Alvarado v. Warden

• Decision Date: 18 September 2018
• Docket Number: CASE NO. 3:16-CV-2563
• Parties: HECTOR ALVARADO, Petitioner, v. WARDEN, Ohio State Penitentiary, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

HECTOR ALVARADO, Petitioner, v. WARDEN, Ohio State Penitentiary, Respondent.

CASE NO. 3:16-CV-2563

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO EASTERN DIVISION

September 18, 2018

JUDGE PATRICIA GAUGHAN

MAGISTRATE JUDGE JONATHAN D. GREENBERG

ORDER

This matter is before the magistrate judge pursuant to Local Rule 72.2. Before the Court is the Petition of Hector Alvarado ("Alvarado" or "Petitioner"), for a Writ of Habeas Corpus filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Currently pending are Alvarado's (1) Motion for Discovery (Doc. No. 28); and (2) Motion to Expand/Complete the Record (Doc. No. 29.) Respondent filed briefs in opposition to both Motions, to which Alvarado replied.

For the following reasons, Alvarado's Motion for Discovery (Doc. No. 28) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. Alvarado's Motion to Expand/Complete the Record (Doc. No. 29) is GRANTED.

I. Summary of Facts

Alvarado's habeas petition challenges the constitutionality of his conviction and sentence for murder in the case of State v. Alvarado, Lucas County Court of Common Pleas Case No. G-4801-CR-201301381. The state appellate court summarized the facts underlying Alvarado's conviction as follows:

{¶ 2} In the early morning hours of New Year's Day, 2013, a fight broke out at the South Beach Bar on Alexis Road in Toledo, Lucas County, Ohio. Christine Henderson suffered a fatal wound to her neck and her fiancée, Stacy Bowen, suffered a non-fatal laceration to his upper arm. Appellant, Hector Alvarado, was indicted on one count of murder in violation of R.C. 2903.02(B) and R.C. 2929.02, and one count of felonious assault in violation of R.C. 2903.11(A)(2). The case proceeded to trial by jury. The following is a summary of the evidence presented.

{¶ 3} Megan Gibson, an employee at the South Beach Bar and Grill, testified that she was working the door in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2013 when "the bar broke out into a riot." She did not witness the assault on Bowen or Henderson. She did, however, clean-up a large amount of blood in the area Henderson was standing before she walked outside and died in the bar's parking lot.

{¶ 4} A bar patron, Charles Wells, testified that he and three of his friends were on the bar's back patio "smoking weed and drinking beer" when the violent, yet short-lived, fight began. He entered the bar, but never engaged in the fighting. Instead, he stood back and observed the commotion, keeping his eye on appellant because he was "the biggest guy in the bar."

{¶ 5} Wells explained that during the fight appellant had "an object" in his hand. He observed appellant swing the object and noted that "everybody he swung on hurried up and got away from him." Wells admitted that his view was obstructed at times because "bodies was [sic] moving, chairs was [sic] flying, people was [sic] swinging."

{¶ 6} At one point, Wells observed appellant near Henderson. He explained, "I seen him swing on her and she walk [sic] away, she grabbed her neck and walk [sic] away. But I didn't know what had happened right then and there." Wells explained that appellant had the object in his hand when he "swung on" Henderson.

{¶ 7} Before the fight completely subsided, Wells and his friends left the bar through the front door. Wells explained what he observed when he stepped outside:

A: All I seen was cars, but I immediately spinned around because it was a crowd of people coming out, there was some people coming out, so then when I seen who was coming out, I turned around and started walking backwards and tripped off the curve.

Q: Did you see [appellant]?

A: He came out right behind me.

Q: What did you see him with?

A: I seen him with a Mexican girl in one hand. I seen him with a knife in another hand.

Q: Sure it was a knife?

A: Clearly I seen the knife. I wouldn't turn my back to him because I just seen him get into it with all these black people and I didn't want him to stab me too. I had my brother and them in the car. They made it in the car. I was walking backwards and my brother and them kept saying, Chuck, get in the car; Chuck, get in the car. I said fuck that. I'm watching him. He got a knife.

Q: How long did you watch him?

A: All the way until I got in the car.

{¶ 8} Wells explained that he and his friends came back to the bar later that morning so they could give another friend, a bouncer, a ride home. It was then that he heard Henderson had died and that Bowen had killed her with a bottle. He explained, "I said, hell, no, [appellant] did it."

{¶ 9} Wells did not talk to the police in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2013. He did, however, receive a phone call from Detective Goodlet on January 8, 2013. He told the detective what he saw and agreed to come down to the station and give a recorded statement. He explained,

A: * * * And the only reason why I really, really went down there, because like I say, I know the family and they was saying that the girlfriend's boyfriend was the one that stabbed her with a bottle and I said, hell no, huh-uh, no. And then I called my friend Dave which [sic] was the bouncer there that night and he asked me was I going down there and I said I'm going to go down there and talk to him.

Q: Did you ever voluntarily talk to the police before?

A: Never in my life. Where I come from that's a snitch.

{¶ 10} Wells was able to identify himself on surveillance video and various stillphotos taken from the video. On cross examination, Wells testified that he and Bowen were not "friends" but that he knew Bowen from the neighborhood and had played basketball with him. He also admitted that he knew Henderson because she drove a recognizable vehicle, a "hot pink truck * * * with cartoon characters on it."

{¶ 11} Dr. Diane Scala-Barnet, a deputy coroner for Lucas County, performed an autopsy on Henderson. She classified Henderson's death as a homicide and determined that a stab wound to the left side of her neck caused a complete transection of the carotid artery. In her opinion, the fatal wound was caused by an instrument with one sharp edge and one dull edge. She ruled out any suggestion that a broken bottle could have caused the wound.

{¶ 12} Dr. Scala-Barnet described the wound track as "lateral to medial and downward." In her opinion, Henderson likely received the wound from a frontal attack but she could not rule out the possibility that the wound was received from an assailant standing behind her. When asked whether it was possible for Henderson to have received the wound while bent over, Dr. Scala-Barnet stated, "[t]hat would be harder to get the downward trajectory * * * It's not impossible, but it's harder to get in there." Dr. Scala-Barnet agreed that if Henderson did receive the wound while bent over, "the assailant would almost certainly have to be lower than her." However, she added that it all depended on where the assailant was positioned relative to the Henderson's body.

{¶ 13} Dr. Scala-Barnet indicated that immediately after being stabbed, blood would have started spurting from Henderson's wound and death would have occurred within a matter of minutes. She indicated that Henderson would have been able to walk after being stabbed, but that she would have felt light headed very quickly.

{¶ 14} Bowen testified that he became involved in the melee after he noticed several of his male friends fighting with people he had never seen before. He didn't know why the fight started and indicated he had no success in trying to break things up. He did not recall fighting with appellant.

{¶ 15} Bowen identified himself, Henderson, and appellant on surveillance footage taken at the bar during the fight. He did not see appellant stab Henderson but he recalled—and the surveillance footage corroborated—that the three of them were in close proximity to each other in the moments before Henderson grabbed her neck and walked away from the melee. However, a table lifted-up and thrown during the fight, obscured the camera at the exact moment Henderson likely received the fatal stab wound to her neck.

{¶ 16} Detective William Goodlet of the Toledo Police Department testified thathe interviewed Bowen shortly after the fight. While Bowen admitted to participating in the fight, he was unable to identify anyone he was fighting.

{¶ 17} Detective Goodlet went to a local hospital after receiving information that another potential witness, Basilia Smith, was being treated for injuries she received during the fight. When questioned, Smith admitted to being at the bar and receiving injuries during the melee. However, she was too intoxicated to provide any additional information helpful to the detective's investigation.

{¶ 18} A few hours after he interviewed Smith, Detective Goodlet received surveillance video from the bar's numerous interior and exterior cameras. The time frame of the preliminary video spanned from 1:39:00 a.m. through 2:15:00 a.m. The detective and his team watched the video in real time but found it grainy and "really tough to follow." Detective Goodlet and his team of investigating officers made a determination to start analyzing footage of the back lot where Henderson's body was found and work back in time in an effort to determine where and when she was injured. At the time, they knew the identities of very few people in the bar. During this period of the investigation, appellant's identity was unknown, but he was one of several "persons of interest" because of his proximity to the victims during the melee.

{¶ 19} A short time later, Detective Goodlet obtained additional surveillance video. After the Detective and his team watched the additional footage, they invited Bowen back in to the station and showed him still shots of the footage. Bowen was able to identify himself, but was not able to identify any of the suspects.

{¶ 20} About a week after the incident, Detective Goodlet received a call from one of the men who had been working security inside the bar. Based upon that conversation, Detective Goodlet made

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