Engesser v. Young
Decision Date | 12 November 2014 |
Docket Number | No. 27001.,27001. |
Parties | Oakley Bernard ENGESSER, Petitioner and Appellee, v. Darin YOUNG, Warden, South Dakota State Penitentiary, Respondent and Appellant. |
Court | South Dakota Supreme Court |
856 N.W.2d 471
Oakley Bernard ENGESSER, Petitioner and Appellee
v.
Darin YOUNG, Warden, South Dakota State Penitentiary, Respondent and Appellant.
No. 27001.
Supreme Court of South Dakota.
Argued Oct. 6, 2014.
Decided Nov. 12, 2014.
Ronald A. Parsons, Jr., Delia M. Druley of Johnson, Heidepriem & Abdallah, LLP, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Michael J. Butler, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Attorneys for petitioner and appellee.
Marty J. Jackley, Attorney General, Paul S. Swedlund, Assistant Attorney General, Pierre, South Dakota, Attorneys for respondent and appellant.
Opinion
KONENKAMP, Justice.
Background
[¶ 2.] In 2001, a jury convicted Oakley “Bernie” Engesser of vehicular homicide and two counts of vehicular battery. The sole issue at the trial was whether Engesser or the deceased, Dorothy Finley, was driving her Corvette when it crashed into a minivan on Interstate 90. Neither Engesser nor Finley was wearing a seatbelt and both had been drinking alcoholic beverages. The Corvette was going “approximately 112 miles per hour when it slammed into the back of the minivan, spun off the road, and rolled several times before coming to rest on its roof in the median.” See State v. Engesser (Engesser I ), 2003 S.D. 47, ¶ 6, 661 N.W.2d 739, 744. No witness at trial testified to seeing the driver of the Corvette. Engesser was thrown from the car, landing face down in the median. Multiple witnesses at trial placed him between five and ten feet from the driver's side of the Corvette. Engesser was unconscious and suffered a gash to the right side of his head. Finley was trapped in the car on the passenger side “underneath the passenger seat, her body in line with the seat. The upper part of Finley's body was lying over the top of the seat. She was facing the ground. Her feet were underneath the dash. Her face was pointing toward the driver's side.” Id. ¶ 7. The passenger side was crushed and the window shattered, but the roof and front windshield were intact. Finley was pronounced dead at the scene.
[¶ 3.] At trial, the State presented evidence from Trooper Ed Fox, the lead investigator. Trooper Fox arrived on the scene after Engesser and Finley had been taken away. He obtained statements from the witnesses at the scene. No witness, however, stated specifically whether the driver was a man or woman. Nonetheless, based on the positioning of and injuries to Finley's body, as later described to Trooper Fox, he concluded that Engesser was the driver.
[¶ 4.] The State also offered evidence from Finley's daughter, who testified that Finley normally kept her purse at her feet when she was the passenger. The purse was found underneath the dashboard on the passenger side. The emergency room physician who treated Engesser testified that the person in the passenger seat would have suffered the most serious injuries because it was the point of impact with the minivan. Engesser suffered injuries on both sides of his body. Finley died of injuries to the right side of her body and head.
[¶ 5.] Engesser did not testify at trial. But the jury viewed a video recording of his interview with Trooper Fox, in which Engesser explained that he did not remember anything after leaving the Full Throttle Saloon. Although Engesser believed Finley was driving, he agreed it was possible they had switched before the accident. Engesser sought to admit hearsay
[856 N.W.2d 474
evidence from his civil attorney that a witness—Sean Boyle—had told the attorney he saw Engesser and Finley leave the Full Throttle Saloon on the night of the accident, and that Finley was driving the Corvette. The court excluded the testimony. Engesser was found guilty and sentenced. We affirmed his convictions in 2003. Engesser I, 2003 S.D. 47, ¶ 50, 661 N.W.2d at 756.
[¶ 7.] In 2006, Engesser filed a second petition for habeas relief in state court. He argued that his trial counsel and first habeas counsel were ineffective because they failed to identify and investigate two witnesses, Eckholm and Charlotte (Delaney) Fowler. Although Eckholm and Fowler were originally questioned at the scene of the accident and neither indicated that they could identify the driver, during the habeas hearing they claimed otherwise. Eckholm testified that he was standing on the shoulder of the Interstate behind his parked truck when he saw the Corvette. He was able to see that it was a woman driver because he saw bracelets and nail polish. She had blonde hair, he said, long “enough to fly in the air.” Fowler testified that while she was in the driver's seat of her van parked on the shoulder of the Interstate in front of Eckholm's vehicle, she saw the Corvette travel out of control and hit the minivan. She explained that, though she told Trooper Fox on the night of the accident that she was looking at her console and did not see the Corvette hit the minivan, she in fact saw the accident. She saw a man thrown from the Corvette. In addition to Eckholm and Fowler, multiple other witnesses testified at the habeas hearing, including Trooper Fox, Engesser's trial counsel and first habeas counsel, and Engesser.
[¶ 8.] The habeas court ruled that trial counsel and Engesser's first habeas counsel were ineffective for failing to identify and investigate Eckholm and Fowler, and that Engesser was prejudiced because their testimony would likely have altered the outcome of Engesser's trial. The court granted the petition and ordered a new trial. Following the court's ruling, in an apparent effort to bolster the rationale for a new trial, Engesser sought leave to
[856 N.W.2d 475
reopen the proceeding to present testimony from two additional witnesses the State disclosed after the habeas hearing. One witness, Greg Smeenk, said that he came upon the accident right after the crash. He attempted to get to the woman inside the car, but could not open the passenger-side door. He testified that he went over to the driver's side and was able to open the door. He took the woman's pulse and realized she was dead. Because he had his two daughters in the car and did not want them to see the accident, he left the scene before ever talking to law enforcement officers. The habeas court denied the motion to reopen because, at the time of Engesser's trial and first habeas petition, neither counsel could have known that Smeenk was a potential witness.
[¶ 10.] Engesser's third habeas petition in state court was also denied, after which Engesser did not seek a certificate of probable cause to appeal. Engesser then requested permission to file a successive federal habeas petition with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court authorized the “petition ‘to present a new claim that counsel was ineffective because of new evidence of Engesser's factual innocence that could not have been discovered earlier.’ ” See Engesser v. Dooley (Engesser IV ), 823 F.Supp.2d 910...
To continue reading
Request your trial-
Schmidt v. State
...or her guilt?What kind of system of justice do we have if we permit actually innocent people to remain in prison? See Engesser v. Young , 856 N.W.2d 471, 484 (S.D. 2014) ("Punishment of the innocent may be the worst of all injustices." (quoting Jenner v. Dooley , 590 N.W.2d 463, 471 (S.D. 1......
-
Engesser v. Fox
...and the window shattered, but the roof and front windshield were intact. Finley was pronounced dead at the scene.Engesser v. Young, 856 N.W.2d 471, 473 (S.D. 2014) (some internal quotation marks and citations omitted); see also Docket 15 at ¶¶ 63-65. Because the procedural history and factu......
-
Hughbanks v. Dooley
...on other grounds, 322 F.3d 1256, 1261 (10th Cir.2003).8 This conclusion is consistent with Engesser v. Young, 2014 S.D. 81, ¶ 27, 856 N.W.2d 471, 481 in which we applied the 2012 amendments to the state habeas corpus law, including SDCL 21–27–3.3, to a 2001 conviction where the habeas actio......
- State v. Springer
-
Chapter 9 Adjudication: Trials and Guilty Pleas
...conviction."). At the state level, a number of jurisdictions acknowledge freestanding claims of actual innocence. Engesser [v. Young, 856 N.W.2d 471, 481 n.3 (S.D. 2014)] (collecting cases and statutes that allow freestanding claims of actual innocence). States that do recognize freestandin......
-
INCONCEIVABILITY, HORROR, AND THE MERCY SEAT.
...(207.) Nebraska v. El-Tabech, 610 N.W.2d 737,747 (Neb. 2000) (citations omitted). See also Engesser v. Young, 2014 SD 81, [paragraph] 38, 856 N.W.2d 471, 484 (concluding in the context of that case that the court "need not consider whether a freestanding claim of actual innocence exists und......