Eggers v. State

• Decision Date: 05 December 2017
• Docket Number: Nos. 16-10785,16-16805,s. 16-10785
• Parties: Michael Wayne EGGERS, Petitioner–Appellant, v. State of ALABAMA, Respondent–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

876 F.3d 1086

Michael Wayne EGGERS, Petitioner–Appellant,

v.State of ALABAMA, Respondent–Appellee.

Nos. 16-10785

16-16805

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

December 5, 2017

Christine A. Freeman, John Anthony Palombi, Leslie S. Smith, Federal Defender Program, Inc., MONTGOMERY, AL, for Petitioner–Appellant.

Michael Wayne Eggers, Donaldson CF–Inmate Legal Mail, BESSEMER, AL, Pro Se.

Richard Dearman Anderson, Alabama Attorney General's Office, for Respondent–Appellee (Case No. 16-10785).

Richard Dearman Anderson, Thomas R. Govan, Jr., Alabama Attorney General's Office, for Respondent–Appellee (Case No. 16-16805).

Before HULL, MARCUS and WILSON, Circuit Judges.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

At issue in this capital case is whether Michael Wayne Eggers, an Alabama death row inmate, is competent to waive his right to appeal from the denial of his § 2254 federal habeas petition, to discharge counsel and proceed with execution. Eggers admitted to having beaten and choked to death Bennie Francis Murray, his former employer, because she slapped him during an argument and because he felt betrayed by her refusal to help him fetch his disabled car from a remote location. On August 5, 2013, Eggers filed a pro se federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, challenging the validity of his convictions and sentence. Counsel was appointed to represent him. Throughout the § 2254 proceedings, Eggers disagreed with his counsel's litigation strategy, sought to have different counsel appointed, and asserted claims for habeas relief in his own voluminous pro se filings.

After his counsel filed a notice of appeal from the district court's denial of his § 2254 petition, Eggers filed recurrent pro se requests to withdraw the appeal, discharge counsel and be executed. At counsel's request, the district court conducted a mental health hearing on Eggers's competency to waive his appeals, and this Court stayed the appeal in order to allow the district court to complete its inquiry. After taking extensive testimony from two psychologists and Eggers himself, in addition to examining voluminous documentary evidence bearing on Eggers's competency, the district court concluded that Eggers was mentally competent and had made a rational choice to forego further collateral review, dismiss his attorneys, and proceed to execution. Thus, it granted Eggers's application to withdraw his appeal from the denial of his § 2254 petition and discharge counsel.

A second notice of appeal was then filed by his counsel challenging the district court's competency ruling too. In light of the petitioner's expressed choice to dismiss all appeals, discharge counsel and proceed with execution, we are obliged to address the ancillary issue of Eggers's competency before turning to the merits of this habeas appeal. To that end, we have obtained briefing from the State, Eggers himself and his counsel to resolve this threshold matter. After review of a lengthy record, we are satisfied that the district court engaged in a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the record and acted within its discretion in finding that the petitioner was competent to proceed as he saw fit and rationally chose to abandon his federal habeas appeal. We can discern no clear error in this determination and, thus, affirm the judgment of the district court and dismiss this appeal.

I.

A.

In order to properly address the matter of competency, we briefly recount the essential factual and procedural history surrounding this case. The underlying facts were summarized by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals this way:

Bennie Francis Murray ("Francis") and her husband, Frank, owned and operated a concession business that traveled around the southeast with a carnival. Francis hired Eggers to work concessions; he traveled with the carnival until September 2000, when the carnival arrived in Jasper, [Alabama,] where Eggers met a woman. When the carnival left Jasper, Eggers stayed behind and found a job, but apparently lost the job at some point and was unable to find another one. On December 26, 2000, Eggers telephoned Francis, who, along with her husband, lived in Talladega when they were not traveling with the carnival, and asked for a job. Francis explained that the carnival would not begin traveling again until mid-March and that the Murrays' "bunkhouse," a trailer that had been converted into rooms for their employees, would not be available until mid-February. On December 28, 2000, Eggers telephoned Francis again. He told Francis that he and his 15-year-old son were at the bus station in Birmingham, and asked Francis to come pick them up. Francis picked up Eggers and his son and brought them back to Talladega, where she tried to help Eggers find a temporary job, but was unable to do so. On December 30, 2000, Eggers asked Francis to take him and his son back to Jasper; she agreed.

According to Eggers's statements to police, on their way to Jasper, Eggers asked Francis to take him to his car, which was outside Jasper; he had driven it off the road in inclement weather the week before Christmas and had gotten stuck in a ditch. Francis agreed and, after dropping off Eggers's son at Eggers's apartment in Jasper, Francis and Eggers left in search of Eggers's car. After driving for some time in a rural area of Walker County, Francis stopped her pickup truck on the side of the road and indicated that she was unwilling to go any further and was going to turn around. Eggers then asked her if she was "joining everyone else on the fuck Mike bandwagon." At that point, Eggers said, Francis "backhanded" him and he "let go ... [and] just started hitting her." Eggers beat Francis with his fists until she was unconscious, at which point he pushed her as far against the driver's side door of the pickup truck as he could, and drove down a nearby dirt road. When Francis started to regain consciousness—"[s]he was making noises and stuff like that"—Eggers stopped the truck and pushed her out of the cab of the truck onto the road. Eggers got out of the truck and started cursing at Francis and kicked her several times in the head with the steel-toed boots he was wearing. Eggers then got back in the truck, drove toward the end of the road and turned around, but decided to stop where he had left Francis because he wanted to make sure she was dead and "wasn't going to stay out there suffering." When Eggers stopped, Francis was starting to regain consciousness so he kicked her again and choked her with his hands "to make sure she was dead." Eggers again said that he "didn't want to leave her out there suffering." Eggers then dragged Francis into nearby woods where she could not be seen from the road and, because he believed she was still alive at that point, he put a tree limb on her throat and stood on it in an effort to kill her. Eggers then took Francis's truck to a car wash and washed Francis's blood out of the cab of the truck. He also went through Francis's purse, which was in the truck, and found cash and a debit card. Eggers said that the killing was not premeditated, but was spontaneous.

[Eggers eventually was arrested in Florida and brought back to Alabama for criminal proceedings.]

Eggers v. State, 914 So.2d 883, 888-89 (Ala. Crim. App. 2004) (citations omitted).

Trial began in August 2002. Id. at 890. During trial, Eggers's counsel had him evaluated by a psychologist in an effort to establish that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. Id. at 890, 912-13. Although Eggers pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, and although the jury was charged on the defense of insanity, Eggers did not argue, nor present evidence denying that he killed Francis or that he was insane at the time of the crime. Id. at 890. Rather, the petitioner claimed that he suffered from intermittent explosive disorder

and personality disorder, that the initial attack on Francis was the result of blind rage precipitated because Francis slapped him and that the ensuing kidnapping and robbery were merely afterthoughts unrelated to the homicide. Id.

The insanity defense failed and the jury convicted Eggers of two counts of capital murder. Id. at 888. The homicide was made capital because it was committed during the course of a kidnaping, see Ala. Code § 13A-5-40(a)(1) (1975), and because it was committed during the course of a robbery, see id. § 13A-5-40(a)(2). Eggers, 914 So.2d at 919-20. The jury recommended that the petitioner be sentenced to death by a vote of eleven to one. Id. at 920. The trial court accepted the jury's recommendation and sentenced Eggers to death. Id. at 921.

Eggers appealed, through new appointed counsel; the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence. Eggers v. State, CR-02-0170, 2004 WL 2200853 (Ala. Crim. App. Oct. 1, 2004). After Eggers filed an application for rehearing, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals substituted its opinion with another on November 24, 2004, also affirming the conviction and sentence, and overruled a second application for rehearing. Eggers, 914 So.2d at 883. The Alabama Supreme Court initially granted Eggers's petition for a writ of certiorari, but later quashed the petition. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals issued its certificate of judgment on May 20, 2005. Eggers subsequently petitioned the United States Supreme Court twice for certiorari review—a pro se petition and an attorney-authored one. Both applications were denied on January 17, 2006. Eggers v. Alabama, 546 U.S. 1140, 126 S.Ct. 1143, 163 L.Ed.2d 1004 (2006).

B.

On April 20, 2006, Eggers timely filed a pro se post-conviction petition pursuant to Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure in the Circuit Court of Walker County, Alabama. At the State's request, the court held a hearing to determine whether to appoint counsel to represent Eggers. Right from the outset, Eggers said that he wanted to proceed...