Healy v. Spencer
| Decision Date | 08 November 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. CIV.A.03-30031-MAP.,CIV.A.03-30031-MAP. |
| Citation | 397 F.Supp.2d 269 |
| Parties | Wayne Blyth HEALY, Petitioner v. Luis SPENCER, et al Respondents |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts |
David M. Lieber, Assistant Attorney General, Boston, MA, for Luis Spencer, Thomas F. Reilly, Respondents.
Natalie S Monroe, Attorney General's Office, Boston, MA, for Luis Spencer, Thomas F. Reilly, Respondents.
Wendy Sibbison, Greenfield, MA, for Wayne Blyth Healy, Petitioner.
MEMORANDUM REGARDING REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS AND MOTION FOR AN EVIDENTIARY HEARING (Dkt. Nos. 1 and 19)
Habeas corpus petitioner Wayne Blyth Healy ("Healy" or "Petitioner") contends that he has been wrongly imprisoned following his conviction on one count of first-degree murder. His arguments can be divided into three categories: (1) that the prosecution's failure to disclose material, exculpatory evidence violated his rights as set forth in Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963); (2) that he is entitled to an evidentiary hearing to develop his claim that the jury foreman was improperly influenced; and (3) that there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction. Citing Terry Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 410, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000),1 and Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), Respondents Luis Spencer and Thomas F. Reily ("Respondent"2 or "the Commonwealth") assert that Petitioner's habeas claims should be denied because the state court's adjudication involved neither an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law nor an unreasonable conclusion that the evidence, when taken in the light most favorable to the prosecution, was sufficient to support the jury's verdict. Furthermore, Respondent contends that permitting an evidentiary hearing would be improper in light of Petitioner's lack of diligence in pursuing a jury taint claim in state court. See Michael Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 420, 435, 120 S.Ct. 1479, 146 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000). See supra note 1.
This matter was referred to Magistrate Judge Kenneth P. Neiman, who recommended that habeas corpus relief be granted with respect to Petitioner's Brady claim, that Petitioner's motion for an evidentiary hearing be allowed, and that relief be denied, without prejudice, with respect to Petitioner's insufficiency of evidence contention. For the reasons set forth below, the court will adopt this recommendation with respect to Healy's Brady claim and request for an evidentiary hearing. However, because sufficiency-of-the-evidence review concerns only the evidence adduced at trial, United States v. Powell, 469 U.S. 57, 67, 105 S.Ct. 471, 83 L.Ed.2d 461 (1984), the court will deny habeas relief with prejudice with respect to that claim.
In its opinion addressing Petitioner's direct appeal, Commonwealth v. Healy, 393 Mass. 367, 471 N.E.2d 359 (1984) ("Healy I"), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ("SJC") offered the following summary of "the evidence submitted by the Commonwealth." Id. at 363.3
Between 1 and 1:30 A.M. on August 8, 1980, the victim, Richard Frank Chalue, was heard screaming for help from inside his apartment in Holyoke. Chalue's body was found on his bed shortly before 2 A.M. He had been stabbed fourteen times in the chest, once on either side of the neck, and once on his right thigh. There was also a laceration on his left index finger. His hands had been bound behind him with socks tied together, and he had a gag of socks tied around his mouth. He was naked except for a towel wrapped around his neck and a pair of dungarees half-way down his legs. A pair of boots tied together with socks lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. On the table in the kitchen were a partially empty bottle of rum, two bottles of cola, one of which was partially empty, a glass, and an ashtray containing cigarette butts. The apartment was dark, since there was no electricity as a result of a fire in the building the week before. The victim's Doberman pinscher dog was locked in another room of the apartment. Both the front and the back doors were locked, the front door having been locked with a key from the outside.
"Since the fire," the Commonwealth's evidence indicated that,
the victim had been staying alone in the apartment, with the dog guarding his possessions. His girlfriend and her two children, with whom he had shared the apartment for the last three years, were staying with her mother in her mother's apartment in a neighboring building. The victim, his girlfriend, and the children were to have moved to a new apartment on August 8. On the evening of August 7, the victim had supper with his girlfriend and the children in her mother's apartment and then took the children to a park. They returned at about 7:30 P.M., and he left at about 8:20 P.M. At about 9:15 P.M. his girlfriend telephoned Chalue's apartment. There was no answer. She called back twice in rapid succession. Chalue answered the third time, sounding as though he had been running and was out of breath. He said that he had been downstairs at the apartment of a neighbor. Then she heard someone walk into the kitchen and say something to Chalue, and she heard them both laugh. She testified that it was the "very soft voice" of a man. Then Chalue became silent. She asked him who was with him. Finally, he answered that it was "Johnny," the neighbor from downstairs. She asked him several times whether everything was all right. He kept responding, "[S]ure, why wouldn't it be?" Johnny Arel testified at trial that he was not in Chalue's apartment, or indeed in the building, on the night in question.
Johnny's brother, Leo, who was staying in the fourth-floor apartment directly below Chalue's, testified that between 9 and 10 P.M. he heard someone going up the stairs; he went out to investigate, and spoke with Chalue, who was outside his own apartment and not within Leo's view. Leo then heard Chalue's front door close. Between midnight and 1 A.M. on August 8 he heard noises in Chalue's apartment as though furniture were being moved. A short time later he heard noises in the hallway and on the stairs outside his front door. When he turned off his radio and approached the door, the noise stopped. Leo was carrying a lantern, and its light was visible through his front door's transom. He heard the noise again twice, and, when he turned the radio off or approached the door, the noise stopped. A short time after the last noise, he heard the police cruisers arrive.
A cash register receipt for rum, cola, and ice was found, stained with blood, on the third-floor landing of the front stairs. The Commonwealth's fingerprint expert testified that he had found [Petitioner's] fingerprints on the bottle of rum and on the partially empty bottle of cola. The Commonwealth's expert serologist testified that his tests indicated that four cigarette butts which had been taken from the ashtray on the victim's kitchen table had been smoked by someone who was a "non-secretor," i.e., who did not secrete blood group substances in his saliva. According to the expert's testimony, 20% of the population is composed of non-secretors. A test of [Petitioner's] saliva showed that he was a non-secretor. Further, one of the four cigarette butts was found to contain cell material from a person with group B blood. [Petitioner] has group B blood. According to the Commonwealth's expert, 2% of the population are non-secretors and have group B blood.
A bloodstained knife was found on the dresser in Chalue's bedroom. The Commonwealth's expert serologist also testified that tests performed on the blood on the knife showed it to contain A and B antigens, which would be consistent with the blood being a mixture of blood of group A and blood of group B. The victim's blood type was group A. Similarly, a long-sleeved shirt found in a search of [Petitioner's] apartment had a bloodstain containing both A and B antigens. Finally, group B blood was found on the gear shift and brake lever of [Petitioner's] automobile.
When the police officers questioned [Petitioner] on the evening of August 8, he had a bandage on the palm of his right hand. The doctor who sutured the wound at about 8:20 A.M. on August 8 testified that in his opinion the wound had been between four and twenty-four hours old at the time he treated it. He testified that the wound could have been caused by the knife found in the victim's bedroom.
On August 8 at about 6:15 P.M. William McCarthy, captain of detectives with the Holyoke police department, dialed [Petitioner's] telephone number, which he had found in the victim's address book next to the initials "W.H." [Petitioner] told McCarthy that it had been three or four months since he had last seen the victim, who had once been married to [Petitioner's] sister. He said that he had had a telephone call from Chalue at about 7 P.M. the evening before, inviting him to a "get-together," but that he had declined the invitation because he had other plans for the evening. McCarthy asked Healy if he would come to the police station sometime to talk with the police officers and possibly to help them in the case. Healy made an appointment to meet with McCarthy at the police station on the following day. About twenty minutes later [Petitioner] called McCarthy to ask whether he could come down to the station that evening, saying that he did not think he would be able to sleep that night "thinking about this." McCarthy agreed to the change.
. . . .
[Petitioner] was accompanied to the police station by his roommate, George Roy. [Petitioner] was ushered into McCarthy's office, and Roy was asked to wait outside. McCarthy began the interview by asking [Petitioner] the names of the victim's friends,...
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Healy v. Spencer
...and by not explicitly factoring into its analysis "how extremely close a case" the murder trial had been. Healy v. Spencer (Healy III), 397 F.Supp.2d 269, 290, 293 (D.Mass.2005). We reverse. The SJC considered the whole record and reached a well-reasoned, supportable conclusion that Healy h......