Hall v. Thomas

• Decision Date: 15 May 2009
• Docket Number: Case No. 2:04-CV-301-WKW.
• Citation: 623 F.Supp.2d 1302
• Parties: Darryl Pierrie HALL, Petitioner, v. Willie THOMAS, Warden, et al., Respondents.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Alabama

623 F.Supp.2d 1302

Darryl Pierrie HALL, Petitioner, v. Willie THOMAS, Warden, et al., Respondents.

Case No. 2:04-CV-301-WKW.

United States District Court, M.D. Alabama, Northern Division.

May 15, 2009.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Thomas Martele Goggans, Thomas M. Goggans, Attorney at Law, Montgomery, AL, for Petitioner.

Yvonne A.H. Saxon, Office of the Attorney General, Montgomery, AL, for Respondents.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

W. KEITH WATKINS, District Judge.

Before the court is the Recommendation of the Magistrate Judge (Recommendation (Doc. # 13)) that Petitioner Darryl Pierrie Hall's ("Hall") request for habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 be denied and the case be dismissed. Hall objects to the recommendation. (Objections (Doc. # 14).) The portions of a recommendation to which a defendant objects are reviewed de novo. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1).

Hall is serving a term of life imprisonment for robbery, and a concurrent twenty-year term for kidnaping. Hall committed these crimes when he was fifteen years old. The convictions stem from his ancillary participation in a robbery carried out by Alonzo Leak ("Leak"), who pled guilty and testified against Hall. Leak entered a day care center after hours, held up three adults and had them bind each other, robbed the center, sexually abused one adult, and raped another who entered the center while the robbery was in progress.

These crimes of senseless violence, and the apparent flippancy with which they were committed, bring this case into sobering focus. Of some concern, however, is the troubling way in which Hall was convicted. Several features of his trial raise red flags about its fairness and his guilt: the manner in which he was apprehended and in which he confessed, the fact that two mistrials preceded his conviction, his acquittal on some of the charges, and the arguably meritorious motion for new trial that was denied.

District courts are bound, nevertheless, by statutes, case law, and legal principles such as comity that dictate the appropriate manner for handling a challenge to a state-court conviction. Section 2254 habeas petitions must be viewed through the lens of the appropriate standard of review, and that review limits, for valid policy reasons, the relief district courts may provide state-court petitioners who arguably received an unfair shake in the state system. That review becomes particularly burdensome to a petitioner when the errors are not reducible to discrete and glaring mistakes. Thus, for the reasons explained below, this petition must be denied, and the recommendation's outcome is due to be adopted, but the unique difficulties of this case justify a thorough explanation for this outcome.

I. JURISDICTION

Jurisdiction is exercised pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). The parties do not contest personal jurisdiction or venue, and there are allegations sufficient to support both.

II. BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background

In the early evening hours of October 15, 1999, Leak entered a day care center in Montgomery, Alabama, and pulled a gun on its owner.¹ He then corralled the owner and the other adults in the building, a parent and her male friend, and herded them into a bathroom. He took them out of the bathroom in stages and had them bind each other, but placed them in various rooms in the small center. He periodically left them unattended and would return to ask the owner for information related to items in the building. After the victims were bound, another parent came into the center to pay her day care fees. Leak threatened her with a gun, and she complied with his request to bind the remaining unbound victim, and then, he proceeded to rape her. He attempted to rape the other parent as well, physically assaulting her with his hands and gun, and using others to disrobe her. He never followed through on the rape because the victim lied and said she had a sexually transmitted disease. The victims testified that throughout the encounter there appeared to be other accomplices in the building or that Leak spoke of other accomplices, but no one witnessed another participant. Leak eventually left, and the victims called for help.

Law enforcement quickly identified Leak, who implicated Hall in the crimes. Leak claimed Hall told him that committing the crimes would position Leak to join a gang, and that Hall was outside the center during the attack providing advice to him on how to carry out the crimes. Hall's home is around the block from the day care center and he attended the center when he was younger. At the time of the offense, Leak was seventeen years old and Hall was fifteen years old.

The police arrested Hall at his residence two days after the crime. His parents invited the police into their home. When Hall was summoned into the living room, the officers handcuffed him. He was escorted to the police station and interrogated there. Hall eventually signed waiver forms and confessed. During the interrogation, Hall's father waited in the police station. Officer M.L. Major ("Major") testified at the suppression hearing that when Hall was being escorted from his home, he said "he wanted his parents to come down" to the police headquarters. (Suppression Hr'g Tr. 20, Apr. 10, 2000 (Record for state court appeal Vol. 12).) Hall, however, testified that he said nothing to the officers as they escorted him to the police car,² but that it was at the police station and prior to questioning that he said, "Where is my daddy? I thought my daddy was supposed to be here when y'all are questioning me." (Suppression Hr'g Tr. 71-72.)

According to the police officers' testimony, at the police station and prior to questioning, they read Hall his Miranda warnings and state-required warnings for juveniles subject to interrogation, after which he voluntarily waived his rights.³ He acknowledges signing rights forms at some point, but argues that he did not understand them. He denies voluntarily waiving his rights, insists he continued to ask for his father, and claims that the officers physically abused him during the interrogation. He also testified that the details of his false confession came from the details of Leak's confession that the officers read to him before he gave a statement.⁴

At trial, Hall presented an alibi defense. He testified and called others to testify as to where he was during the Friday afternoon of the crime. Hall claims that he picked up his sisters from school, returned home, ate dinner, and was on the telephone until a parent of a friend picked him up for a dance at school. To defuse the alibi defense, the prosecution called representatives from the phone company to testify that it had no record of outgoing telephone calls from Hall's residence that afternoon or of outgoing telephone calls from residences from which Hall claimed he received calls.

After the conviction, during a hearing for a motion for new trial,⁵ it became clear that the testimony about the phone records was false, albeit not necessarily intentionally so. The phone company's representative who testified at trial misunderstood the company's retention periods. For customers on flat-rate plans, which was the type of plan for all relevant customers connected with this case, local outgoing phone call records were retained only for sixty days, as opposed to the eighteen months to which the representative testified. At the time of the subpoena, the phone company records for those outgoing calls would have been erased, which would not have been the case had the records been retained for eighteen months, the length of time the representative testified to at trial.⁶

B. Procedural History

The State of Alabama indicted Hall on three counts of first-degree robbery, one count of first-degree rape, one count of first-degree sexual abuse, and four counts of kidnaping. At his first trial, in April 2000, Hall was found not guilty of firstdegree rape and first-degree sexual abuse, but the jury could not reach a verdict on the remaining counts. Hall's second trial, in December 2000, also resulted in a mistrial. It was his third trial, in January 2001, that resulted in a conviction on all of the remaining charges. At issue in the second and third trials was the admissibility of Hall's confession. The court held an evidentiary hearing on his motion to suppress before the second trial, and the motion was denied. Hall's counsel, who was the same for the second and third trials, renewed the motion before the third trial, and the same judge denied it without an additional hearing. After the conviction, the court held an evidentiary hearing on Hall's motion for new trial, a motion which was based in part on the false testimony from the phone company representative. A juror testified at the hearing as to the unsubstantial effect the representative's testimony had on the jury's decision. The court denied the motion.

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the denial of the motion for new trial and the motion to suppress, and rejected Hall's claim that his counsel failed to adequately prepare for trial and was thus constitutionally ineffective. The Alabama Supreme Court in an opinion issued May 9, 2003, 863 So.2d 1079, written by Justice Houston, affirmed the convictions. Justice Lyons wrote a specially concurring opinion, and Justices See and Johnstone dissented without opinion. Justice Lyons concurred with the conclusion of the majority opinion but noted that he was "troubled by the fact that on two prior occasions, two separate juries were unable to find Hall guilty of the same charges, presumably in the face of the same confession and the same evidence contradicting Hall's alibi." (Ala. Sup. Ct. Op., 863 So.2d at 1087-88 (specially concurring).)

Hall filed his § 2254 petition on March 30, 2004. (Pet. (Doc. # 1).) The petition submits two grounds for relief—that Hall's confession was admitted in violation of his rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments...