Coleman v. Mitchell, 98-3545
| Decision Date | 02 November 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 98-3545,98-3545 |
| Citation | 268 F.3d 417 |
| Parties | (6th Cir. 2001) Alton Coleman, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Betty Mitchell, Warden, Respondent-Appellee. Argued: |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio at Cincinnati. Nos. 94-00863, 94-00864. Sandra S. Beckwith, District Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
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[Copyrighted Material Omitted] David C. Stebbins (argued and briefed), Columbus, Ohio, Dale A. Baich (briefed), OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA, Phoenix, Arizona, Fredric F. Kay, Tucson, Arizona, for Appellant.
Charles L. Wille (argued and briefed), OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF OHIO, Capital Crimes Section, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.
Before: BATCHELDER, COLE, and CLAY, Circuit Judges.
CLAY, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which COLE, J., joined. BATCHELDER, J. (pp. 55-58), delivered a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Petitioner, Alton Coleman, appeals from the district court order denying Petitioner's motion, pursuant to Rule 59(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, to alter or amend the district court order denying Petitioner's application for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254 and lifting the stay of execution previously entered by the district court. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM IN PART and REVERSE IN PART and REMAND for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
On October 10, 1984, a Hamilton County, Ohio, grand jury indicted Petitioner for the aggravated murder of Tonnie Storey, with death penalty specifications, as well as for the aggravated robbery of Storey. On June 15, 1985, a jury found Petitioner guilty of aggravated murder under Ohio Revised Code 2903.01 with one death penalty specification.1 The following day the jury recommended the death penalty for Petitioner. On June 24, 1985, following independent review of aggravating and mitigating factors, the Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton County, Ohio sentenced Petitioner to death. The court then ordered that Petitioner be returned to federal custody, where Petitioner had been serving a twenty-year federal sentence for a 1984 conviction under 18 U.S.C. 1201(a), the federal kidnaping statute. However, the court reserved the right of the State of Ohio to request custody of Petitioner in order to carry out the Ohio sentence from the Storey case, as well as to carry out a second death sentence, also imposed by the Court of Common Pleas in a separate trial, in connection with the murder of Marlene Walters.2 The court imposed the death sentence in the Walters case in May of 1985, one month prior to imposing the separate death sentence in the Storey case.3
On October 7, 1987, the Ohio First Appellate District affirmed Petitioner's conviction and death sentence in the Storey case, which was upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court. On January 20, 1990, the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari. On January 31, 1990, the Ohio Supreme Court set an execution date of April 24, 1990, which, in March of 1990, the Ohio Supreme Court stayed for six months to allow Petitioner to file his post-conviction petition. Petitioner filed his post-conviction petition with the common pleas court on September 4, 1990, raising one hundred and four claims for relief. The common pleas court denied Petitioner's post-conviction petition, which was affirmed by the Ohio First Appellate District in March of 1993. The Ohio Supreme Court subsequently declined jurisdiction over Petitioner's appeal.
On June 30, 1993, Petitioner filed an application for delayed reconsideration in the Ohio First Appellate District, which the court denied and was later affirmed by the Ohio Supreme Court. On October 7, 1994, the Ohio Supreme Court set Petitioner's execution date for January 5, 1995.
Following a ten-day stay of execution by the district court, on January 6, 1995, Petitioner filed petitions for the writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2254 in connection with the Storey and Walters cases, which were later consolidated on appeal. On February 10, 1998, the district court denied Petitioner's 2254 petitions and lifted the stay of execution previously entered by the district court. On April 14, 1998, the district court denied Petitioner's motion to alter or amend the district court order pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e). Petitioner appeals.
The Ohio Supreme Court provided the following factual findings in connection with Storey murder:
On July 7, 1984, [Petitioner] and Debra D. Brown approached the home of the Reverend and Mrs. Millard Gay of Dayton, Ohio. After conversing with Mr. Gay, they stayed at the Gays' home from July 7 through July 9, 1984. [Petitioner] and Brown accompanied the Gays to religious services in Lockwood, Ohio, on July 9, 1984. The next day, the Gays drove appellant and Brown to downtown Cincinnati and dropped them off.
On July 11, 1984 at approximately 10:00 a.m., Tonnie Storey, age fifteen, left her home in Cincinnati wearing rusty brown cutoff shorts, a beige sleeveless blouse with yellow rings, blue tassel shoes and a Michael Jackson button. She was next seen at Bloom Junior High School at approximately 11:45 a.m. by a teacher.
Later that same day, between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m., a classmate saw Tonnie on the corner of May and Morgan Streets in Cincinnati in the company of a man and a woman. The classmate identified the man as [Petitioner]. When Tonnie had not returned home by 4:30 p.m. that day, her mother called the police and reported her missing.
On July 19, 1984, a body was discovered in an abandoned building on May Street by a real estate agent. A Michael Jackson button and a pair of brown shorts with keys in the pocket were discovered in the area where the body was found. The keys identified by decedent's father belonged to the Storey residence. The body was badly decomposed and identification was made through fingerprints. The body was identified as that of Tonnie Storey. The cause of death of Tonnie was homicidal asphyxia.
State v. Coleman, 544 N.E.2d 622, 624-25 (Ohio 1989). The Ohio Supreme Court also detailed Petitioner's other criminal activity during the summer of 1984, which included multiple assaults, thefts, and murders.4 A summary of this criminal activity is presented in part IV of the discussion section below.
On September 4, 1984, the district court referred Petitioner to the Federal Correctional Institution at Butner, North Carolina, for an evaluation of whether Petitioner was competent to stand trial on federal kidnaping charges. Sally Cunningham Johnson, M.D., and Jim Hilkey, Ph.D., conducted the evaluation, which was limited to Petitioner's mental competency to understand the federal kidnaping charges brought against him and ability to work with an attorney in defending against those charges. Within those parameters, Drs. Johnson and Hilkey found Petitioner to be mentally competent to stand trial. The findings did not address Petitioner's mental condition at the time of the Storey murder or at the time of the Storey trial.
Counsel stipulated to Petitioner's mental competency to stand trial in the Storey case. Petitioner argues on appeal that the examinations which resulted in him being found mentally competent were limited, and that independent investigation by Petitioner's counsel into Petitioner's social and mental history would have led to the presentation of substantial mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of Petitioner's trial. Petitioner's personal background, and counsel's role in investigating that background, are presented in part VII of the discussion section below.
Petitioner's habeas application to the district court raised forty-eight grounds for relief. The district court found twenty-seven of those grounds to be procedurally barred, and the remainder non-meritorious or inappropriately presented in the federal habeas context. On appeal to this Court, Petitioner raises eight issues for review.
Because Petitioner's habeas application was filed in 1995, prior to the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA"), the pre-AEDPA standard of review applies. See Mapes v. Coyle, 171 F.3d 408, 413 (6th Cir. 1999). Under the pre-AEDPA standard, we presume the correctness of state court factual findings, which are rebuttable only by clear and convincing evidence, and we review determinations of law, or determinations involving mixed questions of law and fact, de novo. Id. (citing Rickman v. Bell, 131 F.3d 1150, 1154 (6th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1133 (1998)).
Petitioner argues that the district court erred when it relied on the Ohio state court's application of res judicata under 2953.21 of the Ohio Post-Conviction Act to procedurally bar many of Petitioner's federal constitutional claims raised in his habeas application.
In State v. Perry, the Ohio Supreme Court found that Ohio courts should apply the doctrine of res judicata when determining post-conviction relief under 2953.21:
Under the doctrine of res judicata, a final judgment of conviction bars the convicted defendant from raising and litigating in any proceeding, except an appeal from that judgment, any defense or any claimed lack of due process that was raised or could have been raised by the defendant at the trial which resulted in that judgment of conviction or on an appeal from that judgment.
226 N.E. 2d 104, 108 (Ohio 1967).
Petitioner argues that res judicata under 2953.21 was not an adequate and independent state ground on which to...
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