Railey v. Webb (CA6)

Railey v. Webb (CA6, No. 06-5806) — The petitioner filed a 2254 petition challenging his guilty-plea convictions and 10 years in prison for three assault counts, including one episode where he shot and injured his girlfriend while target shooting.

Railey alleged judicial bias because the prosecutor who appeared at two pretrial hearings was the uncle of the trial judge.  The state post-conviction court found that defense counsel knew about the relationship and waived it on Railey’s behalf.  In any event, state law required Railey to show actual bias, and mere allegations of bias stemming from a family relationship did not satisfy this standard.  Surveying constitutional law as AEDPA required, the Sixth Circuit concluded that kinship is not a kind of judicial bias that may give rise to a constitutional obligation for a judge to recuse himself.  But, the court also ruled, this obligation is not clearly established.  The relevant Supreme Court law, ending with Bracy v. Gramley, 520 U.S. 899 (1997), could be read to impose a constitutional requirement of recusal in any situation giving rise to an appearance of bias.  But it could also be read to require a showing of actual bias in situations of kinship.  “Regardless of the preferred reading — or the merits of one reading over the other — the fact that there are two or more reasonable readings compels the conclusion that this precedent is not ‘clearly established.’”

Because there was no clearly established Supreme Court law, the court could not rule that the Kentucky courts had unreasonably applied Supreme Court law in requiring Railey to show actual bias between the judge and the prosecutor.

Railey also claimed trial counsel was ineffective for failing to inform him of the relationship between the prosecutor and the judge.  But he did not show that there was a reasonable probability he would have gone to trial if he had known about it.  Thus the court rejected this IAC claim.

The court also rejected Railey’s claim that counsel were ineffective for failing to pursue a voluntary intoxication defense.  But that defense was not available under Kentucky law, because the assault charges he faced were general intent crimes.  And counsel did argue his intoxication in mitigation of his sentence.  Thus counsel did not perform deficiently.

Finally, Railey argued that his plea was not knowing and voluntary because he did not know about the voluntary intoxication defense.  But the court ruled that he had not overcome the presumption attached to state-court determinations that he had pleaded guilty voluntarily.  He explained to the trial judge that he understood he was pleading guilty, and that he had discussed his case with his attorneys, and he signed a statement to that effect.  He did not explain how the state courts’ conclusion was unreasonable.