Hammond v. Hall

• Citation: 586 F.3d 1289
• Decision Date: 04 November 2009
• Docket Number: No. 08-11108.,08-11108.
• Parties: Emanuel Fitzgerald HAMMOND, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Hilton HALL, Warden, GD & CC, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

586 F.3d 1289

Emanuel Fitzgerald HAMMOND, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Hilton HALL, Warden, GD & CC, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 08-11108.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

November 4, 2009.

Brian Mendelsohn (Court-Appointed), Fed. Def. Program, Inc., Atlanta, GA, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Susan V. Boleyn, Atlanta, GA, for Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before CARNES, MARCUS and PRYOR, Circuit Judges.

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

Julie Love was driving a red Mustang convertible through the upscale Buckhead section of Atlanta around 10:00 p.m. on July 11, 1988, one of those typically hot summer nights in Georgia. The petite 27-year-old preschool fitness teacher had been to her regular Monday night "career chat" meeting. She had also gotten engaged the week before and may have been thinking about that. Whatever was on her mind, her thoughts were interrupted by the reality of her car slowing to a stop, as cars do when they run out of gas. She steered it over to the side of the road.

This was back before everyone had a cell phone, so Love got out of her stranded car and started walking to get help. After she had gone only a short distance down Howell Mill Road, a maroon Cutlass sedan pulled up beside her. There were two men and a woman inside. They offered Love a ride, but she declined the offer, waving the group on and telling them that she lived in a house just up a nearby driveway. Love didn't live in the house she pointed out or even on that road, but she started walking up the driveway of that house anyway. The Cutlass drove off.

Before the Cutlass had driven completely out of sight of Julie Love, someone in it looked around in time to see her coming back down the driveway to the street. Realizing that she had tricked them about where she lived, Emanuel Hammond, one of the men in the car, ordered the driver to turn around, dim the headlights, and drive slowly back toward the young woman. After the car crept close, Hammond leaped from it with a sawed-off shotgun. He grabbed Love and threw her into the car, face down onto the rear floorboard. While she screamed and begged him not to hurt her, a wild-eyed Hammond beat her with the steel barrel of the shotgun. Any woman in Love's position would have been terrified, and even more so if she had known what Hammond had done to other women.

About six-and-a-half years before, in February 1982, a young woman named Janet¹ was returning home to the Virginia Highlands section of Atlanta around 1:00 a.m., after having a late dinner with her friends. A man named Antonio Stephney came up behind her with a gun. He forced Janet into a dark alley. While Stephney was robbing Janet, Emanuel Hammond appeared on the scene. Hammond told Stephney that it was supposed to be Hammond's robbery. And he suggested to Stephney that "we rob some more places." Stephney agreed. He rooted through Janet's purse, found her keys, and tossed them to Hammond, telling him to go get Janet's car and bring it around. While Hammond went to get her car, Stephney raped Janet. When Hammond got back with the car, the two men forced Janet into the back seat, covered her with a blanket, took her to several ATM machines in search of cash, and beat her. While this was going on, Hammond was armed with a sawed-off shotgun.

Hammond drove the car around while Stephney raped Janet a second time and talked about killing her. Hammond, who was only sixteen at the time, evidently did not yet have the stomach for murder. Kidnapping maybe, but not murder. At one point when the car was stopped and Stephney had stepped outside for awhile, Janet begged Hammond to drive away. He hesitated but then sped away as Stephney stood in the street and shot at them with a pistol. After a side trip to his grandfather's house where he got rid of the shotgun, Hammond took Janet to the police station.

By the time Hammond and Janet arrived at the police station, she had been held hostage for three-and-a-half hours and had been raped twice. According to her, Hammond "d[id] the talking" to the police, describing the ordeal in a way that "ma[d]e the people there think that [he and Janet] were both victims." Even so, he was charged with rape and aggravated sodomy. Those charges against him were dismissed in December 1982. The reason probably was that despite his involvement in the crimes against Janet, Hammond's belatedly appearing conscience may have saved her life. As far as the record shows, that was the last time his conscience would make an appearance, belatedly or otherwise.

The dismissal of the charges against him provided Hammond with an opportunity to straighten out his life. He quickly failed to take advantage of it. Ten days after the rape and sodomy charges against him were dismissed, Hammond put his apprenticeship with Antonio Stephney behind him and struck out on his own. On the night of December 17, 1982, Hammond came upon a woman as she arrived at her apartment on Briarcliff Road in Atlanta. Because this woman, named Trinh,² had worked the late shift, she did not get home until 1:30 a.m. As she tried to get out of her car, Hammond loomed over her, stuck a knife to her neck, and forced her back into the car. When she resisted, he beat her and slashed her hand with the knife. He grabbed her purse and demanded her credit cards. For the next hour Hammond terrorized Trinh. He drove her around, telling her he was going to rape her and kill her and stuff her body in the trunk of her car. She escaped with her life when Hammond had to pull the car into a service station to get some gas. When he did that, Trinh jumped out of the car and ran to the attendant for help. Hammond was quickly caught and charged. He pleaded guilty to kidnapping with bodily injury and armed robbery. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Prison life did not suit Hammond. He was taught some vocational skills in prison, but the main lesson he took from the experience was not a constructive one. Hammond vowed to his girlfriend that he would never let another of his victims live to send him back to prison. With each victim, he would come closer to fulfilling that vow.

In 1987 Hammond was released after serving less than half of his sentence for attacking Trinh. In May 1988 he saw a woman, whose name was Ellen,³ entering her Rock Springs Circle apartment in Atlanta around lunch time. Hammond grabbed Ellen from behind, put her into a headlock and dragged her at knife point down two flights of stairs to her car. He rifled through Ellen's purse, found her bank cards, and drove her around the city forcing her to make withdrawals from several ATM machines. When Ellen had withdrawn the limit on her card, Hammond drove her to a trash-filled wooded area on a steep incline. There he raped her. Then he stabbed her repeatedly and slit her throat. Ellen had the presence of mind to fake convulsions so Hammond would think she was dying. After terrorizing and abusing her for three-and-a-half hours and seeing her convulse, Hammond hid Ellen's body under a blanket in the trash and left her for dead.

Thinking that he had succeeded in killing Ellen, Hammond bragged to his girlfriend, Janice Weldon, that he had killed a woman. He took her by the wooded area to show her where he had done it, and then he took her to see Ellen's car, which he had stolen. While looking into that car, Weldon noticed a Mother's Day card inside, all addressed and ready to be mailed.

After Hammond left Ellen, she pulled off the blanket, which he had intended to be her burial shroud, and she dragged herself from the wooded area to a street where she found help. We don't know when Hammond found out Ellen had survived. We do know that only two months after kidnapping, robbing, raping, and attempting to kill Ellen, Hammond abducted Julie Love. This time he was accompanied by his girlfriend Weldon and by his own apprentice, his 18-year-old cousin Maurice Porter.

As she lay on the floorboard of his car, Julie Love could not have known that Hammond's crimes against her were the latest in a series of his increasingly violent attacks on women. She could not have known about his vow to make sure that no more of his victims would live to testify against him. She did know, however, that Hammond was cruel, violent, and dangerous. Love, who was only five feet tall and weighed just a hundred pounds, knew that because Hammond kept beating her. She was screaming.

After he finished beating Julie Love, Hammond wanted a cigarette. He told Weldon, who was driving, to take them to a service station in the Bankhead section of Atlanta so he could get something to smoke. Leaving Love in the back seat of the car with Porter, Hammond rested the shotgun against the front seat and went into the store. Weldon, Porter, and Love sat in the car in silence.

When Hammond returned to the Cutlass, he slid into the front seat next to Weldon and told her to drive the group to his grandmother's house in northwest Atlanta. As they pulled up near the house and stopped, Hammond tossed Love's purse to Weldon and ordered her to go through it. Weldon rummaged through the purse, finding a little cash and some ATM cards. Hammond took the cards. He asked Love how much money she had in her bank account. She told him that she did not have much. Love begged Hammond not to hurt her.

She told him she kept cash at her apartment, and they could go get it. She also pleaded with him to call her boyfriend, who would give them anything they wanted if they would just not hurt her.

Worried that Love's boyfriend might be at the apartment, the group went to a pay phone where Weldon called Love's apartment. She got Love's answering machine. She heard Love's voice say: "Hi, this is Julie, and I can't come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number, I'll be glad to get in touch with you as soon as I can. Have a nice day, and thanks for calling."...