Cannon v. State of Alabama

• Decision Date: 12 September 1977
• Docket Number: No. 76-2118,76-2118
• Citation: 558 F.2d 1211
• Parties: Charles William CANNON, Petitioner-Appellant, v. STATE OF ALABAMA, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1211

558 F.2d 1211

Charles William CANNON, Petitioner-Appellant, v. STATE OF ALABAMA, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 76-2118.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 12, 1977.

Robert R. Bryan, Birmingham, Ala. (Court-appointed), Leon St. John, West Palm Beach, Fla., for petitioner-appellant.

William J. Baxley, Atty. Gen., Birmingham, Ala., Randolph P. Reaves, Asst. Atty. Gen., Montgomery, Ala., Barry V. Hutner, Asst. Attys. Gen., Birmingham, Ala., for respondent-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Before GOLDBERG, SIMPSON and FAY, Circuit Judges.

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge:

In a Birmingham service station on the night of May 31, 1972, a black customer shot and killed the manager, son of the city's deputy police chief. The state of Alabama charged Charles William Cannon with murder in connection with that shooting. The sole issue at trial was the identity of the assailant. The state presented one eyewitness who identified Cannon as the killer and another eyewitness who placed Cannon at the scene just prior to the event. Cannon impeached the testimony of those two witnesses and presented extensive alibi evidence. A jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and fixed his sentence at twenty-three years imprisonment. The court entered judgment accordingly.

Cannon now comes before us alleging that the state committed two constitutional errors affecting the determination of guilt or innocence. We agree. The first was the prosecutor's failure to disclose to the defense the existence of an eyewitness who would positively identify the assailant as someone other than Cannon. See Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963); United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976). Because the state's evidence was already very weak, the undisclosed eyewitness testimony would have created a reasonable doubt of Cannon's guilt. The second constitutional error was the staging of a post-indictment showup at which Cannon's counsel was not present. See United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967). The state did not establish that the witness's in-court identification of Cannon derived from a source independent of the impermissible showup. Indeed, the record demonstrates the contrary.

Either of these errors, standing alone, would invalidate Cannon's conviction. We reverse the district court's denial of habeas relief. ¹

I.

The Supreme Court has recently dealt at some length with a prosecutor's duty to disclose to the defense exculpatory information. See United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976). Emphasizing that "the prudent prosecutor will resolve doubtful questions in favor of disclosure," 427 U.S. at 108, 96 S.Ct. at 2399, 49 L.Ed.2d at 352, the Court held that failure to disclose information for which there has been no specific request violates due process only "if the omitted evidence creates a reasonable doubt that did not otherwise exist." 427 U.S. at 112, 96 S.Ct. at 2401, 49 L.Ed.2d at 355. ² Applying this standard requires an analysis of the evidence adduced at trial and of the probable impact of the undisclosed information. In this context we cannot merely consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the government but must instead evaluate all the evidence as it would bear on the deliberations of a factfinder.

Our careful review of the record indicates that, even without the testimony of the undisclosed eyewitness, evidence of Cannon's guilt was extremely weak. Evidence linking Cannon to the shooting came from but two witnesses, only one of whom testified during the prosecution's case in chief. That witness was Samuel Wheeler, an attendant at the gas station and an eyewitness to the crime. His testimony apparently tracks the state's theory of the case.

The substance of that testimony follows. Wheeler, a sixteen-year-old student, was working at Birmingham's Crystal Service Station on the afternoon of May 31, 1972. Jack Warren, Jr., the victim, was in charge of the station. ³ Warren had been in the station drinking beer for nearly two hours when two black men in an old beige Dodge pulled up to one of the pumps. Wheeler identified the driver as Josh Stephens and the passenger as Cannon. Wheeler pumped two dollars worth of gas and received payment from the driver. The passenger went into the station building. Apparently upon a delay in removing the car from the pump area, ⁴ Warren brusquely told the passenger to move the car and to leave the office. The passenger left the office after disclaiming ownership of the car or authority to move it.

Warren told Wheeler that the passenger had been "trying to get smart." Warren picked up a gun off a storage room shelf and put it in his pocket. Apparently upon hearing the earlier remark, the passenger came back inside. Warren repeated his instruction to move the car, and the passenger repeated his statement that he could not do so. Warren pulled the gun from his pocket. The passenger overpowered Warren, took the gun, and shot and killed Warren.

The defense challenged no part of Wheeler's testimony except his identifications of the driver and the passenger. The attack on Wheeler's credibility regarding that testimony was telling. Wheeler admitted making statements to several persons disavowing knowledge of who had committed the crime. Immediately after the shooting Wheeler told the police, a newspaper reporter, and his own mother that he could not identify the assailant. Because Wheeler concededly knew Cannon, those earlier statements directly contradicted Wheeler's trial testimony. In addition, Wheeler first identified Cannon four weeks after the shooting. During that four-week period, police concededly took Wheeler to City Hall three or four times and talked with him on at least ten or fifteen other occasions, constantly urging him to implicate Cannon. Perhaps most significantly, Wheeler testified that a detective told him that he would go to jail if he failed to identify Cannon as the assailant. ⁵ Throughout the four-week period, Wheeler denied Cannon's involvement.

The defense thus left Wheeler's testimony badly impaired. The only additional witnesses in the prosecution's case in chief were the victim's father (who testified to the undisputed identity of the victim), the deputy coroner (whose testimony included nothing of relevance here), and a police sergeant (who denied threatening Wheeler but admitted questioning Wheeler perhaps more than twenty times in the weeks prior to Wheeler's identification of Cannon). The state had brought forth only one witness linking Cannon to the crime. That witness testified that he had identified Cannon after four weeks of taking a contrary position and after the police threatened to jail him if he did not make the identification.

In response to the already weak government showing, the defense presented extensive evidence. Cannon testified that he had been playing the card game "whist" at the time of the shooting. No fewer than thirteen witnesses corroborated that story. In addition, five separate witnesses testified that they had been at the service station shortly before the shooting, observed the two men in the beige car, and knew that neither of those men was Cannon. ⁶ All of these witnesses, then, provided testimony directly contradicting that of the state's sole substantive witness to that point, Samuel Wheeler. Moreover, the defense presented testimony that Wheeler had a bad reputation for truthfulness. ⁷

On rebuttal the prosecution produced a second witness linking Cannon to the shooting. Eleanor Ann Adaway had been in the station shortly before the shooting and had seen the beige car. Unlike every other witness who had seen the car, Adaway testified that it carried three, not two men. Like Samuel Wheeler, she identified the driver as Josh Stephens. She said she had not seen the front-seat passenger's face and could not identify him. She testified that the third person, sitting in the back seat, was Cannon.

The defense succeeded in casting considerable doubt on Adaway's testimony. First, her account was inconsistent with that of every other witness; she alone had placed Cannon in the car's rear seat or indicated there were three passengers. Second, she had been unable to recognize Cannon's photograph shortly after the event and had made her in-court identification only after a suggestive pretrial procedure affording little basis for confidence in the result. ⁸ Thus Adaway's testimony, like Wheeler's, was anything but compelling. The state produced no other witness linking Cannon to the crime.

It is against this background that we must assess the evidence the prosecutor withheld from the defense. That evidence was the testimony of Gracie Mae Sherrod. She said she was buying gas at the service station when the beige car pulled in. There were two blacks in the car. The passenger got out and spoke to Sherrod. She recognized him as Robert Daniels. She also knew Cannon but did not see him at the station that night.

On the night of the shooting, Sherrod provided this information to a Birmingham police detective. She showed the detective where Daniels lived. The detective made notes. Sherrod heard nothing further about the crime until after Cannon's conviction. Only then did the defense learn of Sherrod.

This undisclosed information clearly warrants reversal under the Agursstandard. As the Court emphasized, "The proper standard . . . must reflect our overriding concern with the justice of the finding of guilt." United States v. Agurs, supra, 427 U.S. at 112, 96 S.Ct. at 2401, 49 L.Ed.2d at 354 (footnote omitted). In the case at bar the "justice of the finding of guilt" was subject to considerable doubt even without the Agurs violation. Sherrod's eyewitness testimony positively identifying the passenger said to have committed the crime...