Faulkner v. State
| Decision Date | 27 April 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 42, 43, Sept. Term, 2019,42, 43, Sept. Term, 2019 |
| Parties | David R. FAULKNER v. STATE of Maryland Jonathan D. Smith v. State of Maryland |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Argued by John W.F. Chesley (Arianna M. Scavetti and Michael R. Dziuban, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, Washington, DC; Shawn Armbrust and Frances Walters, The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, George Washington University Law School, Washington, DC), on brief, for Petitioner (No. 42, Sept. Term, 2019).
Argued by Cathleen C. Brockmeyer, Assistant Attorney General (Brian E. Frosh, Attorney General of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for Respondent (No. 42, Sept. Term, 2019).
Argued by Donald P. Salzman (Nathan P. Wacker, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP, Washington, DC; Barry C. Scheck, The Innocence Project, New York, NY), on brief, for Petitioner (No. 43, Sept. Term, 2019).
Argued by Cathleen C. Brockmeyer, Assistant Attorney General (Brian E. Frosh, Attorney General of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for Respondent (No. 43, Sept. Term, 2019).
Amicus Curiae Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys Association in support of Petitioner: Erica J. Suter, Esquire, Law Offices Erica J. Suter, LLC, 6305 Ivy Lane, Suite 700, Greenbelt, MD 20770, Steven M. Klepper, Esquire, Kramon & Graham, P.A., One South Street, Suite 2600, Baltimore, MD 21202, Robin K. Henley, Esquire, Henley & Henley, 47 West Street, Annapolis, MD 21401, Andrew V. Jezic, Esquire, Jezic & Moyse, LLC, 2730 University Blvd. West #604, Wheaton, MD 20902.
Amicus Curiae the Innocence Network in support of Petitioner: Jonathan M. Cohen, Esquire, John Longstreth, Esquire, Daniel S. Cohen, Esquire K& L Gates LLP, 1601 K St. NW, Washington, DC 20006.
Amicus Curiae National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in support of Petitioner: David B. Smith, Esquire, Vice-Chair, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, 1660 L Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, Kristin Saetveit, Esquire, John S. Williams, Esquire, Jane Y. Chong, Esquire, Vanessa O. Omoroghomwan, Esquire, Williams & Connolly LLP, 725 Twelfth Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20005.
Argued before: McDonald, Watts, Hotten, Getty, Biran, Glenn T. Harrell, Jr. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), and Clayton Greene, Jr. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.
On the afternoon of January 5, 1987, Adeline Curry Wilford, 68, was brutally murdered in the kitchen of her home just outside Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. The Maryland State Police ("MSP") officers who arrived on the scene saw that the house had been ransacked. They discovered the palm print of a suspected burglar on the exterior of a propped-up window in the utility room of Ms. Wilford's home, as well as a palm print on the washing machine inside the utility room. MSP theorized that the burglar(s) who left the palm prints murdered Ms. Wilford. MSP was unable to match the palm prints to any person during the initial investigation. The case went cold.
Between 1991 and 1992, a confidential informant told MSP that his friend William Thomas had confessed to him that Thomas burglarized Ms. Wilford's home and stabbed Ms. Wilford to death. The informant further stated that Thomas said his accomplice in the crime was Ty Brooks. MSP learned that both Thomas and Ty Brooks had criminal records involving armed robbery and burglary convictions, respectively, in Talbot County in the 1980s, and that both suspects were at liberty on the day of the Wilford burglary and murder. However, MSP did not attempt to determine in 1991-92 whether the palm prints left at the scene of the crime matched the palm prints of either suspect. The case went cold again.
In January 2000, 13 years after the murder and at the urging of Ms. Wilford's son, MSP reopened the investigation by interviewing Beverly Haddaway. Haddaway told MSP that her nephew, Petitioner Jonathan D. Smith, as well as Petitioner David R. Faulkner and a third young man, Ray Andrews, were involved in the Wilford murder. Although the palm prints at the scene of the crime did not match Smith, Faulkner, or Andrews, and no other physical evidence linked them to the crime, authorities charged Smith, Faulkner, and Andrews with burglary, murder, and related offenses in the Circuit Court for Talbot County. The charges were based largely on statements made by Smith and Andrews, as well as Haddaway's claim that she saw the three young men walk out of a corn field approximately two-and-a-half to three miles away from the Wilford home on the afternoon of January 5, 1987, and that Smith had blood on his shirt at that time.
Andrews entered into a plea agreement with the State, under which the State agreed to recommend a five-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter. Andrews testified against Smith and Faulkner in separate jury trials in 2001. Haddaway also was a key witness for the State in both trials. In his trial, Smith admitted that he had made self-incriminating statements previously. However, Smith claimed that his prior confessions were false, and that he had admitted involvement in the crime to MSP only after officers threatened him with lethal injection and told him he would never see his family again if he did not confess. In his trial, Faulkner introduced evidence that showed he was paid for having worked on the day of the murder at his job in Centreville, Maryland, but did not produce a time-clock card or other evidence showing definitively that he was at work at the time of the murder.
Both Smith and Faulkner were convicted of burglary and murder, and both were sentenced to life in prison. Smith's and Faulkner's direct appeals and petitions for post-conviction relief proved unsuccessful.
By 2013, Smith and Faulkner both had new sets of attorneys, who moved the circuit court to order the State to run the unidentified palm prints through Maryland's recently created automated print identification system. After an MSP fingerprint expert did so, he discovered that the palm prints left by the suspected burglar belong to Ty Brooks. The State has never theorized, let alone produced any evidence, that Smith, Faulkner, and Andrews worked with Ty Brooks and William Thomas to burglarize Ms. Wilford's home and kill her.
Smith and Faulkner also learned in 2012 that the State had suppressed recorded pretrial conversations between Haddaway and an MSP officer assigned to the Wilford case. Those recordings revealed, among other things, that Haddaway demanded and received the dismissal of drug charges against her grandson in a secret agreement that Haddaway made with law enforcement authorities shortly before she testified against Smith and Faulkner.
Smith and Faulkner filed petitions for writs of actual innocence under Md. Code Ann., Crim. Proc. ("CP") § 8-301 , contending that, if the newly discovered palm print evidence and pertinent portions of the Haddaway recordings (as well as other purportedly newly discovered evidence) had been provided to their juries, there is a substantial or significant possibility that the juries would have reached different results. The Circuit Court for Talbot County denied relief to both Smith and Faulkner, and the Court of Special Appeals affirmed. For the reasons discussed in this Opinion, we will reverse the denial of Smith's and Faulkner's petitions for writs of actual innocence and order new trials for both Petitioners.1
At approximately 3:00 p.m. on the afternoon of January 5, 1987, a neighbor of Adeline Wilford discovered her body in the kitchen of Ms. Wilford's farmhouse off Kingston Road near Easton. Subsequent investigation by MSP revealed that, at 2:10 p.m. that day, Ms. Wilford was photographed at a bank in Easton by the bank's security system, while driving her car through the drive-through lane. Thus, the murder occurred after Ms. Wilford returned home, at some point between 2:10 and 3:00 p.m.
Ms. Wilford's neighbor notified police of the murder, and multiple MSP units responded to the farmhouse, arriving shortly before 3:30 p.m. When the officers arrived, they saw only Ms. Wilford's car parked in the driveway. There was enough space between Ms. Wilford's car and the porch for another car to have parked between Ms. Wilford's car and the house.
When they entered the home, the officers found Ms. Wilford lying face up on the kitchen floor, wearing a blue wool coat. She had a pair of glasses on a cord around her neck. Her keys hung in the lock of the back door leading into the kitchen, and bags of groceries were on the kitchen table. There were numerous stab wounds to Ms. Wilford's hands and face, and a large butcher knife was imbedded in Ms. Wilford's cheek/eye area. There were numerous defensive wounds on Ms. Wilford's hands and arms, suggesting that she had struggled with her killer, attempting to ward off the attack.
The police observed that a ground-floor window on the west side of the house was propped open with a stick. Given that it was a cold day in January, officers found the open window noteworthy. The open window led to a utility room containing a washing machine.
It was apparent to the officers that Ms. Wilford's home had been "ransacked"; dressers were opened with "stuff taken out," suggesting that "someone had broken into the house and was looking for money or other goods." Ms. Wilford's tan pocketbook was missing, as was her diamond and sapphire ring and her wallet containing credit cards and an unknown amount of cash. The officers lifted latent fingerprints and palm prints from various places in the home, including the exterior of the utility room window and the washing machine in the utility room.
Based on these observations, MSP theorized that one or more individuals burglarized Ms. Wilford's home on the afternoon of January 5 by entering the utility room through the propped-open window, and were in the process of stealing items when Ms. Wilford returned home. According to this theory, the burglar(s) stabbed Ms. Wilford to...
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