Anderson v. State

• Decision Date: 27 June 2012
• Docket Number: No. 2010–218–Appeal.,2010–218–Appeal.
• Citation: 45 A.3d 594
• Parties: Randy ANDERSON v. STATE of Rhode Island.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

45 A.3d 594

Randy ANDERSON

v.STATE of Rhode Island.

No. 2010–218–Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

June 27, 2012.

Catherine Gibran, Office of the Public Defender, Providence, for Applicant.

Virginia M. McGinn, Department of Attorney General, Providence, for State.

Present: SUTTELL, C.J., GOLDBERG, FLAHERTY, ROBINSON, and INDEGLIA, JJ.

OPINION

Justice INDEGLIA, for the Court.

Randy Anderson (Anderson or applicant) appeals from a judgment of the Superior Court dismissing his application for postconviction relief. On appeal, Anderson contends that the hearing justice erred by (1) deeming his claim of prosecutorial misconduct to be procedurally barred; (2) finding no discovery violation on the part of the state for failing to produce certain medical records; and (3) determining that the medical records would have been “of little or no value to the factfinder in the context of [Anderson's] trial.” This case came before the Supreme Court for oral argument on January 24, 2012, pursuant to an order directing the parties to appear and show cause why the issues raised in this appeal should not be summarily decided. After carefully considering the written and oral submissions of the parties, we are satisfied that this appeal may be resolved without further briefing or argument.¹ For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.

IFacts and Travel

In 1981, Anderson pled nolo contendere to charges of robbery, breaking and entering, and assault on a person over the age of sixty in Superior Court case number W1/81–138A, for which he was sentenced to thirty years, twelve years to serve and eighteen years suspended, with probation. Following his release from incarceration, Anderson was arrested and charged with first-degree child molestation stemming from incidents alleged to have occurred in February and March 1995.² As a result of this arrest, Anderson was presented in May 1995 as a purported violator of his probation imposed in the 1981 case. Over a three-day violation hearing held in June 1995, the complaining witness testified to three incidents of alleged sexual molestation. During the hearing, the prosecutor, in a sidebar discussion that was on the record, informed the hearing justice and defense counsel that the complaining witness had just informed the state that “she [underwent] a physical exam” that produced “no evidence of scarring or damage to the areas that the [s]tate [alleged] there was a criminal offense.” ³ The prosecutor explained that he did not have the reports, given the recentness of the complaining witness's disclosure.⁴ After that hearing, Anderson was found to be a violator of his probation, which adjudication was upheld by this Court in State v. Anderson, 705 A.2d 996 (R.I.1997) (mem.).

In October 1998, following a Superior Court jury trial on the underlying first-degree child molestation charges, Anderson was convicted on one count of fellatio and acquitted on one count involving digital penetration. Anderson moved for a new trial on his conviction, which was denied on October 30, 1998. Thereafter, he was sentenced to fifty years, thirty years to serve and twenty years suspended. He also received an additional ten-year sentence upon being adjudicated as a habitual offender pursuant to G.L.1956 § 12–19–21. This Court upheld Anderson's conviction on June 8, 2000, in State v. Anderson, 752 A.2d 946 (R.I.2000).

Soon after this Court affirmed his conviction, Anderson petitioned the Superior Court for postconviction relief, alleging the ineffective assistance of his counsel during trial.⁵ He contended that his defense counsel was ineffective by failing, inter alia, to locate the complaining witness's medical records concerning the physical examination to which the prosecution alluded at Anderson's violation hearing.⁶ In his postconviction-relief application, Anderson claimed the records would have shown that no evidence existed of any physical injury to the complaining witness. “The hearing justice, who also was the trial justice, denied the petition on the ground that Anderson had failed to satisfy the requirements of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984).” ⁷Anderson v. State, 878 A.2d 1049, 1049 (R.I.2005) (mem.). In regard to the medical records, the hearing justice found that the probative value of such records “prepared a month after the incident, offered to prove that no molestation had occurred, was ‘highly speculative.’ ” Id. at 1050.⁸ The hearing justice also “pointed to the acquittal on one count of the indictment as testament to the effective representation that defendant received at trial.” Id. On appeal, this Court affirmed the Superior Court's order denying Anderson's application for postconviction relief. See id.

In September 2001, during the pendency of his first postconviction-relief application, Anderson filed an additional application for postconviction relief, this time in regard to his probation violation. In that application, he alleged ineffective assistance renderedby his counsel during his probation-violation hearing in 1995. Specifically, he argued that his counsel was ineffective for his lack of effort “to continue the [violation hearing] and seek [a] subpoena for the medical records in [his] case, rather than relying on the statement of the [s]tate's counsel at the time that the medical records indicated no apparent evidence of trauma.” Because the medical records indicated what Anderson alleged to be “physiological evidence that could have been helpful to [the] [c]ourt in deciding the matter of the violation proceeding[,]” Anderson maintained that his counsel's failure to “investigate [the reports] and produce [them] in court” amounted to ineffective assistance and not “trial strategy.” That application for postconviction relief was likewise denied by the Superior Court in February 2008.⁹

On July 25, 2005, Anderson filed a pro se petition for writ of habeas corpus, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, with the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island.¹⁰ In his petition, Anderson challenged his conviction based on the alleged denial of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The district court ordered the state to file copies of transcripts for three prior state court proceedings, including Anderson's trial; and, after reviewing those transcripts, in conjunction with the parties' arguments, recommended that the petition be dismissed with prejudice as lacking legal merit. See Anderson v. A.T. Wall, 2006 WL 1451555 (D.R.I. May 22, 2006).

Undiscouraged by the results in all relevant appeals, the denials of his prior applications for postconviction relief, and the dismissal of his habeas corpus petition, Anderson filed the present postconviction-relief application on January 8, 2009, in Superior Court. In this application, Anderson alleged that the state possessed the June 1995 medical records regarding the complaining witness's physical examination, but had deliberately failed to provide them to trial counsel in response to pretrial requests for discovery under Rule 16(a)(5) of the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure¹¹ and for exculpatory evidence under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963).¹² In response to Anderson's allegations,¹³ the state, in its memorandum, maintained that G.L.1956 § 10–9.1–8¹⁴ served as a procedural bar to his prosecutorial-misconduct claim because this issue could, and should, have been raised in his first application for postconviction relief. The state further argued that Anderson failed to show that the medical records in question would have had an effect on the outcome of the trial.

A hearing on the instant postconviction-relief application occurred on May 17, 2010. At that hearing, Anderson argued that his claim was not barred by § 10–9.1–8 because the state's alleged withholding of the medical records was a clear discovery violation that fell within the statute's exception for permitting claims to proceed “in the interest of justice.” According to Anderson, he did not receive the June 1995 medical records until November 2006, at which time Anderson was able to view them and discern that the records revealed evidence that Anderson contended was “relevant and exculpatory.” At the hearing, Anderson's counsel explained that the medical records indicated

“that not only was [ sic ] there no injuries, there was no tearing or cuts in her vagina, no evidence of any kind of trauma; that her hymen was still intact; that she could not even tolerate the internal exam given to her by Women & Infants' Hospital; that she had indicated to Women & Infants' Hospital way back in 1995 that she was sexually active. She indicated that her means of birth control was using condoms. Both those situations would be factual situations one could infer she was in fact at that point in time maybe even a virgin, even though claiming to be sexually active and using condoms.”

Anderson argued that, had his trial counsel known of the specific details contained in the medical reports, “it would have affected his preparation and it would have affected his strategy during the course of [the] trial.” Pointing to his acquittal on the digital penetration charge, Anderson contended that the jury had relied largely on the credibility of witnesses and that the medical records were significantly relevant to the complaining witness's overall credibility. Thus, Anderson argued, under Brady and Rule 16, the state erred in withholding the medical records from him during the trial.

At the hearing, the state countered that at no time did it deliberately fail to turn over medical records in its possession, despite the fact that the state had been aware of the physical examination. The state emphasized that every attorney who had represented Anderson since 1995 had also been aware of the existence of the records. Additionally, the state recounted the...