DeLuca v. Lord
| Citation | 77 F.3d 578 |
| Decision Date | 13 February 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. 1705,D,1705 |
| Parties | Sheila Ryan DeLUCA, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Elaine A. LORD, Superintendent of Bedford Hills, Correctional Facility; and Robert Abrams, Attorney General of the State of New York, Respondents-Appellants. ocket 94-2418. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) |
Jonathan Svetkey, Assistant District Attorney, New York City (Robert T. Johnson, District Attorney, Bronx County, Peter D. Coddington and Anthony J. Girese, Assistant District Attorneys, New York City, of counsel), for Respondents-Appellants.
Mark F. Pomerantz, New York City (Warren L. Feldman, Rogers & Wells, New York City, David T. Grudberg, Jacobs, Grudberg, Belt & Dow, New Haven, CT, of counsel), for Petitioner-Appellee.
Before: OAKES, KEARSE and LEVAL, Circuit Judges.
This is an appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Robert J. Ward, Judge, granting Sheila Ryan DeLuca's petition for a writ of habeas corpus, setting aside her New York state court conviction for murder in the second degree, and ordering a new trial. See DeLuca v. Lord, 858 F.Supp. 1330 (S.D.N.Y.1994). The district court granted the petition on the grounds that DeLuca's counsel in her state court trial was ineffective in two respects: first, in failing to adequately investigate, prepare for, and advise DeLuca of a possible defense based on extreme emotional disturbance ("EED"); and second, in failing to advise DeLuca that it was up to her to decide whether to testify in her own defense. The People challenge both findings.
We conclude that the record fully supported the district court's finding that the EED defense was of great potential importance to DeLuca's case, that assertion of this defense would have been likely to produce a more favorable result for DeLuca, and that, in abandoning all consideration of this defense at an early stage and for no adequate reason, her counsel failed to deliver effective representation. We affirm on that basis.
DeLuca was indicted for the murder of Robert Bissett. She was tried in the New York State Supreme Court for Bronx County. The evidence presented by the People was essentially as follows:
On the evening of September 21, 1982, Sheila DeLuca met with friends at a bar in the Bronx. In the early morning hours, she left the bar with a friend, Karyn Travelino, and went to an after-hours club, arriving at approximately 5:00 a.m. There they were approached by Robert Bissett, whom they did not know. Later, at approximately 6:30 a.m., DeLuca and Travelino left the club with Bissett and his friends Eugene Murphy and Robert Barrett. Michael Belloise, the blackjack dealer at the club, testified that he held the door open for them as they left and overheard DeLuca say to one of the men that "he shouldn't have called her girlfriend a dyke." Five or ten minutes later, DeLuca returned to use the bathroom. As she was leaving the bar for the second time, Belloise heard her say to two other patrons, "I'm an ex-cop and these guys better not fuck with me because I'll kill them."
Murphy and Barrett testified that when they left the bar, Bissett let them into his van, told them to wait, and then drove off with DeLuca and Travelino in DeLuca's blue Cadillac. About a half-hour later, DeLuca and Bissett returned without Travelino. Murphy and Bissett got into DeLuca's car, and DeLuca and the three men began driving around and drinking sparkling wine. Barrett testified that DeLuca and Bissett seemed to "hit it off." The group continued to drive around, drinking and smoking marijuana.
At approximately 10:00 a.m., DeLuca, Bissett, Murphy, and Barrett drove into the Bronx Park Motel. Bissett rented a room and requested an X-rated movie from the desk clerk. At first, Barrett and Murphy went into the room while Bissett and DeLuca stayed in the car. Bissett then went to the room and asked the other two men to leave so that he and DeLuca could be alone. Murphy and Barrett left, but soon got bored and angry. They yelled "Let's go," and kicked in a hotel window. The hotel's manager then evicted them from the room. The hotel manager testified that he saw Bissett and DeLuca go back to the car. Bissett then returned briefly to the hotel room, leaving his companion alone in the car for approximately two minutes.
At around 1:00 to 1:30 p.m. that afternoon, three city maintenance workers observed Bissett's van parked in a large puddle of water in an empty lot adjacent to the Major Deegan Expressway. They saw the van move up and down and joked that someone must be having sex inside. Shortly thereafter, two of the workers saw a heavyset woman with short blond hair walking unsteadily away from the van up a hill towards a service road. This description roughly matched DeLuca's appearance. The workers testified that there was a fairly high level of noise in the area due to nearby construction, and that they did not hear any gunshots.
Anne O'Byrne, DeLuca's housekeeper, was at DeLuca's house on September 22, 1982. She testified that Peter DeLuca had been out looking for his wife. Sometime around 2:20 p.m., DeLuca arrived at the house in her car, followed almost immediately by Peter DeLuca. Sheila changed clothes and directed O'Byrne to clean the basement. While O'Byrne was in the basement, she heard the DeLucas speaking in high-pitched tones. When O'Byrne was finished, she went upstairs and had a brief conversation with the DeLucas, after which Peter drove O'Byrne home around 4:30 p.m.
Around 7:00 p.m., Peter DeLuca called the police. He told the police that there was a dead body in a van parked in a vacant lot adjacent to the Major Deegan Expressway, and that the deceased had raped his wife. Sergeant Eberhardt, an officer in the Bronx Sex Crimes Squad, called the DeLuca residence and spoke with Sheila DeLuca. The prosecution offered Sergeant Eberhardt's testimony as to what DeLuca told him as a fabrication on DeLuca's part evidencing consciousness of guilt about the murder. He testified DeLuca told him that three men forced her into a van and took her to a hotel, where they told her that she would have to have sex with each of them; that one of the men then forced her back into the van and drove her to a lot near the Major Deegan Expressway, where he raped her in the back of the van; and that she hit him on the head with a bottle and fled. DeLuca refused to say anything more without advice of counsel.
The police found Bissett's body slumped face down between the front bucket seats of the van, feet behind him, with his hands underneath his body. Medical evidence showed that Bissett had been shot four times in the right side of his head at close range. The bullet wounds were closely spaced and in line. The medical examiner testified that Bissett had a bruise on the top of his head that was consistent with his being struck with a bottle. The medical examiner also testified that she was unable to establish the time of death because the body had been refrigerated prior to examination.
The police proceeded from the crime scene to DeLuca's residence, where DeLuca gave the police the clothes she had been wearing the night before. Tests later showed that seminal fluid found on DeLuca's torn underpants came from a man with the same blood type as Bissett. Later that night, Peter DeLuca handed the police a .38 caliber revolver that was registered under Sheila DeLuca's name, telling the police "This is the gun you're here for." Ballistics tests confirmed that this was the weapon that killed Bissett.
Based on this evidence, the prosecutor contended that DeLuca had engaged in a partying spree that began in a Bronx bar with Travelino and continued when she joined Bissett and his friends the next morning, and that DeLuca willingly went with Bissett and the others to the Bronx motel and later to Bissett's van, where she had sex with him and murdered him. DeLuca was portrayed as a sinister figure--an older woman who lured her young prey into a sexual assignation and then killed him.
The defense sought to call one witness, Flora Colao, an expert on rape trauma. The court refused to allow Colao to testify, as the defense had introduced no evidence DeLuca had been raped. The defense rested without calling any witnesses.
The jury found DeLuca guilty of second degree murder. She was sentenced to a term of 20 years to life in prison. Her conviction was upheld on direct appeal, and leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals was denied. DeLuca's conviction became final on February 24, 1986, when her petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court was denied. DeLuca made a post-conviction motion to vacate the judgment under N.Y.Crim.Pro.L. § 440.10, arguing that she was denied effective assistance of counsel. The motion was denied, as was her request for leave to appeal.
On June 1, 1990, DeLuca petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Her contentions included the claim that she was denied effective assistance of counsel. Judge Ward referred the case to Magistrate Judge Kathleen Roberts for an evidentiary hearing on DeLuca's claim of ineffective assistance. At the hearing, DeLuca testified about the events surrounding Bissett's death for the first time. Her testimony depicts the events in a very different light from the trial testimony of Murphy and Barrett.
Concerning her personal life, DeLuca testified that she was a lesbian, and that she had not had sexual relations with a male since early in her youth. There was testimony from her lawyer to the effect that she had been sexually abused as a child.
Before becoming a policewoman, Sheila had studied at Hunter and Radcliffe colleges and had...
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