Hartman v. Bagley

• Decision Date: 10 July 2007
• Docket Number: No. 04-4138.,No. 04-4185.,No. 04-4243.,04-4138.,04-4185.,04-4243.
• Citation: 492 F.3d 347
• Parties: Brett X. HARTMAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Margaret BAGLEY, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

492 F.3d 347

Brett X. HARTMAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Margaret BAGLEY, Warden, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 04-4138.

No. 04-4185.

No. 04-4243.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: January 31, 2007.

Decided and Filed: July 10, 2007.

ARGUED: David C. Stebbins, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Daniel R. Ranke, Office of the Attorney General, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: David C. Stebbins, Columbus, Ohio, Michael J. Benza, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellant. Daniel R. Ranke, Office of the Attorney General, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee.

Before: DAUGHTREY, CLAY, and GILMAN, Circuit Judges.

GILMAN, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which DAUGHTREY, J., joined. CLAY, J. (pp. 371-80), delivered a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.

OPINION

RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge.

Brett X. Hartman was convicted in an Ohio state court of aggravated murder and was sentenced to death. After exhausting his state-court remedies, he filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal district court. The district court denied his petition, but issued a certificate of appealability (COA) regarding one of Hartman's claims. This court added three more claims to the COA. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual background

In Hartman's direct appeal from his conviction, the Ohio Supreme Court set forth the following summary of the relevant facts:

Defendant met Winda Snipes at a bar in Akron, Ohio, sometime during 1997. Subsequently, they engaged in sexual intercourse on several occasions. During the late afternoon of September 9, 1997, defendant went to Snipes's apartment and brutally murdered her by tying her to the bed, stabbing her one hundred thirty-eight times, slitting her throat, and cutting off her hands.

Defendant was convicted of aggravated murder, kidnapping, and tampering with evidence, and sentenced to death. In order to establish defendant's guilt, the state introduced statements defendant had made to the police and to a fellow inmate in jail, and the testimony of a co-worker that defendant mentioned cutting off a victim's hands as a way to eliminate evidence in the O.J. Simpson case. The state also introduced as evidence defendant's bloody tee-shirt and Snipes's watch recovered from defendant's apartment, and forensic testimony linking defendant to the murder.

State's case

Around 2:20 a.m. on September 9, 1997, defendant met Snipes at the Bucket Shop, an Akron bar. Defendant kissed Snipes on the cheek and they talked. Thereafter, defendant and Snipes left the bar and they went to her apartment across the street.

Around 3:00 a.m., David Morris, an acquaintance of defendant and Snipes, left the Inn Between, another Akron bar. While walking past Snipes's apartment on his way home, Morris observed Snipes and defendant through the upstairs window of her apartment. Morris testified that Snipes was yelling at defendant about touching stuff that was not his. Defendant closed the window blinds and "obviously she wasn't very happy about it" because she "scolded" him and reopened the blinds.

That afternoon, at around 4:30 p.m., Snipes was observed crossing a street in a nearby business district. She was never seen alive again.

Defendant had the day off from work on September 9. According to Richard Russell, a bartender at the Inn Between, defendant entered the bar at around 8:00 p.m. and appeared nervous and hyper, and talked excessively. Thereafter, defendant was in and out of the bar five to six times between 9:00 and 10:30 p.m.

Defendant first contacted the police on September 9 with a series of anonymous 911 calls, which he later admitted to. His first 911 call at 9:59 p.m. reported the location of a mutilated body. The police officers dispatched to Snipes's address entered Snipes's apartment building and checked around, but left after finding nothing unusual. Meanwhile, defendant viewed the police unit's arrival and departure while hiding behind a tree across the street. Defendant then made another 911 call telling the police to return to the apartment building and provided further instructions on the body's location.

Akron police officers responding to this call entered Snipes's unlocked apartment and found her naked, mutilated body lying on the bedroom floor. Snipes's leg was draped across the bed, a pair of pantyhose tied her ankle to the bed leg, and a white plastic chair was on top of her body. Snipes's hands were cut off and have never been found.

Around 10:45 p.m., defendant was at the Inn Between with Morris, while police units were across the street investigating Snipes's murder. Morris, having learned that Snipes had been murdered, suggested to defendant that he should talk to the police, since Morris had observed defendant at Snipes's apartment the previous evening.

Shortly before midnight, defendant approached Detective Gregory Harrison while he was at a mobile crime lab parked outside Snipes's apartment. Defendant walked up to Harrison and said, "I hear it's pretty bad in there," and asked if Harrison had "ever seen anything so gruesome." Later that evening, defendant approached Harrison a second time and spontaneously mentioned that Snipes was a whore, "that she slept around a lot," and that "he had slept with her * * * and he had even slept with her the night before at 3:00." In their final contact at around 3:00 a.m., defendant was "kind of mumbling to himself" and Harrison heard defendant say that "she was a whore, she was a big whore, she got what she deserved." Between 11:30 p.m. and 12:15 a.m., defendant also approached Akron Police Lt. John A. Lawson near the murder scene and, "rather abruptly said, `You're going to find my semen in her and my prints over there.'" When Lawson asked why, defendant said he "had been with her earlier that morning, the morning of the 9th," and that he had had sex with her.

At 12:15 a.m. on September 10, defendant spoke to Detective Joseph Urbank in front of the apartment building. Defendant began their conversation by announcing that "he had sex with the victim the night before." Moreover, defendant said he did not know her name but "only knew her as psycho bitch and that everybody knew that if you got drunk and were horny you went to go see her, you went to go see psycho bitch."

Defendant also told Urbank that he went to Snipes's apartment at 2:30 a.m. on September 9, and "she started dancing a little bit." He "lifted her onto the bed, undressed her," and "they started having vaginal intercourse." Defendant said that he was disappointed because Snipes refused to have anal intercourse, and he left her apartment around 3:30 a.m. However, defendant claimed that he did not know anything about the murder until the bartender at the Inn Between told him about it on the evening of September 9.

Around 6:00 a.m. on September 10, police took defendant to the Akron police station, where he was interviewed by Lawson and Urbank. During his interview, defendant denied making the 911 calls, and denied hiding behind a tree across from Snipes's apartment. Then, defendant changed a part of his story and admitted hiding behind a tree near the murder scene.

Following the September 10 police interview, the police searched defendant's apartment with his consent. The police seized defendant's bloody tee-shirt from underneath the headboard of his bed, a pair of his jeans, and his boots. Police found a knife on his dresser and Snipes's wristwatch on defendant's bed stand.

Police took defendant to the police station after the search of his apartment. While awaiting transfer to the Summit County Jail, defendant approached Detective John R. Gilbride and blurted out, "I was the one that called the police" and "I'm the one that found the body." Defendant told Gilbride he had been sexually involved with Snipes since February 1997, and had sexual intercourse with Snipes during the early morning hours of September 9. Defendant stated that "after having sex the psycho bitch threw him out of the apartment stating that her boyfriend was coming over." He left around 3:30 a.m. and returned to his own apartment.

According to Gilbride, defendant said that he slept until 6:00 p.m. on September 9, and then took the bus to the Inn Between bar around 7:30 p.m. Gilbride testified that while going into the Inn Between bar, defendant noticed a light on in Snipes's apartment and decided to visit her. According to Gilbride, defendant gained entry to the apartment through an unlocked door and claimed that he found her dead body in her bedroom. Defendant said that he unsuccessfully tried to pick her body off the floor, noticed that her hands had been cut off, and "freaked out." Thinking "I'm going to get busted for this," defendant washed her blood off his hands and clothes, tried wiping down everything he touched, removed evidence linking him to her apartment, and went home.

Snipes was stabbed one hundred thirty-eight times. Bruising on her ankles indicated that she was alive when she was tied to the bed. Additionally, sperm was found in her vagina and anus. The medical examiner concluded that Snipes had died from strangulation and a slit throat either in the late afternoon or early evening of September 9.

Police found defendant's bloody fingerprint on the leg of the white chair draped over Snipes's body, and police found another of defendant's fingerprints on Snipes's bedspread. An expert witness testified that the long linear blood patterns found on defendant's tee-shirt and Snipes's bedspread were applied by a long-bladed knife. Further, the blood patterns found on defendant's tee-shirt were applied while the tee-shirt was lying flat, and not while defendant was wearing it.

At trial, the prosecution introduced a set of defendant's knives, including a meat cleaver, a knife, and a knife sharpener that defendant kept at the Quaker Square Hilton, where he worked as a chef.

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