Willie v. Maggio
| Decision Date | 06 August 1984 |
| Docket Number | No. 84-3219,84-3219 |
| Parties | Robert Lee WILLIE, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Ross MAGGIO, Jr., Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Ronald J. Tabak, New York City, for petitioner-appellant.
William R. Alford, Jr., 1st Asst. Dist. Atty., Covington, La., J. Kevin McNary, Asst. Dist. Atty., New Orleans, La., for respondent-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Before REAVLEY, RANDALL and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
Robert Lee Willie was convicted in a Louisiana court of the murder of Faith Hathaway and sentenced to die. After exhausting his state remedies, Willie filed an application for federal habeas relief. On March 29, 1984, the district court denied Willie's application for federal habeas relief and a certificate of probable cause to appeal. On March 30, 1984, we granted Willie's motion for a certificate of probable cause and stayed Willie's scheduled execution to allow him an opportunity to address the merits of his appeal. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the district court's denial of the writ of habeas corpus.
Willie was convicted in the Twenty-Second Judicial District Court of Washington Parish, Louisiana, of the murder of Faith Hathaway and received the death sentence. The Louisiana Supreme Court conditionally affirmed Willie's conviction but vacated his sentence. The court remanded the case to the district court to determine whether a printed note found near the murder scene created a reasonable doubt about Willie's guilt. If no such doubt was created by the note, the district court was directed to hold a new penalty hearing. State v. Willie, 410 So.2d 1019 (La.1982).
The trial court conducted an evidentiary hearing and found that the note had no significance, and therefore did not create a reasonable doubt about Willie's guilt. A new penalty hearing was held, and Willie was again sentenced to death. On appeal, the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed Willie's conviction and sentence. State v. Willie, 436 So.2d 553 (La.1983). The United States Supreme Court denied Willie's petition for a writ of certiorari. --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 1327, 79 L.Ed.2d 723 (1984).
Willie twice applied for habeas relief in state district court, and the court denied both of his petitions without issuing any opinion. Willie then sought habeas relief in the Louisiana Supreme Court, but his petition was also denied without opinion.
Willie then filed a petition for federal habeas relief and an application for a stay of execution in the court below. The district court held an evidentiary hearing on Willie's claims. In an oral ruling from the bench, the court denied Willie's petition and refused to grant a certificate of probable cause to appeal.
The gruesome details of the murder that resulted in Willie's conviction can be briefly summarized here as follows: At approximately 4:30 a.m. on the morning of May 28, 1980, Willie and Joseph Vaccaro offered a ride to the victim, Faith Hathaway, outside of the Lakefront Theatre, a discotheque in Mandeville, Louisiana. Hathaway, an eighteen-year old woman, had been celebrating her last night as a civilian before entering the United States Army. Instead of taking the victim home, as she had asked, Willie and Vaccaro took Hathaway to Fricke's Cave, a heavily wooded, secluded gorge south of Franklinton, Louisiana. Willie or Vaccaro, or both, raped Hathaway, and then one of the men repeatedly stabbed the victim in the throat while the other held her hands. On June 1, 1980, Hathaway's clothes and purse were found approximately one hundred and fifty yards from her body. The victim's body was discovered on June 4, 1980. State v. Willie, 410 So.2d at 1023.
On June 3, 1980, Willie and Vaccaro were arrested in Hope, Arkansas for unrelated crimes. On June 10, 1980, both men, still in custody in Arkansas, confessed to Louisiana police officers that they had abducted Hathaway, but each accused the other of raping her and slashing her throat. Id. 1
Willie presents nine issues for review in this appeal. The first four relate to the guilt phase of his trial. He contends that his constitutional rights were violated because: (1) four of the jurors who convicted Willie participated in the voir dire held during the trial of his codefendant, Vaccaro; (2) he was required to exercise two of his peremptory challenges against jurors who should have been excused for cause; (3) his confession should have been suppressed because it was obtained in violation of the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981); and (4) the trial court's exclusion of jurors who were unambiguously opposed to imposing the death penalty resulted in a biased and unfair jury.
Willie's five remaining contentions center around his resentencing proceeding. Willie argues that he is entitled to habeas relief because: (1) the trial court failed to change the venue of trial; (2) the trial court improperly excused a juror who did not unambiguously state that he was incapable of voting to impose the death penalty; (3) the prosecutor's closing argument was so prejudicial that Willie was denied a fundamentally fair trial; (4) Willie received ineffective assistance of counsel at his second penalty hearing; and (5) Willie was not given the opportunity to prove to the court below that Louisiana imposes the death penalty in an invidiously discriminatory manner.
In spite of the fact that several of the claims raised by Willie are difficult, the district court denied most of Willie's claims without setting forth any findings of fact or conclusions of law upon which it based its decision, holding only that none of Willie's constitutional rights had been violated. 2 We have thus been deprived of the benefit of the district court's reasoning in denying Willie's claims. We recognize that the district court was operating under severe time constraints because of the imminence of Willie's execution, and we also recognize the importance of the district court's functioning within those constraints if it is possible responsibly to do so. More important, however, particularly in a capital case, is the requirement that the district court set forth, albeit briefly and perhaps orally, those specific findings of fact and conclusions of law that underlie its ultimate conclusion to grant or deny relief. Those findings and conclusions, while they may initially be the source of some delay, ultimately serve the state's interest (as well as the petitioner's) by facilitating prompt and effective appellate review.
We consider each of Willie's contentions in turn.
Willie initially contends that he was denied a constitutionally fair trial because four of the jurors in his trial heard prejudicial remarks about Willie during the voir dire conducted at the trial of his co-defendant, Vaccaro. The trials of Willie and Vaccaro were severed and held simultaneously in the same courthouse, with Vaccaro being tried upstairs and Willie being tried downstairs. As more veniremen were needed for the voir dire at Willie's trial, potential jurors that were present at Vaccaro's voir dire were sent to the downstairs courtroom, along with veniremen who had been peremptorily challenged. 3
Four of the jurors who were present during part of the voir dire in Vaccaro's trial served on the jury that convicted Willie. While present at the Vaccaro voir dire, they heard the prosecutor explain Louisiana law on principals, La.Rev.Stat.Ann. Sec. 14:24 (West 1974), which provides that all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether or not they directly committed the act constituting the offense, are held liable as principals. 4 Vaccaro Trial Transcript Vol. 5 at 43. However, the prosecutor later clarified to the jury that "if all the state does is prove that Joe Vaccaro was there and we don't prove that he knew what was going on or was in any way involved in it, I tell you that is not enough for you to convict him." Id. at 173.
Shortly thereafter, Vaccaro's counsel posed the following to the jury:
Let me give you another example, let's say Mr. Vaccaro was there and let's say he is drunk or on pills or whatever, and not himself, and let's say that Robert Willie says hold her hands and Joe doesn't know what's going on, he holds her hand and Mr. Willie comes up to her and kills her. Mr. Vaccaro didn't know he was going to kill her. My question to you is, in that situation, would you automatically vote first degree murder on a case like that?
Id. at 176. After asking the veniremen a few more questions, Vaccaro's attorney explained:
The burden of proof is on the State therefore to prove the guilt of Joseph Vaccaro beyond any reasonable doubt. Not only must they show that Joseph Vaccaro was there and Joseph Vaccaro might have killed her or taken part in it, not only must they prove that he probably took part in it or killed her, they must prove beyond any reasonable doubt that he did do it. Now again, it is not enough for the State to prove that a crime was committed. It is not enough to prove that Robert Willie killed Faith Hathaway, but the State must prove that Joseph Vaccaro was a principal and that he intended it and that he participated in it.
The foregoing excerpts from the Vaccaro voir dire are examples only of questions and statements, both by the prosecutor and by defense counsel, that appear throughout that voir dire. A reading of that voir dire indicates to us that any venireman who sat through very much of it, as the four jurors at issue here did, would have come away with the understanding that Vaccaro's defense would be that it was Willie, not...
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