Bowen v. Maynard
| Decision Date | 25 June 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. 86-1136,86-1136 |
| Citation | 799 F.2d 593 |
| Parties | Clifford Henry BOWEN, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Gary D. MAYNARD, Warden, Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Respondent-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Robert A. Nance, Asst. Atty. Gen., Deputy Chief, Federal Div. (Michael C. Turpen, Atty. Gen. of Oklahoma, and Robert W. Cole, Asst. Atty. Gen., with him on brief), State of Okl., for respondent-appellant.
Jack B. Zimmermann (Jim E. Lavine of Zimmermann & Lavine, P.C., Houston, Tex., and Patrick A. Williams of Williams, Donovan and Savage, Tulsa, Okl., with him on brief), of Zimmermann & Lavine, P.C., Houston, Tex., for petitioner-appellee.
Before HOLLOWAY, Chief Judge, LOGAN and SEYMOUR, Circuit Judges.
Clifford Henry Bowen has been incarcerated in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary under three death sentences for over five years. Convicted of a triple murder, Bowen maintains his innocence and argues that the State of Oklahoma violated his federal constitutional rights when it failed to disclose to the defense certain material concerning an early suspect in the case. Having considered the withheld material, we hold that it casts such grave doubt on the convictions that they cannot be permitted to stand. The prosecution had a federal constitutional duty to reveal the material
either with or without a specific request by the defense. We therefore affirm the district court's ruling that the convictions are constitutionally infirm.
Bowen was arrested on August 28, 1980 and pled not guilty to an information charging him and Harold Behrens with three counts of first degree murder in violation of Okla.Stat.Ann. tit. 21, Sec. 701.7 (West 1983). Behrens was convicted first in a separate trial and sentenced to life imprisonment. His conviction was affirmed by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. See Behrens v. Oklahoma, 699 P.2d 156 (Okla.Crim.App.1985).
The case against Bowen was tried to a jury before Oklahoma County District Judge Raymond Naifeh. The jury returned three guilty verdicts and recommended death sentences on each count. Bowen filed a motion for new trial and then an amendment to that motion, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel. Judge Naifeh overruled the motion and signed the death warrants.
While his appeal was pending before the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, Bowen filed in that court a second motion for new trial alleging newly-discovered evidence and the failure to disclose exculpatory material. The Court of Criminal Appeals remanded the matter to the trial court to determine if an evidentiary hearing was appropriate. Judge Naifeh conducted hearings and filed findings of fact and conclusions of law overruling the second motion. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Bowen's convictions. See Bowen v. Oklahoma, 715 P.2d 1093 (Okla.Crim.App.1984). The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari, see Bowen v. Oklahoma, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 3537, 87 L.Ed.2d 660 (1985), and the Court of Criminal Appeals set Bowen's execution for August 12, 1985.
Bowen filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and an application for stay of execution in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. He alleged denial of due process by the prosecution's withholding of exculpatory evidence and denial of effective assistance of counsel. United States District Judge Thomas R. Brett granted the stay and held an evidentiary hearing intended to supplement evidence taken in the state proceeding.
The federal district court filed an opinion and findings of fact and conclusions of law. The court set aside Bowen's convictions and issued the writ of habeas corpus, although it held that the State may re-try Bowen for the triple murder. The court based its decision on the withheld evidence and declined to reach the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. The court thereafter denied the State's motion to stay Bowen's release pending appeal. The court provided several conditions for his release, including that Bowen be required to post a $100,000 appearance bond. The court stayed the effect of its decision pending disposition of a stay motion in this court. This panel heard oral argument on the State's motion to stay and denied the motion but stayed the effect of our order for seven days. Justice White stayed the writ of habeas corpus pending appeal before this court.
On the merits of its appeal, the State contends that (1) the federal district court erred in finding that the defense made a specific oral request for a list of other suspects, and (2) the withheld material is not exculpatory within the meaning of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), and its progeny.
A notorious triple murder occurred in Oklahoma City on July 6, 1980 at approximately 2:00 a.m. Ray Peters, Lawrence Evans, and Marvin Nowlin were fatally shot as they sat around a poolside table at the Guest House Inn motel. Although the murder weapon was not found, bullets and Other information pointed in the direction of Harold Dean Behrens. Formerly a detective with the Oklahoma City Police Department, Behrens made his living selling drugs at the time of the crime. Ray Peters, alleged by the State to be the primary victim, worked for Behrens as a drug dealer. The month before his death, Peters had been arrested in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma on drunk driving and drug charges. Behrens had gotten Peters out of jail and was allegedly concerned about the excessive use of whiskey and Dilaudid by Peters, the loss of profits due to Peters' consumption of the goods, and the possibility that Peters would inform on him to the authorities. A short time before the shooting, Behrens and his lover Herman Borden had been sitting at the poolside table with Peters and various other people including the identification witnesses. Upon leaving the table and in full view of the stranger lurking in the concession area, Behrens put his hand on Peters' shoulder and said he would see him tomorrow. Jack Zumwalt, Behrens' former lover, testified at trial that it was not Behrens' custom to make physical contact with people upon parting company. The State argued that Behrens' gesture "fingered" Peters for the hit man.
shell casings recovered at the scene revealed that a .45 caliber automatic weapon with silver-tipped, hollow point bullets had been used. Several witnesses related that an unfamiliar man had been seen in the pool concession area before the shooting and that, after gunshots were heard, he ran and fled in a waiting vehicle.
Based on descriptions of the man seen in the pool area before the shooting, provided primarily by Mary Lee Chilton and Carrie Pitchford, a police flyer was circulated containing a composite sketch and bearing the following caption:
Def. trial ex. 1.
Upon hearing the description of the alleged assailant and the connection with Behrens, Detective Sergeant David McBride of the Oklahoma City Police Department thought of Clifford Henry Bowen. In 1975, McBride had headed the department's organized crime detail. Behrens was a detective under his supervision and brought information to the detail regarding a man named Jerry Ray James. Bowen was seen with James and became an object of surveillance. Toward the latter stages of the investigation, Behrens left the police department; shortly thereafter, James and Bowen were no longer seen in Oklahoma City. No charges against James or Bowen arose out of the investigation, although at trial the State relied on the investigation to buttress its theory that Behrens had retained Bowen as a professional hit man.
McBride recalled this investigation five years past and found the description of the suspect reminiscent of Bowen: Rec., vol. V, trial trans., vol. II, at 386-87 (emphasis added). McBride pulled a picture of Bowen from police records and brought the information to homicide detectives, who presented the picture to Chilton and Pitchford in a photo array consisting of two groups of five photos each. Group No. 1 featured Bowen without his customary horn-rimmed eyeglasses.
None of the men in the first group had mustaches. In Group No. 2, three of the five men, including the suspect Lee Crowe, see infra Part I(D), had mustaches. Both witnesses identified Bowen in the array and subsequently in a live lineup, although it is disputed whether Chilton also had positively identified a man named William Wayne Simmons from a photo array, and a police detective in a lineup. Chilton underwent hypnosis in an attempt to sharpen her memory of the events, but the fact that she had been hypnotized was never presented to the jury, see rec., vol. III, trial trans., vol. I, at 287-327, and it first appears in the record in the first motion for new trial, see id. vol. III, trial, trans., vol. III, at 913-15.
Following the identification of Bowen by Chilton and Pitchford, police obtained an arrest warrant on August 27. That same day an information was filed charging Harold Dean Behrens and John Doe with the murders. On August 29, Bowen was interrogated by Oklahoma City detectives with counsel present and was taken into custody. Bowen's name was substituted for John Doe on the information.
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