Branch v. Mcdonough, Case No. 4:06cv486–RH.
| Decision Date | 30 March 2010 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 4:06cv486–RH. |
| Citation | 779 F.Supp.2d 1309 |
| Parties | Eric Scott BRANCH, Petitioner,v.James R. McDONOUGH, et al., Respondents. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Florida |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Eric S. Branch, Raiford, FL, pro se.Michael Paul Reiter, Michael P. Reiter–Tallahassee FL, Venice, FL, for Petitioner.
Charmaine Mary Millsaps, Tallahassee, FL, for Respondents.
ORDER DENYING THE PETITION
A Florida state-court jury convicted the petitioner Eric Scott Branch of sexually battering and murdering a student who was walking to her car alone at night on a college campus. The jury recommended and the judge imposed the death sentence. Mr. Branch was unsuccessful on direct appeal and in a state-court collateral attack. He now has filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He seeks relief on multiple grounds, including alleged errors by the trial judge and ineffective assistance of counsel. But the trial judge conducted a full and fair trial that was remarkably free of error. And Mr. Branch's attorney performed quite well. Mr. Branch lost not because of any ruling by the trial judge or any deficiency in his attorney's performance but because of the overwhelming weight of the evidence. This order denies the petition.
Susan Morris was a student at the University of West Florida. Her last class on Monday, January 11, 1993, ended at about 8:20 p.m. She walked alone to her car, a red Toyota Celica with an after-market black antenna and a broken left taillight. The car was near the far end of what was, at that time of night, an isolated parking lot. She never made it into the car. She was savagely beaten, sexually assaulted with a stick from a tree branch, strangled, and left dead in the nearby woods covered with leaves and branches. The medical examiner, who has conducted thousands of autopsies, testified that he will always remember this one because of the extent of the injuries.
Mr. Branch, who was 23, left his home in Indiana and moved to Panama City, Florida, where his cousin was a college student, in November 1992. Mr. Branch soon learned that an Indiana warrant was out for his arrest. He may not have known precisely why. As it turns out, the warrant was issued because, through an error, he had been released too early from a prison sentence for sexual battery on a 14–year–old girl. Mr. Branch may or may not have known that Florida authorities also were looking for him in connection with an unrelated sexual battery.
After arriving in Florida, Mr. Branch initially lived with his cousin. Mr. Branch parked the car he drove—an old Pontiac Bonneville that his grandfather had provided—in the lot of the condominium building next door, so that if law enforcement officers found the car, they would not also find him. In early January 1993, the car was towed, apparently because it was parked in the condominium lot without permission. Mr. Branch began staying with others, fearing arrest if he stayed with his cousin. Meanwhile, Mr. Branch's brother, who had come to Florida to visit Mr. Branch and the cousin, retrieved the Pontiac from the impound lot. On Friday, January 8, 1993, Mr. Branch used his key to take the car without telling his brother or cousin. Mr. Branch's aunt, who also was visiting from Indiana, reported the car missing.
On Friday, January 8, 1993, Mr. Branch headed west to Pensacola in the Pontiac. He was at a nightclub for most of the night. He checked into a motel at about 6:00 a.m. He slept, ate, and went to the University of West Florida in the early afternoon on Saturday, January 9. Mr. Branch went to the Rathskeller, an on-campus hangout, and befriended a student. Mr. Branch took her to the same nightclub he had visited the night before and told her he had met a member of a band. Mr. Branch and the student later went to his motel room, where they spent the night. They spent all day Sunday together as well, eventually spending the night in the student's dormitory room.
Mr. Branch and the student were apart while she attended classes on Monday, January 11, but Mr. Branch saw her before and after. They ate dinner together at the Rathskeller. At perhaps 6:30 p.m., the student left to study. They planned to meet again, either at the Rathskeller or in the library, when she finished studying.
The student studied for a couple of hours and went to meet Mr. Branch. He was not at the Rathskeller or in the library. Unable to find him, the student turned to other activities. She called her own room to check for messages at about 10:30 or 11:00 p.m., and, to her surprise, Mr. Branch answered; she had told him where to find the key. The student returned to the room, where she noticed that Mr. Branch's boots were wet and that he had a cut on his hand. He said he had met some people at the Rathskeller, gone with them to a bar, and gotten in a fight when they tried to make him pay for all the drinks. The student and Mr. Branch again spent the night together in the dormitory room. Mr. Branch left early on the morning of Tuesday, January 12. The student did not hear from Mr. Branch again.
As it turns out, Mr. Branch went at least two places while the student was unable to find him on Monday evening. He drove to the Pensacola airport, parked, and took a taxi back to campus. And he went to the remote parking lot, encountered Ms. Morris, and stole her red Toyota. All of this he admits. What else he did to her is disputed.
Mr. Branch left Pensacola on Tuesday, January 12, headed back to Panama City in the red Toyota. His goal was to pick up his paycheck from a fast-food restaurant where he had briefly worked. He stopped on the way at a store where a friend worked. Mr. Branch later made it to Panama City and met up with his brother and cousin. The friend, the brother, and the cousin all saw that Mr. Branch was driving the red Toyota. He told his cousin that he had gotten it from a girl in Pensacola who attended the University of West Florida. The brother and cousin both noticed the car's after-market black antenna, and the cousin noticed its broken left taillight.
Mr. Branch left Pensacola headed back north, making it to Bowling Green, Kentucky. He spoke with a student at a university dormitory there. Mr. Branch abandoned the red Toyota on a nearby street and called his grandfather, who lived not far across the state line in Indiana, to pick him up. After arriving in Indiana and speaking with his attorney, Mr. Branch turned himself in. An officer who took his fingerprints noticed a cut on his hand.
Ms. Morris's father reported her missing early on Tuesday, January 12. Officers soon began connecting the dots. Panama City officers had put out a be-on-the-lookout bulletin or “BOLO” on the Pontiac, as part of their unrelated effort to find Mr. Branch. Pensacola officers put out a BOLO on the red Toyota. As part of the effort to find Mr. Branch, Panama City officers talked with his cousin and brother, who said Mr. Branch was driving a red Toyota. The officers matched up the BOLOs. Pensacola officers learned that the Pontiac had been seen on the West Florida campus and found it at the airport. They impounded the Pontiac while obtaining a warrant. Officers found the student with whom Mr. Branch had stayed, and she both identified him and turned over other evidence, including a tape case he had left behind that, as officers eventually determined, had his fingerprints on it. A classmate knew where Ms. Morris had parked. With the help of a dog, officers found the body. After a warrant was obtained, a search of the Pontiac turned up bloody boots, clothes, and other evidence, including blood on the car's seats. Enzyme tests—and later DNA tests—matched some of the blood to Ms. Morris. A blood-splatter expert eventually concluded that the blood on the boots had come from medium-velocity splatter—consistent with a beating—and that the assailant most likely had been standing over and straddling the victim. Forensic tests on a towel from the student's room, that she said Mr. Branch had used after showering, found blood, but it did not match the DNA of either Mr. Branch or Ms. Morris.
The obvious explanation for the evidence was that Mr. Branch committed the murder. He was on the campus; the proof of this was irrefutable. He stole Ms. Morris's car and drove it first to Panama City and then to Kentucky; the proof of this was irrefutable. Ms. Morris's blood was on Mr. Branch's boots and in the Pontiac; the proof of this was irrefutable, or nearly so. And he was not in the Rathskeller or library as he had said he would be. It was an exceptionally strong case.
Mr. Branch had the various law-enforcement reports available to him before the trial and studied most of them with care, as he has admitted. Trial Tr. 834–35. He testified at the trial and provided an account that, if believed, would explain most of the evidence—even the DNA on the towel that didn't match. The difficulty was that the explanation was and is more than a little farfetched.
Mr. Branch's story was this. On Monday evening, when the student with whom he had spent the last two nights left to go study, Mr. Branch was at the Rathskeller and, to his surprise, saw the band member he had met at the nightclub on Friday, January 8. The band member's first name, like Mr. Branch's, was Eric. Mr. Branch was unsure of the last name; he could remember only that it was “Peters or St. Peters or St. Pierre or something to that effect.” Trial Tr. 779.
Mr. Branch told the other Eric that he was on the lam and needed a car. The other Eric said he could hot wire one if Mr. Branch could get in. Soon Mr. Branch and the other Eric were in the parking lot looking for a car to steal.
They saw the red Toyota parked off by itself. Perfect. Mr. Branch was about to break in when they saw Ms. Morris coming. They sat on a curb...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Branch v. State
...petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida. Branch v. McDonough (Branch III ), 779 F.Supp.2d 1309 (N.D. Fla. 2010). The federal district court denied the petition, but issued a limited certificate of appealability. Id. at 1330......
-
Fulmer v. Leisure Bay Indus. Inc.
... ... parties have not conceded full jurisdiction, to order the remand of a case removed from a state court. Is it a dispositive order? The protocol in ... ...