Washington v. State

• Citation: 989 A.2d 94
• Decision Date: 25 February 2010
• Docket Number: No. 2007-66-Appeal.,No. 2008-255-Appeal.,2007-66-Appeal.,2008-255-Appeal.
• Parties: Jeffrey S. WASHINGTON v. STATE of Rhode Island. Jeffrey S. Washington v. State of Rhode Island.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Rhode Island

989 A.2d 94

Jeffrey S. WASHINGTON v. STATE of Rhode Island.

Jeffrey S. Washington v. State of Rhode Island.

No. 2007-66-Appeal.

No. 2008-255-Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

February 25, 2010.

Aaron Weisman, Esq., Providence, Department of Attorney General, for Plaintiff.

Mark B. Laroche, Esq., Providence, for Defendant.

Present: SUTTELL, C.J., GOLDBERG, FLAHERTY, and ROBINSON, JJ.

OPINION

Justice FLAHERTY, for the Court.

The applicant, Jeffery S. Washington, appeals from a Superior Court judgment denying his applications for postconviction relief. His original conviction dates to May 1989, when a jury found him guilty of first-degree felony murder for the rape and resulting death of an elderly woman. This case came before the Supreme Court for oral argument on January 26, 2010, pursuant to an order directing the parties to appear and show cause why the issues raised in this appeal should not summarily be decided. After hearing the parties' arguments and considering the memoranda submitted on behalf of each of them, we are satisfied that cause has not been shown, and we proceed to decide this appeal at this time without further briefing or argument. For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.

I Facts and Travel

This sad story begins on Christmas Day 1987, when Alice Carcieri, an elderly double amputee, died from the trauma precipitated by a brutal sexual assault.¹ On that day, the applicant, who had worked cleaning Ms. Carcieri's house in the past, snuck into the basement of her house, where he consumed drugs, ate some food, and relieved himself in a bucket. After entertaining friends and family for the holiday, Ms. Carcieri went to bed. Washington proceeded upstairs to her bedroom and found her asleep. After covering her head and tying her hands to the bedposts, he raped her. Washington attempted to make it appear as though a burglary had occurred before he fled. He left Ms. Carcieri in her bed, where she died from heart failure. A horrified family member discovered her there the next morning.

The applicant was apprehended and arrested in New York after he attempted to steal a wallet. He implicated himself in the death of Ms. Carcieri, and the New York authorities alerted the Providence police. Officers from that department traveled to New York, where they obtained a full confession from him, in which he expressed his remorse for his treatment of Ms. Carcieri. Washington was charged with murder, and eventually he was tried before a jury in the spring of 1989.² The jury returned a verdict of guilty on the charge of first-degree felony murder, and the panel also concluded that the murder involved aggravated battery. The trial justice upheld the jury's finding of aggravated battery and in addition found that there had been aggravated torture. He sentenced Washington to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The applicant appealed his conviction to this Court; however, we affirmed the judgment of conviction. State v. Washington, 581 A.2d 1031, 1036 (R.I.1990).

On April 2, 1998, Washington began his quest for postconviction relief by filing an incomplete pro se application. Since that time, he has been represented by various appointed counsel, but it was not until January 27, 2004, that applicant submitted a complete application for postconviction relief, which was heard before a hearing justice of the Superior Court on June 28, 2004. A decision denying the application was issued on July 18, 2005.³

Washington filed a second application for postconviction relief on August 1, 2005, citing documents that he had received from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Hearings on that petition were held before the same hearing justice and he met with the same fate; his second application for postconviction relief was denied. He then filed a premature appeal to this Court. The applicant's two appeals from the decisions denying his two applications for postconviction relief were consolidated on November 20, 2008.

II Standard of Review

"[P]ost-conviction relief is available to a defendant convicted of a crime who contends that his original conviction or sentence violated rights that the state or federal constitutions secured to him." Ballard v. State, 983 A.2d 264, 266 (R.I. 2009) (quoting Young v. State, 877 A.2d 625, 628 (R.I.2005)); see also G.L.1956 § 10-9.1-1(a)(1) (providing statutory right to postconviction relief for constitutional violations). "When this Court reviews a ruling on an application for postconviction relief, we afford great deference to the motion justice's findings of fact." Moniz v. State, 933 A.2d 691, 694 (R.I.2007) (citing Burke v. State, 925 A.2d 890, 892 (R.I. 2007)). "[A]bsent clear error or a determination that the motion justice neglected or misconceived the evidence, this Court will uphold a postconviction relief decision." Id. (citing Reise v. State, 913 A.2d 1052, 1055 (R.I.2007)). However, "[t]his Court will * * * `review de novo any post-conviction relief decision involving questions of fact or mixed questions of law and fact pertaining to an alleged violation of an applicant's constitutional rights.'" Bustamante v. Wall, 866 A.2d 516, 522 (R.I.2005) (quoting Taylor v. Wall, 821 A.2d 685, 688 (R.I.2003)).

III Analysis

On appeal before this Court, applicant raises four issues.⁴ First, he argues that his trial attorney provided him with ineffective assistance of counsel because he failed to present a defense of diminished capacity at trial. Second, Washington contends that his trial attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel because of his "broken promise to the jury" that defendant would testify in his own defense. Third, he raises still another argument of ineffective assistance of counsel in which he asserts that his trial attorney refused to allow him to testify in his own defense. Finally, he argues that the trial justice committed reversible error when he did not conduct a hearing and colloquy with him to determine that applicant's waiver of his right to testify was done knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily.

A Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

"This Court has adopted the standard announced by the United States Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington, [466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 * * * (1984)] when generally reviewing claims of ineffective assistance of counsel." Rodrigues v. State, 985 A.2d 311, 315 (R.I.2009) (quoting Powers v. State, 734 A.2d 508, 521-22 (R.I.1999)). The Strickland standard requires this Court to review allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel by using a two-part test. Moniz, 933 A.2d at 696 (citing Burke v. State, 925 A.2d 890, 893 (R.I.2007)).

"First, the defendant must show that counsel's performance was deficient. This requires showing that counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as the `counsel' guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment. Second, the defendant must show that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense. This requires showing that counsel's errors were so serious as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial, a trial whose result is reliable. Unless a defendant makes both showings, it cannot be said that the conviction or death sentence resulted from a breakdown in the adversary process that renders the result unreliable." Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052.

Under the performance prong of the test, "the defendant must show that counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness." Id. at 688, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Under the prejudice prong, the defendant must demonstrate that counsel's objectively unreasonable performance caused a "reasonable probability that * * * the result of the proceeding would have been different." Id. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052. The Court in Strickland cautioned, however, that "scrutiny of counsel's performance must be highly deferential." Id. at 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Therefore, this Court "will reject an allegation of ineffective assistance of counsel `unless a defendant can demonstrate that counsel's advice was not within the range of competence demanded of attorneys in criminal cases' * * *." Rodrigues, 985 A.2d at 315 (quoting Moniz, 933 A.2d at 697 and Miguel v. State, 774 A.2d 19, 22 (R.I.2001)).

Diminished Capacity Defense

In his application for postconviction relief, applicant argued that his attorney furnished ineffective assistance when he failed to present a diminished-capacity defense at trial. He asserts that his attorney did not present evidence of his "inability to form a malicious intent, i.e. his diminished capacity." Specifically, applicant contended in his application that his attorney neglected to introduce exculpatory evidence about his state of mind on the night of the crime. He urges that his counsel erred when he did not "pursue expert testimony and lab reports and the analysis of bucket contents that would have established that the defendant was under extreme emotional duress, or a drug induced hallucination, at the time of the incident and had very little capacity to conform his conduct to the law." Moreover, he asserted that his attorney did not challenge the prosecution's evidence, nor did he present testimony about his propensity to "blackout" when under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

The hearing justice rejected this argument. She found "that it was objectively reasonable for Mr. Washington's defense counsel to [forgo] a defense of diminished capacity at trial given its uselessness in defending against charges of felony murder based on rape and the lesser included charge of rape." The hearing justice explained that such a defense could not benefit defendant because felony murder is a general-intent crime that does not require the prosecution to prove that defendant had the specific intent to commit murder and, therefore, diminished capacity is not available as a defense.

There was a substantial amount of...