Johnson v. Beckstrom
| Decision Date | 12 May 2011 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 08-194-ART |
| Parties | JOHN S. JOHNSON, Petitioner, v. GARY BECKSTROM, Warden, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Kentucky |
John Johnson is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder in a Kentucky state prison. He filed a voluminous petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. R. 1. Because all of the claims he advances lack merit, Johnson's petition is dismissed.
His trial began on July 12, 1993, in the Leslie County Circuit Court. John Johnson stood accused of murdering nineteen-year-old Brian Sizemore with an assault rifle. The murder took place shortly before 11:00 p.m. on the night of July 16, 1992. That night began as an ordinary one for the Sizemore family. Brian was visiting his uncle, George Sizemore's, house. Brian's father, Bobby Sizemore, was there too, along with other family and friends. The guests were sitting around a table, shooting the breeze and drinking. It was getting late, and Bobby had plans to take Brian boating out on the lake early the next morning. Trial Transcript ("Tr.") 324.
Shortly after 10:00 p.m., John Johnson pulled up in front of George Sizemore's house in his red, two-tone Chevy pickup truck. Johnson had already had four or five beers so far that evening, and he was angry. Tr. 291, 309, 323. George Sizemore said that Johnson stormed intothe house, took a pistol out of his belt, slammed it on the table, and yelled that he was looking for a man who had ripped off his girlfriend. Tr. 291. Bobby Sizemore remembered the same thing—he said that Johnson was looking for someone named Mearl Sharp, who Johnson believed had robbed his girlfriend. Tr. 323. Bobby tried to talk Johnson down, but Johnson would not cool off. Tr. 324. At some point, Johnson reached for the pistol on the table. Bobby reached for it too, and the two men struggled over possession of the weapon. Id. During the melee, the gun went off. The bullet hit George Sizemore's finger. Tr. 291. Bobby ultimately gained control of the gun, and he whacked Johnson over the head with it, opening up a gash over his eye. Tr. 680-83. Angry and bloodied, Johnson stormed out of the house, got into his pickup truck, and drove away. Tr. 325.
Witnessing the fight unsettled nineteen-year-old Brian. He told his father that he wanted to go home. Tr. 326. Leaving at that time turned out to be a fateful decision. About four minutes after Johnson had left, Brian walked out of the house, got into his black pickup truck, and began backing down the driveway. A few seconds later, Bobby heard what he thought were backfires coming from the road. Tr. 326. But they weren't backfires, they were gun shots. Id.; Tr. 294-96. Kathy Davidson, who also was at George Sizemore's house that night, said she saw the whole thing. She watched Brian back his truck down the driveway. Then she saw a red two-tone truck drive by, fire at least two shots toward Brian's truck, and then speed off. Tr. 363-65. According to her, it was the same pickup truck that Johnson had been driving. Id. Leah Cupp, who was thirteen years old at the time, lived near George Sizemore's house, closer to the road. She said that she saw Johnson's two-tone red pickup truck drive by, then heard the gun shots, and then saw Brian's black truck idling in a ditch. Tr. 347. Bolstering the credibility of these eyewitness identifications, several people testified that the area was well lit that night—the moon was out, and porch lights from various houses also illuminated the driveway and the road. Tr. 320-21, 359.
Members of Brian's family rushed down the driveway toward his truck. Brian was slumped over the steering wheel. There was blood everywhere. Family members took Brian out of the truck, loaded him into another car, and drove him to the hospital. He never had a chance. As the medical examiner, Dr. Carolyn Coyne, confirmed, Brian died of a "penetrating gunshot wound to the head." Tr. 485. One of the bullets passed clear through Brian's brain, entering his left temple and exiting out the right side of his skull. Tr. 487.
Detective John Sizemore (no relation to the victim) was one of the first police officers to arrive at the scene. He peered into Brian's truck and saw that the front seat was covered with blood. Tr. 167. He recovered several shell casings, id., and he also retrieved bullet fragments from the dashboard of the truck, a tree, and a wooden post on the property. Tr. 173, 175. Charles Lanham, a forensic specialist with the Kentucky State Police, arrived later. He photographed the truck and collected the shell casings for ballistics testing. After examining markings on the casings with a microscope, he determined that they were consistent with having been fired from a 7.62 x 39 millimeter SKS rifle. Tr. 415-16. John Napier, one of the state's witnesses, testified that he had seen Johnson earlier that afternoon with that exact kind of rifle in his truck. Tr. 274. Napier was sure of the weapon's caliber because Johnson had shown him a box of ammunition for the gun. Tr. 277-78.
Detective Sizemore returned to the scene a couple of days later and interviewed other witnesses. One of them was fourteen-year-old Michael Turner, one of George Sizemore's neighbors. Turner said that he ran out of his house when he heard the gunshots and saw the Chevy truck driving away. Tr. 531-32. He described the driver as having bushy hair and a beard. Detective Sizemore spread out several photographs of different individuals on the hood of his cruiser and asked Turner to identify the shooter. Turner quickly pointed at the photograph of Johnson. Tr. 517-19. Although he was unable to positively identify Johnson at trial, Turner did acknowledge that he had fingered Johnson during the prior photo lineup. Tr. 535.
Where was Johnson during all of this? Shortly after the murder, his brother, Randall Johnson, drove him to Hazard Hospital to receive treatment for the gash over his eye. The admissions clerk, Iva Simms, asked Johnson how the injury had happened. Johnson told her he had fallen out of a truck, but when Simms inquired further and asked whether the truck had been moving, Johnson became angry. Tr. 492. Tanya Pratt, a nurse at the hospital, recalled the same thing. Johnson was hesitant to say how he had been injured, but when pressed he said he had fallen out of a truck. Tr. 494-95. According to Pratt, Johnson was in an unusual hurry to leave. She told him that he needed stitches, but Johnson did not want to wait for the doctor, so he left with nothing but gauze covering the wound over his eye. Tr. 495.
After Johnson left the hospital, he disappeared for more than three months. Johnson admitted that he had no contact with his family during that time. At trial, Johnson said that his family "knew where I where, they just didn't know how to get ahold of me." Tr. 764. A grand jury indicted Johnson for the murder of Brian Sizemore on August 18, 1992. Finally, more thanthree months after the shooting, Johnson turned himself in to authorities on November 2, 1992. Detective Sizemore made the arrest. Tr. 192.
After hearing all of this evidence over the course of a six-day trial, the jury convicted Johnson of murdering Brian Sizemore after deliberating for only twelve minutes. Tr. 1007. The jury recommended a life sentence. Tr. 1030. On July 26, 1993, the trial court formally sentenced Johnson to life imprisonment. Tr. 1078.
Because he received a life sentence, Johnson appealed his conviction directly to the Kentucky Supreme Court. See Ky. Const. § 110(2)(b) (). He raised a number of errors. The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed his conviction, Johnson v. Commonwealth, 892 S.W.2d 558, 563 (Ky. 1994), although it was closely divided (four-to-three) on two of Johnson's assignments of error. Three Justices would have granted Johnson a new trial based on the trial court's inclusion of a faulty missing-evidence instruction and the trial court's failure to dismiss a troublesome juror from the panel. Id. at 563-65 (Stumbo, J., dissenting).
Johnson then filed a motion in the trial court collaterally attacking his conviction under Kentucky Rule of Criminal Procedure 11.42. The trial court held three separate hearings on Johnson's motion before denying it in its entirety in a written decision issued on October 2, 2003, and amended on September 9, 2005. R. 24-38; 24-39. The Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed, R. 24-47, and the Kentucky Supreme Court denied discretionary review. R. 24-51. Johnson then filed this habeas petition.
A state prisoner seeking a writ of habeas corpus in federal court is like an Olympic hurdler. In order to reach the finish line and receive habeas relief, he must avoid tripping over three different hurdles in his path, each one more difficult to clear than the last. These hurdles—some imposed by statute, others judicially created—exist primarily to protect state sovereignty against unwarranted federal intrusion. When a federal court grants a writ of habeas corpus to a state prisoner, it "intrudes on state sovereignty to a degree matched by few exercises of federal judicial authority." Harrington v. Richter, 131 S. Ct. 770, 787 (2011) (quoting Harris v. Reed, 489 U.S. 255, 282 (1989) (Kennedy, J., dissenting)). Granting habeas invalidates a core exercise of a state's sovereign prerogative—the authority to punish those who break the state's criminal laws. Of course, states must implement their criminal laws in conformity with the United States Constitution. See U.S. Const. art. VI. But our federal system has long relied on a presumption that state courts act in "good faith" and will "honor the Constitution [and] obey the binding laws of the United States." Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 755 (...
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