Ben-Yisrayl v. Davis

• Decision Date: 27 December 2002
• Docket Number: No. 3:01 CV 65 AS.,3:01 CV 65 AS.
• Citation: 245 F.Supp.2d 960
• Parties: Obadyah BEN-YISRAYL, f/k/a Christopher Peterson, Petitioner, v. Cecil DAVIS, Superintendent, Indiana State Prison, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana

Page 960

245 F.Supp.2d 960

Obadyah BEN-YISRAYL, f/k/a Christopher Peterson, Petitioner, v. Cecil DAVIS, Superintendent, Indiana State Prison, Respondent.

No. 3:01 CV 65 AS.

United States District Court, N.D. Indiana, South Bend Division.

December 27, 2002.

Prentice H. Marshall Jr., John H. Gallo, Denise Keliuotis, Kelly Cox, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff/Petitioner.

Thomas D. Perkins, Gary Damon Secrest, Indianapolis, IN, for Defendant/Respondent.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ALLEN SHARP, Judge.

Petitioner, Obadyah Ben-Yisrayl, f/k/a Christopher Peterson¹, was convicted of murder in a state court trial conducted in Lake County, Indiana, and was sentenced to death by the judge conducting that trial. The within petition was filed by counsel in this Court on January 23, 2001 and oral argument was heard in South Bend, Indiana on December 5, 2002. This Court greatly appreciates the high degree of professional competence displayed by appointed counsel for this petitioner.

The extensive state record has been filed and examined by this Court under the mandates of Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963) and under the mandates of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b). Immediate reference is made to the two decisions in this case by the Supreme Court of Indiana, namely Peterson v. State, 674 N.E.2d 528 (Ind.1996), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 1078, 118 S.Ct. 858, 139 L.Ed.2d 757 (1998) and Ben-Yisrayl v. State, 729 N.E.2d 102 (Ind.2000), cert, denied, 534 U.S. 830, 122 S.Ct. 73, 151 L.Ed.2d 38 (2001). This petitioner is now confined on death row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana in this district.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

The Indiana Supreme Court, in its opinion on direct appeal, described the crime committed by Peterson as follows:

On the afternoon of December 18, 1990, the Balovski brothers were each found dead inside the Eli Tailor Shop from shotgun wounds to the head. A sawedoff shotgun later recovered from the defendant's apartment was found to have fired a spent casing recovered from the crime scene. The defendant gave a statement to police admitting the shooting of the Balovski brothers, and he made incriminating admissions to an acquaintance.

Peterson v. State, 674 N.E.2d 528, 532 (Ind.1996). During the late fall of 1990, several shotgun murders had occurred in Lake and Porter Counties, Indiana. Witnesses, including one sitting with a victim when the attack occurred, reported the "shotgun killer" to be a white man. However, in January 1991, Antoine McGee, a light-skinned black man, was questioned by police in connection with a shooting during an armed robbery at the Gainer Bank branch at the Southlake Mall in Merrillville, Indiana. McGee was accused of being the shotgun killer. McGee denied the accusation, but asserted that Peterson was the shotgun killer. McGee took police to Peterson's mother's home. She gave police permission to enter the home, where they found a shotgun, later determined to be that of the shotgun killer, in a closet in Peterson's bedroom, a room to which McGee also had regular access. Police apprehended Peterson at approximately 4:00 a.m. on January 30, 1991. Peterson was questioned by police until mid-afternoon, at which time he asked to speak with his mother. After a brief conversation, Peterson then asked if he could "sleep on it." The next morning, Peterson was again interviewed by the police, at which time he confessed to committing all seven of the shotgun murders. Peterson was not presented before Lake County Magistrate Judge T. Edward Page until late in the afternoon of January 31, 1991, and Page made a record that he had been waiting all afternoon for Peterson to appear while police continued to interview him.

Peterson was tried twice in Lake County for three of the murders and was acquitted in those two trials, despite his confession. He was then tried in Porter County and convicted of the two murders there, and was sentenced to death. See Ben-Yisrayl v. State, 690 N.E.2d 1141 (Ind.1997), postconviction relief denied 753 N.E.2d 649 (Ind.2001). Lake County then prosecuted Peterson in the present case.

II. Standard of Review

A claim under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 requires the federal habeas court to ensure that the state criminal conviction was not achieved at the expense of the petitioner's constitutional rights. Justice Stewart, speaking for the Supreme Court of the United States in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), described the role of the federal district courts in habeas proceedings:

A judgment by a state appellate court rejecting a challenge to evidentiary sufficiency is of course entitled to deference by the federal courts, as is any judgment affirming a criminal conviction. But Congress in § 2254 has selected the federal district courts as precisely the forums that are responsible for determining whether state convictions have been secured in accord with federal constitutional law. The federal habeas corpus statute presumes the norm of a fair trial in the state court and adequate state postconviction remedies to redress possible error. What it does not presume is that these state proceedings will always be without error in the constitutional sense. The duty of a federal habeas corpus court to appraise a claim that constitutional error did occur—reflecting as it does the belief that the "finality" of a deprivation of liberty through the invocation of the criminal sanction is simply not to be achieved at the expense of a constitutional right—is not one that can be so lightly abjured.

Id. at 323, 99 S.Ct. at 2791 (citation omitted).

The Congress of the United States has codified the holdings of Jackson and its progeny through the AEDPA, which amended 28 U.S.C. § 2254, in relevant part, as follows:

In a proceeding instituted by an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court, a determination of a factual issue made by a State court shall be presumed to be correct. The applicant shall have the burden of rebutting the presumption of correctness by clear and convincing evidence.

28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1).

When Congress passed the AEDPA, the standards of review that the court must apply to the merits of a petition for writ of habeas corpus under § 2254 also changed significantly. Section 2254 was further amended in pertinent part:

An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in the State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim— (1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or (2) resulted in a decision that 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). As such, the AEDPA provides a "new, highly deferential standard for evaluating state court rulings." Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 333 n. 7, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997). The Supreme Court handed down an opinion further explaining the application of the AEDPA on April 18, 2000, in Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). Williams v. Taylor specifically addresses the application of the "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established law" language from the AEDPA in the Strickland context. 120 S.Ct. at 1499. In a divided opinion, Justice O'Connor delivered the opinion of the court regarding the appropriate interpretation of that clause. Id. at 1516. Specifically, the court held that "contrary to" and "involved an unreasonable application of clauses of the statute have independent meaning. Id. at 1519. The court defined "contrary to" as an instance where the state court "applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in our cases," or "confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of this Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from our precedent." Id. at 1519-20. The court held that "a federal habeas court making the `unreasonable application' inquiry should ask whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable." Id. at 1521. Concluding the section of her opinion defining the statute, Justice O'Connor stated as follows:

Under § 2254(d)(1), the writ may issue only if one of the following two conditions is satisfied—the state-court adjudication resulted in a decision that (1) "was contrary to ... clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," or (2) "involved an unreasonable application of ... clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." Under the "contrary to" clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than this Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts. Under the "unreasonable application" clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from this Court's decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case.

Id. at 1523.

It remains basic to this day that claims of constitutional violations must first be fairly presented to the state court, as defined by Justice Scalia in Castille v. Peoples, 489 U.S. 346, 109 S.Ct. 1056, 103 L.Ed.2d 380 (1989), and reaffirmed most recently in O'Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 119 S.Ct. 1728, 144 L.Ed.2d 1 (1999). In Moore v. Parke, 148 F.3d 705 (7th Cir.1998), the...