Floyd v. Meachum

• Decision Date: 29 June 1990
• Docket Number: No. 1183,D,1183
• Citation: 907 F.2d 347
• Parties: Robert L. FLOYD, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Larry MEACHUM, Commissioner of Correction, State of Connecticut, Respondent-Appellee. ocket 89-2463.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 347

907 F.2d 347

Robert L. FLOYD, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Larry MEACHUM, Commissioner of Correction, State of Connecticut, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 1183, Docket 89-2463.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued May 3, 1990.

Decided June 29, 1990.

Timothy H. Everett, Hartford, Conn., University of Connecticut, School of Law Legal Clinic, for petitioner-appellant.

Steven M. Sellers, Wallingford, Conn., Asst. State's Atty., Chief, Appellate Unit, Office of the Chief State's Atty., for respondent-appellee.

Before LUMBARD, FEINBERG and WINTER, Circuit Judges.

FEINBERG, Circuit Judge:

This is one of those rare cases where the improper comments in a prosecutor's summation were so numerous and, in combination, so prejudicial that a new trial is required. Petitioner Robert L. Floyd appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, Peter C. Dorsey, J., denying his application for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254. In January 1985, after a jury trial in Connecticut Superior Court, Floyd was found guilty of using a motor vehicle without the owner's permission and of arson in the third degree. Floyd was sentenced to a four and one-half year term of incarceration for those crimes, and his convictions were affirmed on appeal. See State v. Floyd, 10 Conn.App. 361, 523 A.2d 1323 (1987). After exhausting state court remedies, Floyd brought the habeas suit now before us. For reasons given below, we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand the case with instructions that the writ be granted unless the State grants a new trial within 90 days of the issuance of the mandate.

I. Background

We take our basic statement of facts from the majority opinion of the Connecticut Appellate Court in State v. Floyd, 10 Conn.App. at 361-63, 523 A.2d 1323:

The jury could reasonably have found the following facts. In the early morning of October 1, 1983, a fire was discovered in the back seat of a car parked in a lot on Mansfield Street, New Haven. The fire appeared to have been burning only a short time prior to its discovery. The car had no license plates, its left front tire was flat and there was fresh damage to the front bumper and hood. The automobile was registered in the name of Robert Gattison but was being used with his permission by his sister, Sherry Gattison, the live-in companion of the defendant [Floyd]. There were no signs of forced entry and it appeared that the car had been started with a key. The complainant, Sherry Gattison, had not given the defendant permission to drive the car. The defendant and the complainant were in the midst of breaking-up, and the defendant was planning to vacate the couple's shared residence.

The complainant had parked her brother's car in front of the couple's apartment at 6 p.m. the prior evening, entered the apartment, and taken a nap. The defendant came home some two hours later, soon departed and returned at approximately 1:30 a.m. on October 1. At that time, the defendant told the complainant that he had taken the car and driven it into a tree and then had set the car afire and contemplated committing suicide in the flaming car. At approximately 3 a.m., the complainant received a telephone call from her mother who stated that the police found the vehicle in a parking lot. The complainant then told the defendant she was going to telephone the police, but refrained from doing so because the defendant threatened her. The complainant did not, in fact, relay her knowledge of the original crime to the police until October 24, 1983. The defendant's car was similarly set on fire some twenty hours later. The defendant accused the complainant's brother of setting the fire.

The defendant presented an alibi defense and alibi witnesses. The defendant's alibi that he was with friends until returning to the apartment at 9:30 p.m. conflicted, however, with the alibi witnesses' testimony that he was with them until 11:30 p.m.

The state's chief witness was the complainant Sherry Gattison. During the trial, she testified that she had not received any of the insurance proceeds from the car fire. The next day, the state's attorney informed the court that the complainant had, in fact, received $1400 in insurance proceeds but had been confused by defense counsel's questioning. The defense used this discrepancy to impeach the witness.

The nature of Floyd's claims requires us to discuss in some detail the summations of both the prosecutor and defense counsel. The prosecutor presented a relatively short initial summation to the jury and retained 45 minutes of her allotted one-hour summation for rebuttal. In her opening argument, the prosecutor told the jury that Floyd had "the motive, the opportunity and the method to commit these crimes." The prosecutor maintained that Floyd had at least three motives: revenge against Sherry Gattison, jealousy of suspected competitors for her affections and suicide. Next, the prosecutor claimed that Floyd's access to the car keys provided the opportunity. Finally, the prosecutor said that the method by which Sherry Gattison was deprived of the car was by the accident and the fire. The prosecutor anticipated that the defense would challenge Sherry Gattison's credibility; argued that "in order to acquit in this case, you would have to say you're throwing out all of Sherry Gattison's testimony"; proceeded to contrast the State's witnesses to the defense alibi witnesses; and claimed that the issues of credibility "couldn't be any more clear cut."

Since Floyd did not testify at trial, the prosecutor reviewed Floyd's pretrial statements to witnesses that were repeated in testimony. In addition, the prosecutor pointed to Floyd's alleged confessions to Sherry Gattison and Ronald Gattison and Floyd's statement to the police, regarding which one investigator claimed to have "a specific personal recollection that this defendant said that he was home at 9:30." The prosecutor characterized Floyd as a liar 10 times in this brief opening statement and stated that his lying "if ever there was, is proof beyond a reasonable doubt." In closing her initial summation, she posed the question "Why would an innocent man lie? Why would an innocent man lie? Exactly."

In summation, defense counsel told the jury that Sherry Gattison also had the motive, opportunity and means to set the car on fire and insisted that the case hinged solely on the testimony of Sherry Gattison. Defense counsel then discussed evidence that Sherry Gattison had dissembled with her own insurance company concerning the car's true owner (her brother) and its true custodian (herself). Defense counsel also discussed Sherry Gattison's three-week delay in telling the police about Floyd's alleged confession and the inconsistencies in her testimony; maintained that Sherry Gattison was a "liar" or "lied" even under oath to the police and on the witness stand; and repeated this characterization over 30 times.

In discussing Sherry Gattison's credibility, defense counsel referred to the prosecutor, Mary Galvin, stating

And Miss Galvin expects you to believe her, and Miss Galvin says that this woman's story is worthy of belief and that the person who was jealous and revengeful in this case is Robert Floyd, Robert Floyd, who has had a relationship with another person, who resumes that relationship with the other person; and the woman who is left behind, Miss Galvin asks us to believe that she is not revengeful and jealous.

Defense counsel twice more referred to the prosecutor when discussing Sherry Gattison:

Miss Galvin may tell you, when she comes up here, that these mistakes in time were just mistakes; that anybody could get confused. Miss Gattison could get confused. She didn't mean to lie; but she told us that she had not told the truth and that she decided, before she came into court, she would tell the truth. But then, when she came into court, she told something else that's not the truth; that she had not received any of the money of the insurance payments. I asked her that. I said, "You mean after all of the time that you were making payments on this car, your brother didn't give you any of the money back?" It didn't seem fair, did it? She said no, she didn't get anything. Then she came in the next day and she lied. She told us that what she had said the day before wasn't true. That was another time that she lied. That time she said she got confused. Nobody could have gotten confused about that question. When you get fourteen hundred dollars back, you know you've gotten fourteen hundred dollars back. You don't forget that.... The next day, she said she had been confused. That wasn't confusion. That was a lie. That was an important lie because it showed you that right in front of you, she would lie, the way she lied to the police and the way she's been lying from the beginning of this case. I don't know why she's been lying. Maybe you don't know why she's been lying. But she's a liar. We don't have to know why.

I don't have to prove anything in this case. Miss Galvin put her on the stand and she vouches for her credibility; and she expects you to convict this man on the basis of this woman's testimony.

On rebuttal, the prosecutor characterized defense counsel's summation as a personal attack and inferred from it an accusation that she had "put on a witness who I knew was committing perjury."

You were told that I was unethical. You were told that it was disrespectful to put Sherry Gattison on the stand. You were told, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that me, not just the State of Connecticut--that I've been unethical.... Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, if you believe I've intentionally put on any perjured testimony in this case, if you believe, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that I've lied to you, that I have misrepresented facts, then even though I'm not here as Mary Galvin--I am here as the prosecutor for the...