Habeas petition denied where man shot and killed daughter's boyfriend

The plaintiff in this case challenges his criminal conviction on the ground that the state trial court did not properly apply the law governing when you are justified in causing someone's death. This case has a long road behind it, including an early favorable ruling from the Appellate Division, but in the end, the conviction is sustained and the plaintiff will have to serve his sentence for first-degree manslaughter,

The case is Brown v. James, issued on May 7. The facts are unpleasant. Plaintiff shot his daughter's boyfriend during an altercation in the lobby of his apartment building. The victim, Cabbagestalk, was also the father of plaintiff's grandchild. The daughter witnessed the shooting, which transpired after plaintiff and Cabbagestalk got into plaintiff's face during an argument and swung at plaintiff. When plaintiff pulled out his gun, Cabbagestalk said, "you going to pull a gun out, you better use it." When the gun was fired, plaintiff was leaning back and two feet from Cabbagestalk. The criminal court did not charge the jury on plaintiff's "justification" defense, asserted when the criminal defendant claims he had no choice but to defend himself with deadly force. Following the guilty verdict, plaintiff took up his appeals, ultimately losing in the New York Court of Appeals before filing this habeas petition in federal court.

Under New York law, the jury may consider your justification defense if the defendant reasonably believed he had to use deadly force. But you cannot have a justification charge at trial if you were the initial aggressor, i.e., if you started it all. An initial aggressor is someone who uses or threatens the imminent use of physical force. Under the case law, even when mere physical force is used against the defendant, the initial aggressor is someone who uses deadly force in the encounter. Even someone who threatens to use physical force may be the initial aggressor under state law.

After the First Department ruled in plaintiff's favor and said the criminal court should have allowed the jury to decide if he could invoke a justification defense, the New York Court of Appeals disagreed and reinstated the conviction, reasoning that plaintiff was the initial aggressor in initially drawing his gun, and further that there was no evidence that plaintiff withdrew after pulling out his gun.

The habeas petition in federal court would provide plaintiff a new trial despite the New York Court of Appeals' ruling. But plaintiff loses in the Second Circuit (Nardini, Cabranes and Kahn) because the state court ruling did not violate his due process rights in allegedly denying him the right jury charge. Habeas petitions must show the state court ruling was an unreasonable application of U.S. constitutional law. That's a tough standard to meet, but that's what Congress intended when it amended the habeas law in the 1990s. The Second Circuit finds the New York Court did not get it wrong in reviewing the evidentiary record as to who was the initial aggressor, as the record shows that plaintiff had his gun by his side during the argument. Displaying the gun was a threat to imminently use deadly force. As the New York Court of Appeals' analysis was not unreasonable, plaintiff is denied habeas relief in federal court.