Allen v. Royce

• Decision Date: 13 January 2022
• Docket Number: 19-CV-3672 (RPK)
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York
• Parties: NICHOLAS ALLEN, Petitioner, v. MARK ROYCE, Superintendent, Green Haven Correctional Facility, Respondent.

NICHOLAS ALLEN, Petitioner,
v.
MARK ROYCE, Superintendent, Green Haven Correctional Facility, Respondent.

No. 19-CV-3672 (RPK)

United States District Court, E.D. New York

January 13, 2022

MEMORANDUM & ORDER

RACHEL P. KOVNER, United States District Judge:

Petitioner Nicholas Allen is serving a state prison sentence for second-degree manslaughter, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and first-degree reckless endangerment. The charges stem from the shooting death of Avalisa Morris at a house party in Queens, New York. Allen now seeks a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He raises two claims: that the evidence presented at his trial was insufficient and that the prosecution made improper comments during summation. Petitioner has failed to show that the state appellate decision rejecting these claims was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States, ” or was “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Accordingly, the petition is denied.

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BACKGROUND

I. The Shooting

The following facts are taken from the state court record, viewed in the light most favorable to the prosecution. See Cavazos v. Smith, 565 U.S. 1, 7 (2011) (per curiam); McDaniel v. Brown, 558 U.S. 120, 133 (2010) (per curiam).

Petitioner was a friend of co-defendant Oneil Mairs. (T. 1176-78, 1191-92, 1194-95.)^[*]On February 4, 2011, Mairs brought petitioner to a lounge in Queens, New York. There, petitioner met and spent three or four hours with Brittany Goodridge. (T. 736-37, 969.) Petitioner asked Goodridge for her phone number; Goodridge declined but told petitioner that she might provide her No. to petitioner if he attended a surprise birthday party for her friend Nicole Skervin the following night. (T. 737, 755.)

Petitioner and Mairs both attended the surprise birthday party for Skervin on February 5, 2011. (T. 759.) The party was held at the home of Allyn “Vanessa” Teel. (T. 464, 628-29.) Teel lived on the first floor of a two-family home and hosted the party in the basement. (T. 464, 628-29.) The second-floor tenant, Richard “Wayne” Bennett, also attended the party. (T. 463-65.)

Petitioner and Mairs spoke with Goodridge briefly at the party, and petitioner exchanged phone No. with Goodridge. (T. 738-39.) About an hour later, petitioner told Goodridge that he was leaving to visit another party but planned to come back. (T. 739-40.) Petitioner followed through, returning roughly an hour later and letting Goodridge know he was back. (T. 790.)

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Teel's sister Mary “Bo” Johnson was also at the party. (T. 628.) Around 2 a.m., Johnson was outside Teel's house when she noticed a man hugging a crying woman who she later learned was Mairs's girlfriend, Felicia Douglas. (T. 629-31, 1041.) Johnson spoke with the man and Douglas. (T. 631.) She then saw petitioner and Mairs walking together from the front of the house toward the back, with Johnson's friend Donovan behind them. (T. 631-33.) Johnson approached petitioner and Mairs and told Mairs the party was over, but Mairs wanted to return to the basement. (T. 633.) Johnson and Mairs spoke for about fifteen or twenty minutes, while petitioner stood with Mairs. Ibid. At some point, Donovan grabbed Johnson's arm and said, “Mary, enough.” (T. 634.) Then petitioner and Mairs reentered the basement. (T. 634.)

Around 4 or 4:15 a.m., outside Teel's house, Mairs punched Douglas in the face. (T. 917-18.) Douglas began crying. (T. 919.) Skervin, who witnessed the punch, brought Douglas into the first-floor living room. (T. 919-20.) Afterward, Skervin and several others confronted Mairs, who was in the basement, and told him that he had to leave the party. (T. 921.) During the confrontation, someone tried to grab Mairs's wrist, but Mairs drew his hand back. Ibid. When Mairs did so, his shirt rode up, at which point Skervin spotted the butt of a gun in Mairs's waistband. Ibid.

At this point, petitioner and another man came over to help Mairs in the scuffle. (T. 922.) Skervin and others began pushing petitioner, Mairs, and the third man out of the basement through the exit door. (T. 470-72, 555-56, 924.) Mairs yelled that he would not leave. (T. 924.) But eventually, the group succeeded in pushing the three men out. (T. 556, 924-25.)

While this conflict was underway, another partygoer, Vanessa Edwards, was speaking with Douglas near the top of the staircase leading to the basement door. (T. 836.) Edwards heard footsteps and saw Mairs and several other people climbing up the stairs. Mairs had a black gun in

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his hand. (T. 837-38.) Edwards crouched down and told Douglas to get down because Mairs had a gun. (T. 838.) While crouched, Edwards saw Mairs and the others go back down the stairs. Ibid.

At that point, the conflict escalated. According to several witnesses, Mairs and petitioner began pushing on or kicking the door to reenter the basement. (T. 556-57, 637, 925-28.) Skervin, Morris, and others pushed or braced against the door from the opposite side to keep the men out of the basement, causing the door to move back and forth. Ibid. After forcing the door closed again, Morris braced her whole body against the door, facing away from it, when two gunshots rang out from the other side of the door. (T. 474, 557, 928.)

Following the second gunshot, Morris fell to the ground. (T. 557, 638-39, 928.) Another partygoer, Kahan Williams, testified that he was in the basement when he heard the gunshots and saw Morris fall to the ground, and that he reacted by running toward the still-moving door to brace it shut and by yelling, “Someone got hit, ” and “she's down.” (T. 557-58.) After Williams yelled, the shooting stopped and the men outside the basement door stopped pushing. (T. 558.)

Edwards testified that she was still upstairs and crouching along with Douglas when she heard a gunshot. (T. 839.) She testified that she grabbed Douglas and ran to hide behind the garage. Ibid. While hiding, she heard a second gunshot. Ibid. According to Edwards, after hearing the gunshots, she “peeped out” from behind the garage and saw Mairs and his male friends leaving. (T. 840.)

Following the second shot, Bennett, the second-floor tenant, testified that he ran to the front door of his apartment. The door was on the outside of the building, at the front of the house. (T. 475.) While trying to enter his apartment, Bennett saw petitioner and two other men come from the back of the house towards the front of the house. (T. 474-75.) Bennett testified that as he tried

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to find his keys, he made eye contact with petitioner, who pointed a black gun at Bennett, rotated slightly to the left, and asked, “What are you looking at?” (T. 475-80.) Bennett also saw one of the other men tuck something in his waistband as they left. (T. 482.)

Johnson corroborated Bennett's account. Johnson testified that she was inside Teel's first-floor apartment checking on Teel's children and had gone to lock Teel's front door when she heard Bennett fumbling with his keys outside. (T. 639.) Thinking it was her nephew trying to enter Teel's apartment, Johnson opened the front door to see Bennett attempting to enter his apartment via the adjacent door. (T. 639.) With Teel's door open, Johnson saw petitioner and Mairs walking past the front of the house, and watched as petitioner pointed a gun at Bennett and said, “Whatcha lookin' at, pussy?” (T. 639-40.)

Several people called 911. (T. 369.) Emergency medical technician Hasnie Ahmethaj found Morris on the ground in the basement at Teel's home, not breathing, with a gunshot wound to the left side of the head and exposed brain matter. (T. 365.) EMT Ahmethaj pronounced Morris dead at 4:37 a.m. due to a “mortal wound injury secondary to a gunshot wound.” (T. 366.)

Detective Marvin Miller, a crime scene investigator, also responded to the crime scene. (T. 388.) Detective Miller found two .45 caliber spent shell casings fired from a semi-automatic weapon at the bottom of the stairs leading to the basement, on the left side. (T. 389, 399.) Firing such a weapon, Detective Miller testified, would raise its temperature due to the burnt gunpowder emitted from the gun's barrel. (T. 392.) Detective Miller testified that when a .45 caliber semiautomatic weapon is properly fired, the weapon ejects spent shell casings to the right, but that if the shooter rotates the gun to the left, the casings will instead eject leftward. (T. 391, 446-49.)

Detective Miller also observed two bullet holes in the door leading to the basement. (T. 392.) The first bullet hole was sixty-one inches from the bottom of the door and tended toward

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the door's center, while the second bullet hole was fifty-and-a-half inches from the bottom of the door and near the doorknob. (T. 397-98.) Detective Miller testified that, given the shapes of the bullet holes, they were likely caused by a shooter firing from different positions: the first shot likely came from the left in a “small area probably going towards the stairway or up the stairway, ” while the second was more direct, likely caused by a shooter standing directly in front of the door. (T. 414-16.)

An autopsy confirmed that Morris had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. (T. 1112.) According to the deputy chief medical examiner present at the autopsy, that wound caused Morris's death. (T. 1109, 1111, 1118.)

Mairs turned himself in at the police station at 10:45 a.m. on the morning of the shooting. (T. 1047-48.) Petitioner was apprehended a month later as a result of a traffic stop while driving a vehicle registered to Mairs. (T. 721-22, 1062-63.)

II. Procedural History

Petitioner and Mairs were each charged with second-degree murder, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and first-degree...