Stroud v. Polk

• Decision Date: 23 October 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05-17.,05-17.
• Parties: Isaac Jackson STROUD, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Marvin POLK, Warden, Central Prison, Raleigh, North Carolina, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

466 F.3d 291

Isaac Jackson STROUD, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Marvin POLK, Warden, Central Prison, Raleigh, North Carolina, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 05-17.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued September 19, 2006.

Decided October 23, 2006.

ARGUED: Marilyn Gerk Ozer, William F.W. Massengale, MAssengale & Ozer, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for Appellant. Jonathan Porter Babb, Sr., North Carolina Department of Justice, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Roy Cooper, Attorney General of North Carolina, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before WILKINSON, MOTZ, and TRAXLER, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge MOTZ wrote the opinion, in which Judge WILKINSON and Judge TRAXLER joined.

OPINION

DIANA GRIBBON MOTZ, Circuit Judge:

A North Carolina jury convicted Isaac Jackson Stroud of first degree murder and recommended that he be sentenced to death. Stroud challenged his conviction and resulting death sentence in state court, unsuccessfully pursuing both a direct appeal and post-conviction relief. Stroud then filed this petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court. The district court denied habeas relief and denied Stroud's motion for a certificate of appealability. We, however, granted a certificate of appealability as to one issue, involving his challenge to the state court's rejection of his claim that North Carolina's "short-form" murder indictment provided inadequate notice that he could be convicted of first degree murder on a theory of torture. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the district court's dismissal of his habeas petition.

I.

North Carolina indicted Stroud using its "short-form" murder indictment, which simply charged that he "unlawfully, willfully and feloniously and of malice aforethought did kill and murder" his long-time girlfriend, Jocelyn Mitchell. The indictment noted on its face that it was sufficient to charge both first and second degree murder and cited to both the statute authorizing the short form, see N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15-144 (1983), and the state's murder statute, see N.C. Gen.Stat. § 14-17 (Cum.Supp.1991).

The Supreme Court of North Carolina summarized the evidence presented at Stroud's trial:

At trial, the State presented evidence tending to show that Jocelyn Mitchell died on 1 May 1993 from dozens of blunt force injuries to her body. Defendant [Stroud] was in the apartment with the victim the night of the beating. John McPhatter, the defendant's next-door neighbor, and McPhatter's girlfriend, Debra Harper, each testified that on 1 May 1993, between 12:30 and 1:30 a.m., they awoke to a loud thump from defendant's apartment. McPhatter and Harper also heard the defendant arguing and the victim talking and crying. They specifically heard the defendant say, "You shouldn't have gone to that party," and heard the victim say, "Look what you've done to my face." McPhatter and Harper testified that as the night went on, the defendant continued to argue, but the victim stopped talking and only cried. McPhatter testified that when he left his apartment at 5:30 a.m., he could still hear the defendant arguing and the victim crying. Similarly, when Harper left the apartment between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m., she could still hear the defendant arguing and the victim "whimpering." Linda Baldwin, an upstairs neighbor, testified that by 7:30 a.m., there were no noises coming from the apartment occupied by the defendant and Mitchell.

Approximately seven hours later, the defendant called 911 from his apartment. He told the dispatcher that Mitchell had collapsed, that he could not wake her and that she was breathing lightly. The victim was not breathing when paramedics arrived, she had no pulse and her neck and arms were stiff. Defendant told the paramedics that Mitchell had been assaulted around 6:00 p.m. the night before at the school where she was employed as a teacher. The paramedics called the police.

Officers M.L. Hayes and J.A. Pickett, Jr., of the Durham Police Department arrived at the defendant's apartment around 3:00 p.m. The defendant told Officer Hayes that he and Mitchell had been fighting all night. Defendant also told the officers that Mitchell had come home around 8:00 p.m. and stated that she had been attacked and could not breathe. At trial, however, the State presented evidence that at about 8:00 p.m., Mitchell was seen parking her car and that she looked normal, had no visible injuries, was not bleeding and had no trouble walking. The State also presented evidence from a co-worker who observed Mitchell shopping at a grocery store around 11:55 p.m. The co-worker noticed nothing strange about Mitchell's appearance or actions and testified that Mitchell was not crying and appeared to be in good health.

Dr. John Butts, Chief Medical Examiner of the State of North Carolina, performed an autopsy on the victim. Dr. Butts' examination revealed, among other injuries, bruising on either side of the eyes, behind the right ear, on the lower part of the neck and over the front part of the skull. There was a laceration on the top of the head that extended into the deeper skin tissue that covers the skull. There were multiple bruises on the upper and mid-back, as well as extensive bruising of the right side and back, upper left arm and elbow, buttocks, back of the right thigh and all along the front part of the legs. The victim's skin was torn and scratched in several places. One back left rib was broken in two places, and ribs eight through eleven on the right side in the back were broken. One of the victim's ribs punctured the right lung, causing it to collapse and causing bleeding into the chest cavity. Dr. Butts characterized the wounds to the hands and forearms as defensive wounds from fending off her assailant's blows.

Dr. Butts testified that, in his opinion, Jocelyn Mitchell was struck dozens of times, causing her tissues to rupture and bleed into the muscles and fat beneath her skin. Further, some of her fat was broken up by the blunt-force trauma. The fat liquified and flowed into the victim's lungs, causing hypoxia, a lack of oxygen to the tissues. The overall process of internal bleeding, loss of blood to the tissues, collapse of the lung and fat in the lungs gradually resulted in loss of consciousness, coma and then death. Dr. Butts further testified that the victim's injuries would have been very painful, would have affected the victim's ability to move or walk and eventually would have incapacitated her.

State v. Stroud, 345 N.C. 106, 478 S.E.2d 476, 477-78 (1996).

At the conclusion of Stroud's trial, the judge charged the jury with determining whether Stroud committed murder, in either the first or second degree, and kidnapping in the second degree. The judge instructed the jury that it could find Stroud guilty of first degree murder under three theories: (1) "[o]n the basis of malice, premeditation and deliberation," (2) "[u]nder the first degree felony murder rule," or (3) "[o]n the basis of first degree murder by torture." The judge explained that conviction of murder by torture requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that (1) the defendant intentionally tortured the victim, and (2) the torture proximately caused the victim's death. He also instructed the jury that "[t]orture is the course of conduct by a person which intentionally inflicts grievous pain and suffering upon another for the purpose of punishment, persuasion, or sadistic pleasure."

The jury found Stroud guilty of first degree murder and second degree kidnapping. In a special verdict, the jury indicated that it based its murder verdict on felony murder and torture — it did not convict Stroud on "the basis of malice, premeditation and deliberation."¹ Following the jury's recommendation, the judge sentenced Stroud to death.

Stroud appealed. The Supreme Court of North Carolina affirmed the convictions and sentence, Stroud, 478 S.E.2d at 481, 483, and the Supreme Court of the United States denied Stroud's petition for writ of certiorari. Stroud v. North Carolina, 522 U.S. 826, 118 S.Ct. 86, 139 L.Ed.2d 43 (1997). A North Carolina court denied Stroud post-conviction relief. Stroud then filed this petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which the federal district court denied. Concluding that Stroud had "made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right," 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2) (2000), with respect to the state court's denial of his challenge to the adequacy of notice provided by the short-form murder indictment, we granted Stroud a certificate of appealability as to this issue.

II.

Stroud asserts that, in violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, he "had no notice in pretrial hearings" or "during trial before the charge conference . . . that he could be convicted of murder by torture." Reply Brief at 3.

The state court, on post-conviction review, rejected this claim on the merits with little discussion. Under federal law, we too must reject this claim unless the state court's "adjudication of the claim . . . resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," or "resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) (2000). Given this stringent standard of review, Stroud's claim fails.

A.

The State maintains that Stroud's sole challenge is to the indictment's failure to include the elements of murder by torture. See Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000); Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 119 S.Ct. 1215, 143 L.Ed.2d 311 (1999) (holding that elements of a crime must be charged in the indictment and proven beyond a reasonable doubt). Hartman v. Lee, 283 F.3d 190 (4th Cir.2002), forecloses that challenge. There we held that because "under...