Zornes v. Smith

Background

Tracy Alan Zornes filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, challenging his state criminal proceedings. The case came before the district court on Magistrate Judge Katherine Menendez’s Report and Recommendation, which recommended denying all thirteen grounds for relief. Zornes and Respondent Michelle Smith objected. The district court reviewed the challenged portions of the recommendation independently and reviewed the unchallenged portions for clear error.

Zornes litigated all claims without a lawyer except ground one, concerning his right to a public trial, for which the court appointed counsel. His objections addressed procedural default, his request to amend the petition, grounds two, three, six, and thirteen, and the public-trial claim in ground one.

Procedural Default and Amendment Request

The court declined to categorically disregard Minnesota’s procedural rule, known as the Knaffla rule. That rule generally bars state-court review of claims that were raised, or could have been raised, in an earlier proceeding. A federal court ordinarily cannot grant habeas relief on a claim that was not fairly presented to the state courts unless the petitioner shows cause and actual prejudice, or that refusing review would result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice.

The court also held that the exceptions recognized in Martinez v. Ryan and Trevino v. Thaler did not apply. Minnesota law provides a meaningful opportunity—and in some circumstances requires a defendant—to raise ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claims on direct appeal. The court therefore rejected Zornes’s argument that those decisions excused his procedural defaults.

Zornes had requested permission to amend his petition to clarify or add ineffective-assistance claims. The court found that Magistrate Judge Menendez had considered the claims Zornes said he intended to add, and that Zornes had not identified other amendments that could change the result. The court therefore concluded that formally granting the amendment request would be futile.

Grounds Two, Three, Six, and Thirteen

For grounds three and six, Zornes alleged prosecution misconduct involving an expansive witness list and claimed that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object. The Minnesota Supreme Court had ruled that these claims were barred under the Knaffla rule because they could have been raised on direct appeal. The district court found that Zornes had not shown sufficient cause to overcome the procedural default. His asserted ineffective-assistance claim against appellate counsel was itself procedurally defaulted, and his explanation did not establish cause for that default.

In ground two, Zornes claimed that trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to argue that a knife could not have caused particular wounds and for failing to present expert testimony about the wounds. The court evaluated counsel’s conduct under the constitutional standard requiring both deficient performance and resulting prejudice, while applying the strong presumption that counsel’s decisions reflected reasonable professional judgment. The court concluded that counsel had cross-examined the medical examiner and argued that the items found at the campsite were not connected to the crimes. Zornes did not show that counsel’s decisions were outside the range of reasonable professional judgment. The court denied habeas relief on ground two.

Ground thirteen principally involved a state-law claim based on newly discovered evidence. The Minnesota Supreme Court had determined that an expert report concerning whether items recovered from Zornes could have caused wounds was not newly discovered because its conclusion was consistent with facts established at trial. The federal court stated that it would not reexamine that state-law determination. To the extent ground thirteen implied an ineffective-assistance claim concerning investigation, the court found that it substantially overlapped with ground two and rejected it for the same reasons.

Zornes also argued that new evidence established actual innocence and should allow review of otherwise defaulted claims. The court found that much, if not all, of the evidence had been available at trial through reasonable diligence, that the evidence was not inherently exculpatory, and that it did not undermine the significant circumstantial evidence supporting his conviction. Zornes therefore did not satisfy the demanding standard requiring a showing that no reasonable juror would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ground One: Public Trial

Ground one concerned the Sixth Amendment right to a public trial. Zornes argued that this right was violated when his girlfriend, who was on the witness list, and a victim’s brother were excluded from the courtroom during jury selection. He also alleged that people on the prosecution’s lengthy witness list were implicitly excluded.

The Minnesota Supreme Court concluded that excluding Zornes’s girlfriend was within the trial court’s authority to sequester potential witnesses and that removing the victim’s brother was too minor to violate the right to a public trial. On federal habeas review, the district court could grant relief only if that state-court decision was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established United States Supreme Court precedent.

The district court distinguished the Supreme Court’s decisions in Waller v. Georgia and Presley v. Georgia, which addressed total courtroom closures, from Zornes’s case, which involved the exclusion of particular people, primarily anticipated witnesses, while the courtroom remained open to the public and press. Because the Supreme Court had not squarely addressed partial courtroom closures, the district court concluded that the Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision was not contrary to, or an objectively unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law. The court therefore denied habeas relief on ground one.

Certificate of Appealability

A certificate of appealability is required before a federal habeas petitioner may appeal an adverse ruling. The court found that reasonable judges could debate the public-trial issue, particularly because Supreme Court precedent did not clearly resolve whether the governing courtroom-closure standards applied to this kind of partial exclusion. The court therefore granted a certificate of appealability on the question whether the Minnesota Supreme Court’s public-trial conclusion was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law.

The court denied a certificate of appealability on every other claim.

Order

Judge Eric C. Tostrud overruled Zornes’s objections and Smith’s objections, accepted the Report and Recommendation, and denied Zornes’s habeas petition. The court granted a certificate of appealability for the ground-one public-trial question and denied a certificate of appealability on all other claims.