Jones v. Delo, Superintendent, Potosi Correctional Center, 99-2276WM

• Decision Date: 13 November 2000
• Docket Number: No. 99-2276WM,99-2276WM
• Citation: 258 F.3d 893
• Parties: (8th Cir. 2001) William R. Jones, Appellant, v. Paul Delo, Superintendent, Potosi Correctional Center, Appellee. Submitted:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 893

258 F.3d 893 (8th Cir. 2001)

William R. Jones, Appellant, v. Paul Delo, Superintendent, Potosi Correctional Center, Appellee.

No. 99-2276WM

United States Court of Appeals FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

Submitted: November 13, 2000

Filed: July 31, 2001

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

Before RICHARD S. ARNOLD, BEAM, and BYE, Circuit Judges.

RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

William R. Jones, Jr., a Missouri inmate sentenced to death for first-degree murder, appeals from the District Court's ¹ denial of his second amended petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He argues that he received constitutionally ineffective assistance of trial counsel because of counsel's failure (1) to investigate and present evidence of mental disorder and organic brain damage at the guilt phase of the trial; and (2) to investigate and present mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of the trial. He also argues that his rights were violated by the District Court's denial of his request for an evidentiary hearing. After full consideration, we reject these claims. There are respects in which trial counsel can justly be criticized, but after taking into account what the evidence would have looked like without these deficiencies, we see no reasonable probability that the verdict would have been different.

I. Trial

A. Guilt Phase

This case involves the January 16, 1986, shooting death of Stanley Albert. The State presented the following evidence at trial, which took place on November 6 through 10, 1986. Mr. Jones, the petitioner, was a bisexual who lived in the Kansas City, Missouri, area, where he worked as a strip dancer in nightclubs. He was seen with Mr. Albert by the latter's daughter in the fall of 1985 in Mr. Albert's 1984 white Camaro, a car the victim was very proud of. Petitioner was 21 years old at the time and Mr. Albert was in his fifties. Beginning in December 1985, petitioner told several people, including his male roommate and lover, Charles Wesley Thomas, that his father was going to help him purchase a white Camaro. Petitioner's father had helped him purchase cars in the past and had discussed helping him buy another one, but had had no conversation with him about a white Camaro.

On or about January 10, 1986, petitioner asked Karla Wright, who had been his girlfriend for several years, what she would think of him if he killed someone. On January 13, petitioner told another woman friend, with whom he planned to go to Indianapolis for a dancing job, that he would drive because he was going to get a white Camaro. On Wednesday, January 15, 1986, petitioner told Mr. Thomas that he would be getting his car the next day at 4:30 p.m. On January 16, at 4:30 p.m., Mr. Albert pulled up in front of petitioner's apartment in the Camaro. Petitioner borrowed a blanket from Mr. Thomas, and Mr. Thomas saw him leave with Mr. Albert in the car.

At about 8:00 p.m. that evening, petitioner called Mr. Thomas, told him he was in Independence, Missouri, drinking and driving around in his new car, and offered him a ride. Petitioner picked Mr. Thomas up in the Camaro at about 9:00 p.m. During the ride, petitioner crushed a pair of sunglasses that were lying on the seat of the car, saying the owner would not need them anymore. He left the apartment early the next morning, purchased a shovel using Mr. Thomas's credit card (without permission), and returned in the afternoon. He had a scratch on his face and told Mr. Thomas he had been at a park and got scratched by a tree branch. He complained to Mr. Thomas that he was tired, saying, "well, it gets pretty tiring when you drag a dead man through the woods." Petitioner had with him two license plates and told Mr. Thomas he had to give them back to the man who owned the car, and that his father was going to give him plates until his own came in. In fact, Petitioner's father was not involved in any way in acquiring the white Camaro, and the Kansas plates later found on the Camaro had been stolen.

On Saturday, January 18, at about 4:00 p.m., petitioner left his apartment with his woman friend in the Camaro to drive to Indianapolis. At about 5:30 p.m. that evening, the car was stopped for speeding on a highway outside Kansas City by a state highway patrol officer. As the officer approached, petitioner sped away and a high-speed chase ensued. The officer got up to 120 miles per hour, but petitioner still kept ahead of him. Eventually, petitioner eluded the officer and abandoned the car. He was arrested three miles away.

Mr. Albert did not report to work on Friday, January 17. On March 2, 1986, his body was found in a wooded area in a park near Independence. The medical examiner estimated that he had been dead between two weeks and several months. The body was wrapped in a blanket identical in appearance to the one petitioner had borrowed from his roommate. Mr. Albert had been shot five times in the lower torso and chest. Three of the bullets had been fired from the same .22 revolver, and the other two could have been.

On April 1, 1986, petitioner was charged with stealing a motor vehicle, first-degree murder for the murder of Mr. Albert, and armed criminal action. In May, bullets of the same common type that had killed Mr. Albert, as well as two license plates that had been on Mr. Albert's car, and Mr. Albert's watch were found in petitioner's apartment. The watch and bullets were hidden between some paneling and a wall, underneath one end of a bathtub. The State proceeded only on the first-degree murder count.

At his first meeting with one of his two attorneys, who had been retained by his mother, petitioner gave the attorney a hand-written letter recounting his version of events on January 16, 1986. He wrote that Mr. Albert had asked him to go on a picnic on that day and that petitioner borrowed a blanket from his roommate to take along. Petitioner had a gun with him he always carried it because he had previously been badly beaten up. Mr. Albert and petitioner went to a secluded area in a park, drinking some beer and wine on the way, and, after they ate, Mr. Albert made an explicit sexual advance. Petitioner called him a pervert and turned to leave, whereupon Mr. Albert grabbed petitioner by the arm.

Petitioner wrote further that when he pulled away from Mr. Albert he lost his balance and must have fallen. The next thing he remembered, he was sitting in the car at a nearby convenience store, partially unclothed. He went back to the park and found Mr. Albert's body in a ditch. He returned to his apartment in Mr. Albert's car. He was in pain, there was blood on his anus, and he realized he had been raped. He felt there was no one he could tell about it and was afraid his parents would find out. He did tell his sister about the rape when she visited him in jail. Petitioner ended the letter by stating that he kept having flashbacks about "bright flames that would come from a gun and the noise it made."

Petitioner did not testify at the guilt phase of the trial. His defense consisted of pointing out that the State's case was circumstantial. The jury convicted petitioner of first-degree murder, which under Missouri law required a finding that he "knowingly cause[d] the death of another person after deliberation upon the matter." Mo. Rev. Stat. § 565.020. "Deliberation" is defined as "cool reflection for any length of time no matter how brief." Id. (3).

B. Penalty Phase

The case proceeded to the penalty phase on November 13, 1986. The State presented evidence of petitioner's guilty plea to a charge of stealing over $150 for a January 1984 burglary of Ms. Wright's parents' home, and his guilty plea to a charge of stealing under $150 in February 1984. The State presented the testimony of Mr. Thomas that when he took petitioner to his family's home in Arkansas for Thanksgiving in 1985, petitioner burglarized a neighbor's house, and the testimony of Ms. Wright regarding the burglary of her parents' home, which occurred after she showed petitioner how to open the safe.

Petitioner took the stand and denied that he killed Mr. Albert. According to petitioner's testimony, he first met Stanley Albert at the Liberty Memorial. He struck up a conversation and told Mr. Albert that he jogged there every day. When petitioner first saw Mr. Albert, he was waxing the white Camaro. That same day, petitioner and Mr. Albert went back to petitioner's apartment. Mr. Albert washed his hands and left his watch by the sink. Later, petitioner further testified, on January 16, 1986, Mr. Albert called and talked about the car. He picked petitioner up in the car. He was looking at petitioner "romantically." Mr. Albert indicated that petitioner might help pay for the car with sex. They went to a McDonald's and were in the parking lot there, eating. A friend of Mr. Albert's pulled up in a dark car. They talked. "It looked real serious." Mr. Albert asked petitioner to take his car and drive it over to the apartment and wait there, which he did. After about thirty minutes, he went back to McDonald's, but neither Mr. Albert nor the other man (who had been in a dark car) was there. Petitioner never saw Stanley Albert again, alive or dead. However, he kept the car and was driving it to Indiana with Julie Glidewell when he was arrested for speeding. He had no idea that Stanley Albert was dead. Petitioner also claimed that he stole the money from Ms. Wright's parents with her help so the two of them could run off together. The State did not cross-examine petitioner, and the defense presented no other witnesses on his behalf.

The jury found two aggravating circumstances that petitioner murdered Mr. Albert "for the purpose of receiving money or any other thing of monetary value from Albert," and that petitioner murdered Mr. Albert while petitioner "was engaged in the perpetration of or the attempt to perpetrate robbery" and sentenced him to...