Knox v. Butler

• Decision Date: 03 October 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-3520,88-3520
• Citation: 884 F.2d 849
• Parties: 28 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1182 Roland KNOX, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Robert H. BUTLER, Sr., Warden, LSP, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 849

884 F.2d 849

28 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1182

Roland KNOX, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Robert H. BUTLER, Sr., Warden, LSP, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 88-3520.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Oct. 3, 1989.

As Amended on Denial of Rehearing Nov. 21, 1989.

Robert J. Collins, Baton Rouge, La. (Court Appointed), for petitioner-appellant.

Dan J. Grady, III, Janice Kile, Asst. Dist. Atty., Baton Rouge, La., for respondent-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.

Before WISDOM, KING, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

Roland Knox was sentenced to 35 years at hard labor for driving a getaway car in an armed robbery. He petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction. We decide that the substantial agreement between accounts given by several witnesses would allow a reasonable finder of fact to believe the testimony favorable to the prosecution and to doubt the credibility of the testimony favorable to the defense. We therefore affirm the district court's decision and deny the writ.

I

On the afternoon of March 3, 1976, an armed robber took between $500 and $550 in cash from the Tigertown Exxon Station in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Eyewitnesses saw a man matching the robber's description enter a car about a block from the station immediately after the robbery. One of those witnesses wrote down the license plate number of the car. An hour after the robbery, Knox drove that car into the Exxon Station to buy gas. He was arrested and charged as a principal in the armed robbery.

Knox admitted to having picked up an acquaintance, Winfield Tucker, near the station. Tucker was charged with the robbery. One witness said at a lineup that she thought Tucker was the robber, but she was not certain. ¹ On January 31, 1977, the charges against Tucker were dropped for lack of probable cause to hold him for trial. The charges against Knox were also dropped at that time for lack of probable cause.

Several months later, charges were pressed again. Tucker fled the jurisdiction while released on bail. He has not been tried. On April 14, 1978, after a bench trial, Knox was convicted under La.Rev.Stat.Ann. Sec. 14:64 as a principal in an armed robbery. He was sentenced on June 5, 1978. After exhausting his direct appeals, he petitions for habeas relief. ² Knox's habeas petition disputes the sufficiency of the evidence offered to prove both his participation in the armed robbery and his specific intent to commit the crime. ³

II

Jackson v. Virginia requires that we find the evidence sufficient to convict Knox if we conclude, "after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, [that] any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt." ⁴ In a federal habeas corpus proceeding, we must defer to the factual findings in the state court proceedings. ⁵ We must respect the ability of the fact-finder to evaluate the credibility of witnesses. ⁶ When we apply the Jackson standard to the record of this case as a whole, we find that the witnesses are in such substantial agreement that certain minor discrepancies that Knox points to do not justify vacating the conviction. ⁷

A. The Testimony

The State based its case against Knox on the testimony of four witnesses: the cashier at the Exxon station, another employee of the station, a man working near the station, and an investigating officer.

Ruby Ross was the cashier. She testified that, as she returned to her booth after checking the sales on the pumps, a young black man coming from the direction of Texas Street approached her and asked for change for a dollar. As she opened the door to the booth, she testified, he pushed her inside the door, pulled a .32 automatic, and demanded money. She handed him a bank deposit bag. According to Ross's testimony, the robber then searched through several other bags, took the money, and proceeded out the door and toward Texas Street. She did not see him after he left the station. She did not know whether he escaped on foot or by car. Ross described the robber as "a young black man" with a "little small mustache". She testified that he was "wearing a cap with a half-moon bib" and a blue jean jacket and pants. She did not recall the material of the cap, the color of his shirt, or whether he wore glasses.

Ross's description of the robbery was consistent with that given by Phillip James, another employee of the station. When the robbery occurred, James was talking on a telephone behind the station. He could see along East Roosevelt Street to Texas Street. He noticed a man get out of a "green Chevrolet" at the corner of Texas and East Roosevelt. Only the driver remained in the car. The car "went around the corner somewhere." The man who left the car approached the phone, then walked toward the cashier's booth. James saw the gun and the robbery, but he did not describe the robbery in detail. During the robbery, a customer interrupted James's telephone conversation, asked him for change, and called the police. By that time, James testified, the robber had run back past the telephone and jumped into the same green Chevrolet, which was parked on Texas Street. According to James's testimony, the car then sped away north on Texas. James did not identify the driver of the Chevrolet. James testified that the robber was wearing blue jean pants, a blue denim jacket with the sleeves cut off, "black shades", and a brown bibbed hat.

William Thomas Flynn, an employee of South Central Bell Telephone, gave testimony central to the state's case. Flynn was repairing a telephone at the southeast corner of Texas Street and East Roosevelt Street at the time the robbery occurred. A "green--a light green Chevrolet", pulled up alongside him. Only the driver, a young black man, was in the car. Flynn did not identify the driver as Knox. Knox, however, admitted he was the driver. The car was on East Roosevelt, pointed east. Flynn testified that the car waited for "no more than may be four or five minutes, at the most," until another young black man came "running" down East Roosevelt Street from the direction of the station. According to Flynn's testimony, that man "threw ... a bag or something" onto the seat of the car, "got in the car, and said, 'Let's go'--or something like that--'Get it'--and that's when the tires started spinning and it took off." Flynn told a co-worker, "Man, something's wrong." He wrote down the license plate number on the top of the telephone box he was repairing. A few minutes later Flynn saw police officers at the station. He told them what he had seen, and they copied the license number. It was the license number of the car Knox was driving an hour later when he was arrested. Under cross-examination, Flynn admitted that the Chevrolet "maybe" could have waited next to him for only one minute but said, "I don't believe it was one minute." He was certain that the car left heading east along East Roosevelt Street. Flynn said that the man he saw running along East Roosevelt "had on a pair of blue jeans and a blue jean number [jacket] and it looked like a blue jean engineer's cap--and sunglasses on."

In most respects, Flynn's testimony was consistent with the accounts given by Ross and James. Ross and James saw the robber flee east along East Roosevelt; Flynn saw a man running along East Roosevelt from the direction of the Exxon Station. James saw the robber climb into a "green Chevrolet"; Flynn described the car he saw as "green--light green".

There are some minor discrepancies between the accounts. James saw a brown cap; Flynn was adamant that it was a blue jean cap. James said the sleeves of the jacket had been cut off; Flynn did not mention this. Ross, whose description in other respects matched Flynn's, did not remember the sunglasses. But these discrepancies are remarkably small for three separate accounts of such an event.

There is, however, one major inconsistency in the testimony of the witnesses. Flynn asserted that he saw the car head east on East Roosevelt, but James insisted that the getaway car travelled north on Texas. Knox contends that James's testimony is the most credible available and that it undermines the credibility of Flynn's testimony.

Knox's own account of the interaction Flynn witnessed depicts it as innocent chance meeting of two acquaintances. Knox testified that he had borrowed his sister's car for a job interview. The interviewer confirmed that Knox attended the interview. Knox then drove around for several hours, according to his testimony. At the time of the robbery, Knox said, he was alone in the car, driving down Texas Street to visit a friend who lived in apartments on the corner of East Roosevelt Street and Texas Street. He testified that he saw Tucker "running"; he did not say whether Tucker was on East Roosevelt Street or Texas Street. Knox described the incident as follows:

[T]he dude whistled at me and I stopped, you know--playing the radio--I stopped, just--I wasn't going to back up in the middle of Texas Street, so I just sat there and waited for him until he caught up. He was running, and he told me, he said, "Give me a ride." I know him. Well, I--you know, I won't deny him the ride. So I gave him--he said he'd give me--"I'll give you twenty dollars to take me on Florida Street." I said, "How far down Florida are you going?" He said, "By Globe's." So I took him there, you know.

When Knox was arrested, he had $20. According to Knox, Flynn saw an innocuous, unplanned meeting between himself and Tucker.

The insufficient-evidence claim raised by Knox in his habeas petition reduces to an argument about credibility: whether the finder of fact should have given the testimony of Knox and of James more weight than it gave to Flynn's account.

B. The Credibility of James's Testimony

Some of...