Government of Virgin Islands v. Martinez

• Decision Date: 04 March 1986
• Docket Number: 84-3507,Nos. 84-3358,s. 84-3358
• Citation: 780 F.2d 302
• Parties: GOVERNMENT OF the VIRGIN ISLANDS, Appellee, v. Juan A. MARTINEZ, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

Page 302

780 F.2d 302

GOVERNMENT OF the VIRGIN ISLANDS, Appellee, v. Juan A. MARTINEZ, Appellant.

Nos. 84-3358, 84-3507.

United States Court of Appeals Third Circuit.

Argued April 23, 1985.

Decided Dec. 27, 1985.

As Amended Feb. 3, 1986.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Feb. 24, 1986.

As Amended March 4, 1986.

Michael A. Joseph (argued), Federal Public Defender, Christiansted, St. Croix, V.I., for Appellant.

Frederick D. Jones (argued), Office of the United States Attorney, Christiansted, St. Croix, V.I., for appellee.

Before ADAMS, GARTH, and BECKER, Circuit Judges

OPINION OF THE COURT

ADAMS, Circuit Judge.

Juan Martinez appeals from his conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for first degree murder, V.I.Code, tit. 14, Sec. 922(a)(1). On appeal Martinez does not deny that he killed Felipe Gomez, but argues that the killing was not willful, premeditated, and deliberate as required for a first-degree conviction. Specifically, he appeals on two grounds. First, he contends that the evidence produced at trial was insufficient to support guilt beyond a reasonable doubt of first-degree murder. Second, Martinez maintains that he was denied a fair trial because the prosecutor failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to his counsel, despite a specific request by the defense. We conclude that the evidence supports Martinez's conviction. However, we believe that Martinez has made out an arguable violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963) which requires that prosecutors disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense. As a result, we will remand for a hearing in order for the district court to determine whether Martinez should be afforded a new trial.

I.

Juan Martinez killed Felipe Gomez on the night of March 4, 1984, in front of Building # 4 of the Walter I.M. Hodge Pavilion in Frederiksted, St. Croix. Miguel Lopez, who knew both Martinez and Gomez, and in whose house Martinez was staying that night, testified that he encountered Gomez while walking outside the housing project at about 10:00 p.m. Appellant's App. at 27A-29A. Gomez, who was intoxicated and armed with a knife, told Lopez that he was looking for Martinez. Id. at 27A. Lopez replied that Gomez was drunk, and should go home, but Gomez insisted that "he didn't care, that he wanted to go there and take [Martinez] out of the house." Id.

Gomez and Martinez appear to have been involved in a feud. Id. at 43A; 106A. Just three nights earlier, Gomez had been seen at the same apartment complex looking for Martinez. On that occasion, Gomez, who was drunk and armed with a shotgun, sought entry to Lopez's house in order to kill Martinez, who was known as Titoi. Id. at 43A. When Gomez was denied entry, he said to Martinez, "Titoi, if you don't get out, if you don't kill me I gonna kill you." Id. at 62A. This was not the first time Gomez had threatened to take Martinez's life. Id. at 106A. After a previous death threat which Gomez delivered in a face-to-face confrontation with Martinez, Martinez walked away. Later, though, he apparently vowed to take revenge; a friend testified Martinez told her, "if he don't kill Felipe [Gomez] his name is not Titoi [Martinez]." Id. at 108A. Gomez was known to be a drinker and a fighter; asked whether Gomez knew how to fight, one witness testified that "that's all the man does." Id. at 129A.5.

On the night of March 4, after encountering Lopez outside of the project, Gomez proceeded to the front door of Lopez's house, where Martinez was staying, and pounded on it. Id. at 72A. Martinez answered from the side door, from which the front entrance can be viewed through a brick garden wall containing openings. Id. at 34A. An argument ensued, and shortly thereafter Martinez shot Gomez through the wall two or three times. Id. at 136A. Gomez fell to the ground. Martinez then came around to the front of the house, shot Gomez once or twice more while Gomez lay on the ground; Martinez then ran away. Id. at 38A-39A; 70A-85A.

When the police arrived shortly thereafter, they found no evidence of the knife Gomez had been seen brandishing outside the project before the shooting. Nor did they find any other weapon. The only person to have approached Gomez between the time he was shot and the time the police arrived was Gomez's brother, who was seen leaning over the body and opening Gomez's shirt. Id. at 54A; 66A.

All the above evidence was presented by government witnesses. At the close of the prosecution's case, Martinez's defense counsel moved for judgment of acquittal of first-degree murder, on the basis of insufficiency of the evidence to support first-degree homicide. She argued that "Mr. Gomez, himself, was known at the time to have been very drunk, to have been armed and to have previously threatened my client's life," and that the facts did not support the necessary premeditation and deliberation. The judge denied the motion. In his case, Martinez presented only an alibi defense, denying he had killed Gomez. He testified that he left Lopez's house at approximately 7 p.m., and spent the evening first at his sister's house and then at his father's house. Martinez's father, brother, and two sisters testified in support of his story.

Only after his conviction, and during the separate sentencing proceding, did Martinez reveal that, before trial, he had confessed to the killing to a Spanish-speaking police officer, Detective Vigo. Martinez told the court that Gomez had arrived at Lopez's house with a shotgun as well as a knife, and that he had broken in the louver window to get to Martinez. Martinez said that he shot Gomez when Gomez pointed the gun at him. App. at 143-147. According to an affidavit taken later by an investigator for the Federal Public Defender, Detective Vigo stated that he relayed this confession to Detective Steve Brown, the principal case agent, who sat at the prosecutor's table throughout the trial, and to Assistant United States Attorney Frederick Jones, who prosecuted the case. App. at 14A.2. At oral argument in this appeal, the Assistant U.S. Attorney admitted that the confession had been passed on to Detective Brown, but denied that he himself was aware of it.

Martinez, who primarily spoke Spanish and used English only in a most rudimentary manner, never told his court-appointed counsel, a white female attorney who spoke only English, about this confession or about Gomez's gun. Until the sentencing hearing, he maintained to her that he had a valid alibi. There is some evidence he misunderstood her role as counsel, and believed that she was part of the adjudicatory apparatus that would rule on his guilt or innocence: in the pre-sentencing hearing, he related to the judge his fear "that she [his attorney] could find me in the first-degree murder." Appellant's App. at 145A.

Martinez's counsel had given the prosecutor a specific request, pursuant to Fed.R.Crim.P. 16 and Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), for "all oral confessions or statements, subsequently reduced to writing, summarized in police reports, made by the defendant." Martinez's confession put the prosecution in a position to know that there was little basis for Martinez's alibi defense but also that there was considerable question about the elements of premeditation and deliberation. The confession, therefore, although inculpatory, was also exculpatory.

Once she learned of the confession at the sentencing proceeding, Martinez's counsel informed the court that she would seek a new trial based on the prosecution's failure to disclose the confession. The judge denied Martinez's motion for a new trial, and imposed a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. Martinez filed a timely appeal.

II.

Martinez first contends that the evidence submitted to the jury was insufficient to support premeditation and therefore does not support a conviction for first degree murder. The evidence, however, adequately supports the jury's finding.

In Government of Virgin Islands v. Lake, 362 F.2d 770 (3d Cir.1966), this Court addressed the elements of willfulness, deliberateness, and premeditation which must be established to prove first-degree murder:

To premeditate a killing is to conceive the design or plan to kill. State v. Anderson, 1961, 35 N.J. 472, 173 A.2d 377, 389-390. A deliberate killing is one which has been planned and reflected upon by the accused and is committed in a cool state of the blood, not in sudden passion engendered by just cause of provocation. State v. Roedl, 1945, 107 Utah 538, 155 P.2d 741, 749. It is not required, however, that the accused shall have brooded over his plan to kill or entertained it for any considerable period of time. Although the mental processes involved must take place prior to the killing, a brief moment of thought may be sufficient to form a fixed, deliberate design to kill. State v. Hammonds, 1939, 216 N.C. 67, 3 S.E.2d 439, 445; Keenan v. Commonwealth, 1863, 44 Pa. 55, 56-57. See, also, Bullock v. United States, 1941, 74 App.D.C. 220, 122 F.2d 213, 214; 1 Wharton's Criminal Law and Procedure (1957) Secs. 267, 268; 40 C.J.S. Homicide Sec. 33.

362 F.2d at 776. The element of premeditation may be inferred from the circumstances surrounding the homicide. Government of Virgin Islands v. Roldan, 612 F.2d 775, 781 (3d Cir.1979).

Martinez submits that the evidence in the record does not establish premeditation. Factors casting doubt on Martinez's premeditation include the evidence that the victim was armed and intoxicated; that the victim came looking for Martinez and not vice versa; that an argument immediately preceded the shooting; and that three nights earlier the victim, intoxicated then also, had sought entry to the same house, told Martinez that he would kill him, and had then fired a shotgun several times in the air. These facts prove, Martinez argues, that he acted out of defensive fear, and not in the "cool state...