Jaiman v. State

• Decision Date: 16 November 2012
• Docket Number: No. 2009–147–Appeal.,2009–147–Appeal.
• Citation: 55 A.3d 224
• Parties: Hector JAIMAN v. STATE of Rhode Island.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

55 A.3d 224

Hector JAIMAN

v.STATE of Rhode Island.

No. 2009–147–Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

Nov. 16, 2012.

Janice M. Weisfeld, Office of the Public Defender, for Applicant.

Aaron L. Weisman, Department of Attorney General, Lee Hiromoto, Rule 9 Student, for State.

Present: SUTTELL, C.J., GOLDBERG, FLAHERTY, ROBINSON, and INDEGLIA, JJ.

OPINION

Justice FLAHERTY, for the Court.

The applicant, Hector Jaiman, appeals to this Court from the Superior Court's denial of his application for postconviction relief. Jaiman previously was convicted of first-degree murder, assault with intent to murder, and assault with a dangerous weapon. Before this Court, Jaiman contends that his application for postconviction relief should have been granted based on a violation of his right to due process. He also argues that he was prejudiced by the ineffective assistance of his trial counsel because his counsel failed to object to what the applicant maintains was improper witness vouching and because his trial counsel failed to object to a first-degree murder instruction that the trial justice imparted to the jury. For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we affirm the judgment of the Superior Court denying the application for postconviction relief.

IFacts and Travel

The factual background of this case is described at length in the direct appeal of defendant's conviction— viz., State v. Jaiman, 850 A.2d 984, 985–87 (R.I.2004). For the sake of brevity, we shall summarize only the facts that are relevant to the issues raised by this appeal.

ABackground

On the evening of September 18, 1993, Jaiman was operating a motor vehicle in Central Falls accompanied by Ariel Muriel. As they traveled, the pair encountered a car driven by Albert Robertson, in which Thomas DeGrafft and Dean Zigbuo were passengers. As the two cars drove side-by-side, Muriel fired a handgun into Robertson's car. Robertson was struck, DeGrafft was mortally wounded, and Zigbuo escaped without injury.

On May 12, 1994, Jaiman and Muriel were charged with six criminal charges, including: murder of DeGrafft, assault with intent to murder Robertson, conspiracy to murder DeGrafft, conspiracy to assault Robertson, assault with a dangerous weapon upon Zigbuo, and conspiracy to commit felony assault upon Zigbuo. While he was incarcerated awaiting trial, Muriel entered into a plea bargain with the Attorney General. Muriel agreed that, in exchange for his testimony against Jaiman, he would plead guilty to a reduced charge of the second-degree murder of DeGrafft. After his plea was accepted by a justice of the Superior Court, Muriel received a sentence of fifty years for second-degree murder, with twenty years to serve and thirty years suspended, and a guarantee that he would appear before the Parole Board in July 2000. In accordance with the plea bargain, Muriel, through an interpreter, gave an unsworn seven-page statement to the Central Falls Police, in which he said that Jaiman had provided him with a gun and had instructed him to shoot Robertson.

BThe Trial

In October and November of 1995, Jaiman went to trial before a jury; Muriel testified at the trial as the prosecutor's key witness. However, the jury was unable to achieve unanimity, and a mistrial was declared. In February 2000, Jaiman went to trial a second time. During that trial, the state again called Muriel to the stand, but this time, he refused to testify, maintaining that it was his understanding that his plea agreement required him to testify truthfully only once. When he was asked whether he had testified truthfully at the first trial, he responded, “[a]s far as I remember, I think so.” Nonetheless, Muriel professed that he had no memory of Jaiman saying anything to him about Robertson, he had no memory of Jaiman giving him a gun that night, he had no memory of Jaiman telling him to shoot Robertson, and he had no memory of what he did with the gun afterward. He continued to maintain that position even after he was shown the statement he had provided to the Central Falls Police and after the state attempted to refresh his recollection by showing him a transcript of his testimony from Jaiman's first trial. He explained that his memory failure was the result of the passage of time and the stress arising from his incarceration.

As a result of Muriel's memory failure, the trial justice permitted portions of the witness's police statement to be read to the jury. Significantly, when Muriel testified that he could not remember the position of the vehicles when he started firing at the Robertson car, he was presented with his police statement in an attempt to refresh his recollection. The following portion of that statement was read to Muriel in the presence of the jury:

“Q Did there come a time that any of the cars turned off the street? * * *

“A Answer: The shooting stopped and they turned left and we turned left and they turned right, I think. Question: Before you turned left did you shoot at the car any other time? Answer: Yes, as [Jaiman]'s car was turning onto the street I shot twice more. Question: Where did you go then?”

The state then moved to have the entire police statement entered into evidence as a full exhibit, and defendant objected. However, after a recess, defense counsel said that he had reached an agreement with the state and that he did not object to the introduction of the three questions that the prosecution had identified. The trial justice also allowed the introduction of additional portions of the police statement as a full exhibit as a prior inconsistent statement.

On March 3, 2000, the jury found Jaiman guilty of the first-degree murder of DeGrafft, as well as assault with intent to murder Robertson and assault with a dangerous weapon upon Zigbuo.¹ Jaiman filed a motion for a new trial, which the trial justice denied, and on March 9, 2000, he sentenced Jaiman to a mandatory term of life imprisonment for the first-degree murder and to two concurrent terms of twenty years to serve on both assault convictions.

CThe Direct Appeal

Jaiman timely filed a notice of appeal to this Court.² It is fair to say that defendant's appeal to this Court focused on the introduction of Muriel's police statement during the trial. In a decision dated June 22, 2004, this Court held that the police statement was admissible as a prior inconsistent statement, and we affirmed the conviction.³Jaiman, 850 A.2d at 990.

DPostconviction Relief

On December 16, 2004, Jaiman filed a pro se application for postconviction relief in the Superior Court, which was amended twice after counsel was appointed to represent him. In Jaiman's second amended application, he delineated twelve reasons to support his argument that his conviction and his sentence violated the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and laws of Rhode Island, including that his trial attorney was ineffective because he did not object to the prosecutor's unnecessary multiple references to “truthfulness” when addressing Muriel's cooperation agreement, that his trial attorney was ineffective because he failed to request any type of cautionary instruction when the prosecutor improperly vouched for Muriel's truthfulness, and that his sentence “exceeded the maximum authorized by law and is otherwise not in accordance with the sentence authorized by law.” ⁴

A hearing on Jaiman's postconviction-relief application was held on August 13, 2008. During the hearing, the parties agreed to address the specific issue of whether there was merit to Jaiman's allegation that he was currently serving an illegal sentence.⁵ After the parties presented their respective arguments, the trial justice concluded that counsel's argument that Jaiman was serving an illegal sentence was “not supported either in law or in fact or frankly in policy as to the rights to plea bargain and the right of the state to seek and prosecute at levels that they choose for the defendants that are targeted for violation of the law.”

Upon review of the other issues argued in defendant's brief, the trial justice concluded that he saw “no reason to convene any kind of evidentiary hearing at all claiming basically to the ineffective assistance because [trial counsel] represented the defendant and somehow sat on his hands and failed to object at certain times or permit inculpable faulty statements to come in,” and “[f]rankly, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled on a fair amount of that already and even before closing argument that there was a decision in Jaiman reported at 850 A.2d 984.” The trial justice further explained that he saw

“nothing raised in [trial counsel's] brief * * * or delineated in [trial counsel's] memoranda * * * that any stretch of the imagination transgresses or reaches the Strickland level and I'm of the mind that to the extend [sic] that you care to have this matter reviewed by the Supreme Court, by all means take it upstairs if you like, but I see no reason to offer judgment in favor of your client in this matter.”

Before he dismissed Jaiman's postconviction-relief application, the trial justice asked Jaiman's postconviction-relief counsel to explain what would be gained by inviting trial counsel to the stand to explain his reasons for objecting or not objecting to certain evidence. Jaiman's counsel responded that he believed there was merit to the allegation that the objections should have been made by trial counsel. He also argued that even if he personally did not believe there was merit to the issues in the postconviction-relief application, and if he had reported such an opinion in a Shatney memorandum, Jaiman nonetheless “has the opportunity to proceed even pro se if he still wanted to have those issues brought before the Court.” See Shatney v. State, 755 A.2d 130 (R.I.2000).

The trial justice responded that Shatney does not require the court to provide a hearing in every single instance for which there is a prayer for relief and, in this case, that ...