and-probable-consequences rules. The California courts concluded that Harris had not shown he met the statutory requirements because the jury’s special-circumstance findings showed that he intended to kill the victim or aided and abetted another person in killing the victim. Those findings, the state courts concluded, were sufficient for a murder conviction under the amended California law.

The federal court held that the state courts’ application of California sentencing law was not so arbitrary or capricious that it amounted to an independent violation of due process. It also stated that the record contained sufficient evidence that Harris, with intent to kill, aided and abetted the actual killer. The court concluded that Harris was not entitled to federal relief on this claim.

Racial Justice Act claim

The California Racial Justice Act prohibits state convictions and sentences imposed on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin and identifies several ways a violation may be shown. The state trial court rejected Harris’s claim because he offered only general statements about physical evidence and alleged systemic racial bias. The state court found that those statements did not show racial animus or provide a statistical basis for challenging the charging decision or sentence.

The federal court concluded that Harris was not entitled to federal relief on this claim. It also stated that the Racial Justice Act applies only prospectively in cases in which judgment had not been entered before January 1, 2021, and cited authority treating such a claim as not cognizable in a federal custody challenge.

Disposition

The court dismissed the petition. It denied a certificate of appealability because reasonable judges would not find its assessment of the constitutional claims debatable or wrong. A certificate of appealability is the document generally required to appeal the denial of a federal habeas petition. Based solely on Harris’s affidavit of poverty, the court granted his application to proceed without paying filing fees.

The classification is mixed because the order reached the merits of the section 1170.95 and Racial Justice Act-related federal claims while disposing of the challenges to the 1988 conviction and sentence on the threshold ground that prior appellate authorization was required.