Fields v. Gibson

• Decision Date: 17 January 2002
• Docket Number: No. 00-6145,00-6145
• Citation: 277 F.3d 1203
• Parties: (10th Cir. 2002) BOBBY JOE FIELDS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. GARY L. GIBSON, Warden, Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Respondent-Appellee
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 1203

277 F.3d 1203 (10th Cir. 2002)

BOBBY JOE FIELDS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. GARY L. GIBSON, Warden, Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 00-6145

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS TENTH CIRCUIT

January 17, 2002

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma (D.C. No. CIV-98-25-T) [Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] James W. Berry of James W. Berry, P.C., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Seth S. Branham, Assistant Attorney General (W.A. Drew Edmondson, Attorney General of Oklahoma, with him on the brief), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Respondent-Appellee.

Before TACHA, Chief Judge,EBEL and LUCERO, Circuit Judges.

EBEL, Circuit Judge.

Bobby Joe Fields appeals the denial of his writ of habeas corpus brought under 28 U.S.C. 2254. A certificate of appealability was granted on the following four issues (1) whether trial counsels' pressure of Fields to accept a blind guilty plea resulted in its being involuntary; (2) whether trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance in advising Fields to enter a blind guilty plea; (3) whether the same evidence may support different death penalty aggravators; and (4) whether there was sufficient evidence to support the "prior violent felony" aggravator. We exercise jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1291 and AFFIRM.

BACKGROUND

A. The Murder

On March 1, 1993, Shirley Masterson, Bobby Joe Fields's girlfriend, invited Fields to party at her duplex at 1312 N. Indiana Avenue. Masterson's Aid to Families with Dependent Children check had arrived and she planned on using the money to buy alcohol and cocaine. Shawanda and Yolanda Pittman, Masterson's grown daughters, and Dia Russell, Shawanda and Yolanda's friend, were partying with Masterson and Fields.

The party continued the next day, March 2, 1993. Sometime around noon, Fields walked two doors down to Louise Schem's house (1324 N. Indiana Ave.) ostensibly to ask if he could do yard work for her. She declined. In the mid- to late-afternoon, Fields went to the upstairs-half of Masterson's duplex (1312 1/2 N. Indiana Ave.) to ask Albert Anuario if he wanted to buy a television and VCR for $70. Anuario, who had also been drinking, replied that he was interested but that he did not have enough money.

Fields decided to steal Schem's television and sell it to buy more cocaine. When, around 5 p.m., he again walked down the block to carry out the robbery, he thought Schem was not at home. He opened the screen door, pushed open the front door,¹ crossed the living room to the television (which was on), and reached to unplug it. At that moment, Schem entered the room carrying her .25 semi-automatic pistol. A struggle ensued as the two of them wrestled to control the gun. Despite the fact that, at the time, Fields was thirty years-old, 5' 7" tall, and weighed 140 pounds while Schem was elderly,² 5' 4" tall, and 114 pounds, their struggle was protracted: it began in the living room, spilled out the front door and down the steps, and ended on the sidewalk in front of Schem's house.³

Robert Vallejo happened to be driving by and saw the final seconds of the altercation. He testified that he saw them struggling on the sidewalk, heard Schem cry "Help! Help!", heard a gunshot, and watched Schem fall to the sidewalk. The government's medical examiner testified that the bullet had a flat trajectory it entered the back, left-side of Schem's neck, beneath her left ear, passed through her spinal cord and the back of her mouth, and exited her mouth, fracturing two of her incisor teeth. The gunpowder residue on the back of her neck indicated that the shot was fired from six to twelve inches.⁴

Vallejo drove away a short distance, made a U-turn, and returned to the scene. Fields had fled, but he returned to Masterson's house thirty to forty minutes later. As he walked in Masterson's back door, the pistol went off. Dia Russell testified that Fields looked hysterical he was talking fast and breathing heavily. Perhaps half an hour after returning to Masterson's house, he went upstairs and sold the gun to Anuario for $40.

Shortly after the police and medical personnel started arriving at Schem's house, Russell took Masterson and Fields to Fields's sister's house. Russell testified that during the drive Fields said that "he didn't have any kind of remorse or guilt" and "he wouldn't lose any sleep" because "white people deserve what they got." (Fields is black; Schem was white.) In addition, she testified that later, while they were watching a news story of how the police had arrested a different black man for the murder, he said that he was "relieved" that he might not get caught and that "he had thought about being on [the television show] America's [M]ost [W]anted."

B. Fields's Arrest and Guilty Plea

Two days after the murder, on March 4, 1993, Fields was arrested and interrogated.⁵ He told the police that, thinking Schem was not home, he went to her house to steal her television. When she surprised him with a gun, he jumped at her in self-defense, and they wrestled over the weapon. The struggle spilled out onto the sidewalk, where he pulled the gun from her hands. As he did so, it went off accidentally, killing her.

Fields was charged with first degree felony murder, and, in the alternative, first degree malice murder. On May 7, 1993, a Bill of Particulars was filed alleging three death penalty aggravators: that Fields previously had been convicted of a felony involving the use or threat of violence ("prior violent felony"); that Fields committed murder to avoid lawful arrest or prosecution ("murdered to avoid arrest"); and that Fields was a continuing threat to society ("continuing threat to society").

Catherine Burton, an assistant public defender, was assigned Fields's case on March 24, 1993. Burton was a relatively new attorney in the Public Defender's Office ("PDO"), having been there only 21/2 years. Up until five days before trial, Burton was handling the case by herself. Her repeated requests for help did not elicit a response from the PDO. Burton was intimidated by the fact that the lead prosecutor in the case was Robert ("Bob") H. Macy.

Originally, Oklahoma Judge James Gullet had set trial for October 4, 1993. Burton asked for a continuance so she could better prepare, and the trial was reset for Monday, February 7, 1994. On Wednesday, February 2, 1994, Tim Wilson, assistant public defender and chief of the PDO's litigation division, the second most experienced death penalty lawyer at the PDO, overheard in the lunch room that Burton was going to trial by herself on the Fields case. He sought Burton out and volunteered his help. She accepted, they talked over the "pleadability" of the case, and she asked him to argue the motions.

Burton thought she had a "done deal" with Judge Gullet: she would convince Fields to accept a blind plea and he would be sentenced to less than death. Burton drew this conclusion from various conversations with Judge Gullet. For example, at a pretrial conference, after hearing the prosecutor recite the facts, Judge Gullet said it did not sound like a death penalty case to him. At another time, Burton was speaking ex parte with Judge Gullet about another case, when he asked her to refresh him on the facts of the Fields case. After she did, he said, "If the facts are as you say they are, I will very, very, very, seriously consider giving him life or life without parole." During that same conversation, he told her he was retiring. Burton took that statement to mean that the judge was indicating that he was more inclined to sentence Fields to less than death because the judge would not have to answer to the media or worry about re-election.

Everyone agreed, however, that Judge Gullet never promised or guaranteed anything to Burton or Fields. Judge Gullet stated on the record that "not once did I advise [Burton] that I would consider one sentencing over another sentencing. Every time that she talked with this Court, what I would advise her, I would consider all three statutory ranges of punishment[: life, life without parole, and death]."

Burton relayed her impressions to Fields. She tried to convince him to enter a blind plea of guilty, but he was reluctant. She drew a line on her legal pad, six inches long, and marked off what she though his chances were of receiving each of the three possible punishments from Judge Gullet: his chance of getting death was half an inch, his chance of getting life was one inch, and his chance of getting life without parole was everything else 41/2 inches. She also advised Fields that if he went to trial before a jury she believed that he would get the death penalty, and that tactically he would be far better off entering a blind guilty plea to the court. At the hearing on the motion to withdraw the plea, Burton testified that the week before trial she "pulled out all the stops" to convince Fields to accept the blind plea. She persuaded all of Fields's sisters, including the one who raised him, to try to convince him to enter a blind guilty plea. On Sunday, February 6, 1994, the day before trial, Burton and Wilson visited Fields and she told him that while she was fully prepared to go to trial, they both recommended that he take the blind plea because it was his best chance to avoid a death sentence. Finally they convinced him, and on Monday, February 7, 1994, Fields entered the blind guilty plea in open court. Prior to entering his plea, both his trial counsel (Burton and Wilson) and Judge Gullet told Fields that if he pled guilty, he could be sentenced to life, life without parole, or death.

The sentencing hearing took place March 28 - 29, 1994. The State and the defense each put on ten witnesses. Fields testified and was cross-examined. To demonstrate the "prior violent felony" aggravator, the government called Police Detective Robert...