Wilcox v. Ford

• Decision Date: 03 April 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-8060,86-8060
• Citation: 813 F.2d 1140
• Parties: E.K. WILCOX, Jr., Petitioner-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. J. Paul FORD, Warden, Respondent-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1140

813 F.2d 1140

E.K. WILCOX, Jr., Petitioner-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. J. Paul FORD, Warden, Respondent-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.

No. 86-8060.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eleventh Circuit.

April 3, 1987.

William B. Hill, Jr., Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, Ga., for respondent-appellant, cross-appellee.

Bobby Lee Cook, Summerville, Ga., Wilby C. Coleman, Valdosta, Ga., James F. Wyatt, III, Charlotte, N.C., for petitioner-appellee, cross-appellant.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

Before FAY and JOHNSON, Circuit Judges, and HENDERSON, Senior Circuit Judge.

JOHNSON, Circuit Judge:

This is an appeal taken by Warden J. Paul Ford from a district court order granting habeas corpus relief to appellee E.K. Wilcox, Jr., 626 F.Supp. 760 (1985). Ford also appeals the district court's decision to grant bail to Wilcox. Wilcox cross-appeals the district court's dismissal of the remaining claims in his petition. We reverse the portion of the district court's opinion granting habeas corpus relief, affirm the portion of the district court's opinion denying habeas corpus relief, and reverse the district court's order granting bail to the appellee.

E.K. Wilcox, Jr., was indicted by a grand jury in Lowndes County, Georgia, in March 1981 for the murder of Hellen Hanks and the unlawful concealment of her death. Wilcox was tried before a jury and found guilty on both counts. A summary of the critical facts developed at trial is attached to this opinion as an appendix. Wilcox was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder and to a consecutive twelve month sentence for unlawful concealment of a death.

Wilcox appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia. His conviction was affirmed. Wilcox v. State, 250 Ga. 745, 301 S.E.2d 251 (1983). He then filed a writ of habeas corpus in the Superior Court of Muscogee County, Georgia. The court held a hearing on the petition for relief on November 17, 1983. The petition was denied on March 9, 1984. The Supreme Court of Georgia then denied Wilcox's application for a certificate of probable cause to appeal the decision of the state habeas court.

Wilcox filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia on September 17, 1984. The application set forth six grounds for relief: 1) the state obtained his conviction with insufficient evidence; 2) the police investigation of the crime involved police misconduct so fundamentally unfair that it violated due process; 3) the trial court improperly prohibited Wilcox's counsel from questioning two veniremen concerning their leanings as to which party ought to prevail; 4) the trial court erred in failing to strike for cause two veniremen who admitted on voir dire that they had a preconceived notion that Wilcox was guilty; 5) the admission of testimony coerced from two Wilcox employees (Wrentz and Marshall) violated Wilcox's due process rights; and 6) the false answer during voir dire of a venireman eventually selected to sit as a juror violated Wilcox's Sixth Amendment and due process rights. ¹

On July 9, 1985, the district court held an evidentiary hearing on the question of whether Wrentz's and Marshall's testimony had been coerced. On December 20, 1985, the district court granted the application for habeas relief. Ten days later, on December 30, 1985, the federal habeas court also ordered that Wilcox be released on bond.

The district court granted the writ on the first two grounds for relief asserted in the petition and dismissed the other four claims as meritless. The district court held that The district court held in the alternative that the police misconduct in the case in interrogating Wrentz and Marshall "shocked the conscience", thereby violating due process. As a result, the court held, Wilcox would be entitled to a new trial even if there had been sufficient evidence to convict Wilcox under Jackson v. Virginia.

the Jackson v. Virginia ² standard was not satisfied by the evidence presented in this case because no rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. The court concluded that the evidence was insufficient for two reasons: 1) the evidence at trial presented an alternative hypothesis to explain Hellen Hanks' death, and that hypothesis raised a reasonable doubt as to Wilcox, Jr.'s guilt; and 2) the only testimony linking Wilcox, Jr., with Hellen Hanks' death, the testimony of Ed Wrentz, could not be accepted as true by a rational trier of fact. The court further concluded that, since the writ was issued on grounds of insufficiency of evidence, the state would be barred from retrying Wilcox.

Sufficiency of the Evidence

Warden Ford's first contention on appeal is that the district court erred in concluding that the evidence adduced at trial was insufficient to support Wilcox's conviction. In the seminal case of Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), the United States Supreme Court stated that our task in addressing such a claim on habeas review is to determine whether any rational trier of fact would have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S.Ct. at 2789; see Stoner v. Graddick, 751 F.2d 1535, 1547 (11th Cir.1985); Duncan v. Stynchcombe, 704 F.2d 1213, 1215 (11th Cir.1983). In applying this test, we must review the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution. Jackson, supra, 443 U.S. at 319, 99 S.Ct. at 2789; Stoner, supra, 751 F.2d at 1547; Cosby v. Jones, 682 F.2d 1373, 1379 (11th Cir.1982).

The federal courts have consistently reiterated that this standard for weighing the constitutional sufficiency of the evidence is a limited one. See, e.g., Martin v. State of Alabama, 730 F.2d 721, 724 (11th Cir.1984). It is not required that the evidence rule out every hypothesis except that of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson, supra, 443 U.S. at 326, 99 S.Ct. at 2792; Martin, supra, 730 F.2d at 724. Faced with a record of historical facts that supports conflicting inferences, we must presume that the jury resolved such conflicts in favor of the prosecution, deferring to the jury's judgment as to the weight and credibility of the evidence. See Jackson, supra, 443 U.S. at 326, 99 S.Ct. at 2792; Machin v. Wainwright, 758 F.2d 1431, 1435 (11th Cir.1985); Cobb v. Wainwright, 666 F.2d 966, 971 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 457 U.S. 1107, 102 S.Ct. 2906, 73 L.Ed.2d 1315 (1982). The simple fact that the evidence gives some support to the defendant's theory of innocence does not warrant the grant of habeas relief. Martin, supra, 730 F.2d at 724; Cosby, supra, 682 F.2d at 1383 and n. 21. ³

In determining whether the facts of a particular case satisfy the Jackson standard, it is necessary to refer to the essential elements of the crimes as defined by state law. See Jackson, supra, 443 U.S. at 324 n. 16, 99 S.Ct. at 2792 n. 16; Buffo v. Graddick, 742 F.2d 592, 595 (11th Cir.1984). The crimes charged in this case are murder and unlawful concealment of a death. Under Georgia law, "[a] person commits the offense of murder when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought, either express or implied, causes the death of another human being." O.C.G.A. Sec. 16- Appellee E.K. Wilcox, Jr., argues that the evidence at trial was insufficient to support his conviction on two grounds: 1) the evidence does not satisfy the Jackson v. Virginia standard because it gives equal or nearly equal circumstantial support to a theory of guilt and a theory of innocence; and 2) even if the evidence as a whole meets the Jackson standard, the court should disregard the testimony of Ed Wrentz as incredible, and without the testimony of Wrentz there is clearly insufficient evidence to convict Wilcox of either crime. We reject both arguments and hold that the evidence presented by the State was clearly sufficient to support Wilcox's conviction for both murder and unlawful concealment of death.

                5-1(a) (1981);  see Holloway v. McElroy, 474 F.Supp. 1363, 1367-68 (M.D.Ga.1979), aff'd, 632 F.2d 605 (5th Cir.1980),cert. denied, 451 U.S. 1028, 101 S.Ct. 3019, 69 L.Ed.2d 398 (1981).  Express malice is defined as the "deliberate intention unlawfully to take the life of another human being which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof."    Id. at Sec. 16-5-1(b).  Implied malice exists "where no considerable provocation appears and where all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart."    Id.  A person commits the misdemeanor of concealing death if "by concealing the death of any other person, [he] hinders a discovery of whether or not such person was unlawfully killed."    O.C.G.A. Sec. 16-10-31. 4
                

Considering all of the evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution, including the testimony of Ed Wrentz, ⁵ we find that it provided a sufficient basis for the jury to conclude that E.K. Wilcox, Jr., murdered Hellen Hanks and then concealed her death by surreptitiously burying her body in a field. The prosecution's expert medical testimony identified the body as Hellen Hanks and gave the jury a reasonable basis to conclude that Hanks had been strangled in connection with a sexual assault. Several witnesses testified that E.K. Wilcox, Jr., had been sexually harassing Hanks in the weeks prior to her murder and that she was afraid of him. Other witnesses gave testimony indicating that Wilcox, Jr., arrived at the Wilcox offices in Valdosta on the day of the murder at around 3:00 or 3:30 rather than at 4:15 or 4:30 as claimed by Wilcox, giving rise to the inference that Wilcox, Jr. and the victim were together at the Wilcox offices for some period of time in the afternoon. The evidence also showed that Wilcox did not report Hanks as missing until 4:45 or 5:00 that afternoon.

Furthermore, Wrentz's direct testimony gave the jury a basis to conclude that later that same evening,...