Franklin v. Adkins
| Decision Date | 29 April 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 92-1765,92-1765 |
| Citation | 993 F.2d 1549 |
| Parties | NOTICE: Seventh Circuit Rule 53(b)(2) states unpublished orders shall not be cited or used as precedent except to support a claim of res judicata, collateral estoppel or law of the case in any federal court within the circuit. Charles M. FRANKLIN, Petitioner/Appellant, v. Charles ADKINS and Indiana Attorney General, Respondents/Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Before CUMMINGS, CUDAHY and MANION, Circuit Judges.
Charles Franklin filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254, claiming that (1) he was denied due process of law because the evidence presented at his trial was insufficient to sustain his convictions for murder and conspiracy to commit murder, and (2) he was denied his right under the Sixth Amendment to be confronted with the witnesses against him and his right under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to receive a fair trial when the trial court allowed the prosecution to introduce evidence that Franklin's co-conspirator had been convicted of conspiring to commit murder. The district court denied Franklin's petition and we affirm.
On the morning of February 16, 1986, the body of Jackson Jay Bell was discovered in his home. The cause of death was a wound inflicted by a shotgun blast to the right chest and heart. The shotgun had been fired through a kitchen window. Franklin lived in an adjoining house and had been involved in a long-running affair with Betty Sue Bell, the victim's wife. Betty Sue and Franklin were arrested and charged with conspiring to commit murder, and Franklin was also charged with murder. Betty Sue was tried and convicted by a jury before Franklin's trial began.
A jury convicted Franklin of both murder and conspiring to commit murder, but the convictions were reversed by the Supreme Court of Indiana in Franklin v. State, 533 N.E.2d 1195 (Ind.1989). A second jury trial was commenced and a jury again convicted Franklin of both offenses. Franklin was sentenced to concurrent terms of fifty years in prison. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed Franklin's convictions and the Supreme Court of Indiana denied transfer. Franklin subsequently filed with the district court a pro se petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, claiming that the evidence was insufficient to sustain his convictions, and that he had been denied his right to be confronted with the witnesses against him and his right to a fair trial when the district court permitted the prosecution to introduce evidence that Betty Sue had been convicted of conspiring to commit murder. The district court denied Franklin's petition for writ of habeas corpus, and Franklin appeals.
The scope of our review of Franklin's petition for writ of habeas corpus is limited to determining whether Franklin's custody violates the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States. 28 U.S.C. § 2254; Estelle v. McGuire, 112 S.Ct. 475, 480 (1991). Franklin maintains that the evidence presented at his trial was insufficient to sustain his convictions for murder and conspiracy to commit murder. This is a federal Constitutional claim and therefore is within the scope of our review. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 321 (1979). "[T]he relevant question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Id. at 319.
Franklin contends that because the state did not present direct evidence that he fired the shot that killed the victim or that he reached an agreement with Betty Sue to murder the victim, a rational jury could not have found him guilty of both conspiracy to commit murder and murder. At trial the state presented evidence that the individual who committed the murder left footprints in the snow outside the kitchen window of the victim's house as he waited for an opportunity to shoot the victim. Franklin argues that because the state did not empirically prove that the footprints were his, a rational jury could not have concluded that he was at the scene of the murder when the murder took place. He argues that the data from the autopsy report and the evidence gathered by investigators at the scene of the murder disprove the state's theory that Franklin shot the victim through a window while the victim was seated in his kitchen. Franklin also argues that the transcript of a tape recording that was made of Betty Sue's telephone call to the police immediately after the murder supports his theory that the victim was shot by someone upstairs and was subsequently carried downstairs to the kitchen. Finally, Franklin maintains that a rational jury would not have inferred that he and Betty Sue conspired to murder the victim but only that the two knew each other and had a friendly relationship.
Nevertheless, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the state, we must conclude that a rational trier of fact could have found Franklin guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and murder. The state did not need to present direct evidence that Franklin committed the offenses to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Franklin's selective discussion of the evidence ignores strong circumstantial evidence that supports the jury's verdict. Circumstantial evidence is every bit as probative as direct evidence. United States v. McNeill, 887 F.2d 448, 450 (3d Cir.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1987 (1990). Franklin's convictions may be supported by circumstantial evidence alone, United States v. Durrive, 902 F.2d 1221, 1225 (7th Cir.1990), so long as there exists a logical and convicing connection between the established facts and the conclusion inferred. United States v. Grandinetti, 891 F.2d 1302, 1306-07 (7th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1060 (1990). A rational jury could have inferred from the facts established at Franklin's trial that Franklin conspired with Betty Sue to murder the victim and that he did, in fact, commit the murder. Franklin had a long-running affair with Betty Sue. He was present on the night of the murder and he owned a shotgun of the type that was used to shoot the victim. Franklin gave the shotgun to a friend several weeks after the murder and remarked that the police were looking for it. While he was incarcerated before his trial, Franklin related to two fellow inmates that he had killed the victim by donning gloves and shooting him through the kitchen window with a shotgun, and that in 1985 he had planted a bomb in the victim's truck, but the bomb did not explode. Franklin's ex-wife had seen the bomb sitting on a table several weeks before the bombing attempt. Franklin further told the inmates that the victim's wife had helped him commit the murder.
In light of this strong circumstantial evidence in support of the jury's verdict, it is clear to us that Franklin has failed to show that a rational jury could not have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We therefore conclude that the evidence was sufficient to support Franklin's convictions.
II.
Franklin also contends that he was deprived of his constitutional right to be confronted with the witnesses against him when the district court permitted the state to elicit testimony from one of its witnesses revealing that Betty Sue had been convicted of conspiring to commit murder. The Sixth Amendment provides in part that: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him...." Franklin relies on Kirby v. United States, 174 U.S. 47 (1899), a case in which the Supreme Court applied the Confrontation Clause to restrict a prosecutor's use of third-party convictions and guilty pleas. Kirby involved a prosecution for receipt of property stolen from the United States. At Kirby's trial the government's sole proof of the fact that the property had been stolen from the United States consisted of the prior guilty pleas of three of the thieves and the conviction after a trial of a fourth. The government simply produced the record of the conviction and the guilty pleas to prove that the property that Kirby received had been stolen from the United States. The Court reversed Kirby's conviction, holding that he had not been "within the meaning of the constitution, confronted with the witnesses against him." Id. at 60. The violation of the Confrontation Clause resulted not from the government's failure to confront Kirby with the four thieves who had pleaded guilty or had been convicted, but rather from the government's failure to confront Kirby with those who had been witnesses against the thieves. The Court saw the effect of the government's use of the record of the conviction and guilty pleas as allowing the government to use the testimony of those who had been witnesses against the thieves to prove facts incriminating to Kirby while not allowing Kirby an opportunity to challenge and cross-examine the witnesses. Id. at 61.
Franklin submits that in this case, as in Kirby, the prosecution violated the Confrontation Clause by using the prior conviction of a third person (Betty Sue) as substantive evidence to prove a fact essential to sustain a conviction in a subsequent case. The state elicited testimony from one of its witnesses, Detective Robert Green, revealing that Betty Sue had been arrested for, and convicted of, conspiring to murder her husband. Franklin argues that the effect of this testimony was to allow the state to establish that Franklin agreed with Betty Sue to commit murder since the jury knew from the charges against Franklin that Betty Sue was the alleged co-conspirator. This, Franklin concludes, violated his right of confrontation, for he was not a party in the case against Betty Sue and therefore had not been able to...
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