Blake v. McDaniel
| Decision Date | 30 July 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 59263,59263 |
| Parties | ALFONSO MANUEL BLAKE, Appellant, v. E.K MCDANIEL, WARDEN OF ELY STATE PRISON; AND THE STATE OF NEVADA, Respondents. |
| Court | Nevada Supreme Court |
An unpublished order shall not be regarded as precedent and shall not be cited as legal authority. SCR 123.
ORDER OF AFFIRMANCE
This is an appeal from the district court's order denying a post-conviction petition for a writ of habeas corpus in a death penalty case. Eighth Judicial District Court, Clark County; Stefany Miley, Judge.
Appellant Alfonso Manuel Blake met Sophear Choy through her employment as a dancer at a club in Las Vegas. Sophear and her older sister Kim danced at various clubs in Las Vegas to earn money for school. One evening the sisters and their friend Priscilla Van Dine met Blake at a bar. He offered to rent three rooms in his house to Kim. Kim told Blake that she would consider his offer. They agreed that while she considered Blake's offer, the women would store some of their belongings in Blake's garage. About two days later, Kim, Sophear, and Van Dine dropped off their belongings at Blake's house. Feeling uncomfortable with the arrangement with Blake, the women decided not to move into his house. Kim called Blake, informed him of their decision, thanked him for allowing them to store their belongings in his garage, and arranged toretrieve their belongings around 11 p.m. the next night. Blake was upset with their decision.
On March 4, 2003, Kim, Van Dine, and two of their friends drove to Blake's house in two vehicles to retrieve the women's belongings. They were unable to fit everything in the vehicle, and Kim told Blake that they would return later that evening for the rest of their things. The encounter was uneventful.
The situation turned confrontational when Kim, Van Dine, and Sophear returned later that evening to gather the rest of their belongings. While driving to Blake's house, Sophear had a heated phone conversation with Blake. When the women reached Blake's neighborhood, they noticed some of their possessions on a street corner and stopped. While they were loading their vehicle, two cars pulled up behind them. Blake rushed out of one of the vehicles and confronted Sophear. He nudged her in the back and the three women who were with Blake (Jinah Chung, Bonette Lim, and Aileen Ramos) surrounded Sophear. Nervous that Sophear was about to be beaten, Kim called 9-1-1 on her cellphone. Blake began choking Sophear and hitting her head against boxes that had been loaded into her vehicle. During the altercation, Blake stabbed Sophear, and he somehow was stabbed. One of his companions tried to hit Kim and take her cellphone. After Sophear dropped to the ground, Blake approached Kim, took her cellphone and demanded to know whom she had called.
After the altercation, Blake ordered Kim, Sophear, and Van Dine to walk toward an open desert area. He told his three female companions to leave the area. After walking some distance, he forced the women on their knees, donned a pair of gloves, pulled a silver revolver outof his pocket, and said, "I warned you I didn't want any problems." Blake shot Van Dine and Sophear in the head. He pointed the gun at Kim and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck Kim in the head and ricocheted off a ring on her right hand, which she had waved over her head. Blake shot Kim again in the head, and she lost consciousness.
When Kim woke up, Blake was gone. Kim stumbled across the desert area yelling for help. She came to a police car and told the officer that Blake had shot her, her sister, and a friend. One of the officers ran to the area from which Kim emerged and found Sophear dead. Van Dine, however, was still breathing. She was transported to the hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries a few hours later.
Meanwhile, Blake fled to Los Angeles along with Chung, Lim, and his friend, Vandal, in Chung's Blazer. During the drive, Blake and Vandal concocted Blake's alibi. When they arrived in Los Angeles, Vandal wrapped Blake's gun in a towel and threw it in the sewer. They also stopped to buy hand cleaner. Blake scrubbed his hands with it and tossed the remainder down the sewer.
While in Los Angeles, Blake sought medical treatment for his injuries at a local hospital but lied to medical personnel about how he incurred his injury. During a phone call Blake received at the hospital, Chung heard him say, Blake left the hospital the day after being admitted. He, Lim, and Chung drove to the San Bernardino, California area and then headed back to Las Vegas. On March 8, 2003, police officers in Barstow, California, who were on the lookout for Chung's Blazer, pulled the vehicle over with weapons drawn. Blake, Lim, and Chung were arrested without incident.
Blake asserted an insanity defense at trial. To support that defense, he relied on testimony from his sister, Arlene Oliver, and a psychologist, Dr. Louis Mortillaro. Oliver testified that when Blake arrived at her home around 3 a.m. on the morning after the shootings, he appeared irrational and delusional. He asked for a ride and then hid in Oliver's car, seeming afraid that someone was after him. Dr. Mortillaro testified to his opinion regarding Blake's mental state based on a series of tests and several hours of interviews with Blake, his brother and sister, and Ramos. Dr. Mortillaro opined that Blake was in a compromised mental state at the time of the shootings, meaning that "he would have difficulty determining right from wrong and thinking logically." He also opined that Blake suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) resulting from the stab wound he received during the altercation with Sophear. During cross-examination, Dr. Mortillaro testified that he was unaware of several violent outbursts by Blake and agreed that he "absolutely" would have preferred to have had that information prior to his diagnosis.
The State rebutted Blake's insanity defense with testimony from psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Bittker who disagreed with both diagnoses offered by the defense expert. First, Dr. Bittker disagreed that Blake suffered a brief reactive psychosis and stated that Dr. Mortillaro's opinion did not correspond to any professional standard or to Dr. Bittker's clinical experience. Second, Dr. Bittker testified that Blake's PTSD resulted from the shootings, not from being stabbed. Dr. Bittker concluded that, based upon a reasonable degree of medical certainty, Blake understood the nature of his actions when he shot the victims.
The jury found Blake guilty of the first-degree murders of Sophear and Van Dine and the attempted murder of Kim, all with the use of a deadly weapon. At the penalty hearing, the State presented evidence concerning Blake's criminal history, including: (1) a conviction for misdemeanor battery with substantial bodily harm for hitting a 17-year-old boy with a baseball bat, resulting in stitches to the boy's head, a broken nose, and bruises; (2) a misdemeanor disorderly-conduct conviction for stabbing a 17-year-old boy; (3) an arrest for hitting his girlfriend and pushing her to the ground; (4) an encounter with a motorist in which Blake threw a cup of ice at the motorist and punched her twice in the face; (5) a misdemeanor malicious-destruction-of-personal-property conviction for rendering his girlfriend's car inoperable; (6) a misdemeanor conviction for brandishing a weapon for producing two butcher knives and threatening to kill a woman's son; (7) a misdemeanor conviction for conspiracy to possess a controlled substance resulting from police officers' discovery of 164 grams of marijuana and $1000 on Blake's person; (8) a felony conviction for the possession of a forged passport; and (9) two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution. Chung testified to beatings she sustained from Blake and his controlling behavior. The State also presented victim impact testimony from the victims' family members.
The jury found three circumstances aggravated each murder— Blake had been convicted of a felony involving the use or threat of violence to the person of another (the attempted murder of Kim), the murder was committed to avoid or prevent a lawful arrest, and Blake had been convicted of more than one murder in the immediate proceeding. One or more jurors also found three mitigating circumstances—Blake's remorse; his mental, emotional, or physical state at the time of the incident; and thelack of any evidence of a long-standing plan to commit murder. In weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the jury determined that any mitigating circumstances were insufficient to outweigh the aggravating circumstances and returned a sentence of death for each murder. This court affirmed the judgment of conviction and death sentences. Blake v. State, 121 Nev. 779, 121 P.3d 567 (2005).
Blake filed a timely proper person post-conviction petition for a writ of habeas corpus and later filed a supplemental petition through appointed counsel. The district court denied the petition without conducting an evidentiary hearing. On February 18, 2009, this court upheld the district court's judgment and remittitur issued on May 19, 2009. Blake v. State, Docket No. 50552 (Order of Affirmance, February 18, 2009). On April 22, 2010, Blake filed a second post-conviction petition. The State filed a motion to dismiss the petition on the grounds that Blake's claims were procedurally barred and several claims were barred by the law-of-the-case doctrine. The district court dismissed the petition without conducting an evidentiary hearing, concluding that Blake's claims were procedurally barred or barred by the law-of-the-case doctrine. This appeal followed.
Because Blake filed his petition approximately five years after this court resolved his direct appeal, the petition was untimely under NRS 34.726(1). The petition was also successive and therefore procedurally barred pursuant to NRS...
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