Ferrell v. Head
| Decision Date | 16 November 2005 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action File No. 1:02-CV-2896-TWT. |
| Citation | 398 F.Supp.2d 1273 |
| Parties | Eric Lynn FERRELL, Petitioner, v. Frederick HEAD, Warden, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Georgia |
Gretchen M. Stork, Federal Defender Program, Atlanta, GA, Mark Evan Olive, Office of Mark E. Olive, Tallahassee, FL, for Petitioner.
Beth Attaway Burton, Mary Beth Westmoreland, Susan Virginia Boleyn, Thurbert E. Baker, Office of State Attorney General, Atlanta, GA, for Respondent.
This is a habeas corpus action in a death penalty case. It is before the Court on the First Amended Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus by a Person in State Custody [Doc. 34]. For the reasons set forth below, the First Amended Petition is DENIED.
The Petitioner Eric Lynn Ferrell was convicted in 1988 of the murder of his 72 year old grandmother and his 15 year old cousin. Ferrell spent the night of December 29, 1987, at the DeKalb County home of his grandmother, Willie Myrt Lowe. Ferrell's cousin, Tony Kilgore, was also staying with Ms. Lowe that night. Early the next morning, Ferrell returned to the nearby home of his parents. He then obtained a ride with a friend to meet with his probation officer so that he could pay a past-due probation fee. Ferrell told the friend that he would be able to pay for the gasoline for the trip because he had recently received $900 in compensation from Rockdale County for wrongful detention. Ferrell paid his past-due probation fee, bought a six-pack of beer for his friend and himself, and then called home. A neighbor answered his home phone and informed Ferrell that his grandmother was "kinda sick." Ferrell, however, told his friend that he had been informed that someone had hurt his grandmother. Ferrell speculated to the friend that the mafia might have hurt his grandmother in retaliation for a killing recently committed by his uncle. Ferrell returned to his grandmother's house, where the bodies of his grandmother and cousin had been discovered. Each had been killed by two small caliber gunshots to the head. A large quantity of cash and rolled coins, which Ms. Lowe generally kept in her home, was missing.
Ferrell and other relatives gave witness statements at the police station. Ferrell initially stated that he had left his grandmother's house that morning to go to work and did not remember anything unusual other than two hang-up telephone calls and some noises the night before. He did recall seeing a blue car in front of the house as he left in the morning. Ferrell was not a suspect at this time. Instead, the police suspected this was a revenge-type killing by members of the family of a man murdered by two of Ferrell's uncles a few weeks earlier. This initial suspicion was shared by most members of Ferrell's family, and was consistent with the evidence at the scene. The home had not been ransacked, the police at first did not realize the victims had been robbed, and the victims had been killed execution style by gunshot wounds to the head at very close range.
When Ferrell was questioned again later that day, the detectives learned that he was on probation for forgery and that he had been arrested for an unrelated murder. For their own safety, the detectives then asked Ferrell what he had in his pockets. Ferrell produced a large wad of money totaling over $500, which the detectives returned to him. Ferrell said that he had been paid $450 that morning for a roofing job. One of the detectives left and attempted to verify the source of the money. Ferrell's mother could not recall anyone coming by the house that morning to give Ferrell a large sum of money. The man for whom Ferrell had planned to work that day was contacted, and he stated that Ferrell had worked very little in the last two weeks, knew that he had no work scheduled that day, and usually had little or no money. The employer stated he often had to buy Ferrell's lunch for him. The detective also discovered that Ferrell's grandmother usually kept a large amount of money in her house, but that there was none in the house after her death.
One of Ferrell's uncles was interviewed and stated that before he was arrested he left a handgun with one of Ferrell's brothers. The detectives obtained a search warrant for the Ferrell residence. During the search of Ferrell's bedroom the police found a.22 caliber handgun that was shown at trial to be the murder weapon. They also found two boxes of .22 caliber shells. Four shells were missing. The police then arrested Ferrell for the murders. In a search incident to his arrest, four .22 caliber shell casings matching the ammunition found in his bedroom and bearing markings consistent with having been fired by the murder weapon were discovered in Ferrell's back pocket.
Ferrell asked to speak with detectives after his arrest and the discovery of the spent .22 caliber shells in his pocket. At that time and in his later trial testimony, Ferrell gave the following account of the murders. As he was leaving his grandmother's house, two unknown men confronted Ferrell and demanded to see his uncle, who had killed a man six days earlier. When the men pushed their way into the house, Ferrell pulled out his .22 caliber handgun. The men forced him to drop his handgun by pulling out a .38 caliber handgun and a sawed-off shotgun. The two men searched the house, murdered Ferrell's grandmother and cousin with Ferrell's .22 caliber handgun, threw the still-loaded weapon on the bed next to the victims, put a large sum of money in Ferrell's pocket, told him to bring his uncle to them, and left the house.
In 1988, Ferrell was tried for the murders in the Superior Court of DeKalb County. He was convicted of two counts of malice murder for the fatal shooting of his 72-year-old grandmother and his 15-year-old cousin. He was also convicted of one count of armed robbery and one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Ferrell was sentenced to death on September 17, 1988. Ferrell moved for a new trial, and hearings on this motion were held on January 4, 1989, and April 10-11, 1990. The trial court denied Ferrell's motion for new trial, and the Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed his convictions and sentences on March 15, 1991. Ferrell v. State, 261 Ga. 115, 401 S.E.2d 741 (1991). On October 21, 1991, the United States Supreme Court denied Ferrell's petition for writ of certiorari. Ferrell v. Georgia, 502 U.S. 927, 112 S.Ct. 343, 116 L.Ed.2d 282 (1991), reh'g denied, 502 U.S. 1051, 112 S.Ct. 923, 116 L.Ed.2d 822 (1992).
Ferrell filed his initial state habeas corpus petition on July 19, 1995, and an amended petition on March 15, 1999. An evidentiary hearing was held on July 13, 1999. On February 8, 2001, the state habeas court vacated Ferrell's convictions and death sentence on the grounds of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel and a conflict of interest on the part of trial counsel. The warden appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia, and the Supreme Court reversed the order of the state habeas court and reinstated the Petitioner's convictions and sentences. Head v. Ferrell, 274 Ga. 399, 554 S.E.2d 155 (2001). Ferrell filed this federal habeas corpus action on October 21, 2002. The Petitioner's motion for leave to conduct discovery was denied. The case is before the Court for a ruling on the merits.
Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), a federal court may not grant habeas corpus relief for claims previously adjudicated on the merits by a state court unless the state court adjudication resulted in a decision that (1) "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," or (2) "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding."
A district court evaluating a habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) "`should survey the legal landscape' at the time the State court adjudicated the petitioner's claim to determine the applicable Supreme Court authority; the law is `clearly established' if Supreme Court precedent would have compelled a particular result in the case." Neelley v. Nagle, 138 F.3d 917, 923 (11th Cir.1998), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1075, 119 S.Ct. 811, 142 L.Ed.2d 671 (1999). A state court decision is "contrary to" clearly established federal law when it applies a rule that contradicts the governing law as set forth in cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). "A state-court decision will also be contrary to Court's clearly established precedent if the state court confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of this Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from our precedent." Id. at 406, 120 S.Ct. 1495. The Supreme Court in Williams held "that when a state-court decision unreasonably applies the law of this Court to the facts of a prisoner's case, a federal court applying § 2254(d)(1) may conclude that the state-court decision falls within the provision's `unreasonable application' clause." Id. at 409, 120 S.Ct. 1495. The Supreme Court also held that "a federal habeas court making the `unreasonable application' inquiry should ask whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable." Id.
The Petitioner asserts fourteen distinct and independently dispositive claims. It appears that counsel for the Petitioner assert what they consider to be the strongest claims first and the remaining claims in descending order. The Court will address them in the same order.
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