Lopez v. Massachusetts

• Decision Date: 03 December 2004
• Docket Number: No. CIV.A.01-11207-WGY.,CIV.A.01-11207-WGY.
• Citation: 349 F.Supp.2d 109
• Parties: Jose LOPEZ, Petitioner, v. COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, and Page True, Warden, Sussex State Prison Respondents.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

349 F.Supp.2d 109

Jose LOPEZ, Petitioner, v. COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, and Page True, Warden, Sussex State Prison Respondents.

No. CIV.A.01-11207-WGY.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

December 3, 2004.

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Benjamin D. Entine, Attorney at Law, Boston, MA, for Jose Lopez, Plaintiff.

Dean A. Mazzone, Attorney General's Office, Boston, MA, for Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Respondent.

Linda A. Wagner, Attorney General's Office, Boston, MA, for Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Respondent.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

YOUNG, Chief Judge.

Jose Lopez (Lopez) has filed a petition for a federal writ of habeas corpus, alleging that the Massachusetts courts violated his federal constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial, and against compelled self-incrimination, by failing to suppress certain evidence at his trial (and dismiss his indictment on those grounds) or to award him a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. Although Lopez's claims regarding evidentiary rulings at trial fail under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), his claims regarding his motion for a new trial have sufficient merit to warrant granting him an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the writ of habeas corpus ought issue.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL POSTURE

As the Court explains below, the Supreme Judicial Court's ("SJC") factual findings must be treated as correct here because the SJC's findings as to what evidence Lopez and the Commonwealth produced at trial, and the conclusions the SJC draws from that evidence, fall within the reasonable range. The Court therefore quotes verbatim the SJC's findings as to the factual background:

The background of the case is as follows. [Lopez] met the victim's mother, Maria Rodriguez, in July, 1993, and began living with her and her two sons shortly thereafter in Haverhill. Rodriguez was a habitual drug user, and [Lopez] often assisted in caring for the two boys. By April, 1994, [Lopez] and Rodriguez were experiencing conflict in their relationship, and [Lopez] threatened to "take the kids away [and] hide them ... so [she] wouldn't find them." Rodriguez obtained a protective order against [Lopez], but he persisted in coming to her apartment. Sometimes she allowed him to come in, and he slept on her couch several nights a week.

On June 28, 1994, Rodriguez was paid $1,000 to enter into a sham marriage with a man who wanted to obtain United States citizenship. Later that day, Rodriguez and [Lopez], who was very upset over the marriage, argued over whether she would move away from Haverhill with him. He left Rodriguez's apartment, but returned in the early morning hours of June 29, banging on the door, crying, and asking Rodriguez to take him back. She let him in, and he slept on her couch for the rest of the night.

On the afternoon of June 29, 1994, at approximately 4 P.M., Rodriguez left [Lopez] in her living room watching television. Her son, the victim, was playing at a neighbor's home, and [Lopez] agreed to watch the victim while Rodriguez went out. [Lopez] then went to the apartment where the victim was playing and offered him money to go home to help him close a window. The victim left his friends, saying that he would be back. A neighbor saw [Lopez] and the victim get into [Lopez]'s truck and drive away. The neighbor told Rodriguez, after she returned home, that [Lopez] had taken the victim "in the truck and left."

[Lopez] returned to Rodriguez's apartment later that evening, without the victim. He told Rodriguez that he had paid the victim five dollars to help him with the window, but denied leaving with the victim in his truck. [Lopez] and Rodriguez then went to the police station and reported the boy missing.

The next day, [Lopez] gave several statements to the Haverhill police regarding his whereabouts on the previous evening. [Lopez] told the police that, on the previous day, at approximately 4:30 P.M., he went to a neighbor's house and offered the victim money to close a window at home. After the victim closed the window, he stated that he was going to return next door to play. [Lopez] then walked to a friend's house, got his truck, returned to Rodriguez's apartment and parked his truck in the driveway. [Lopez] stated that, at that time, about 5 P.M., nobody appeared to be at the apartment. [Lopez] told the police that, after doing an errand, he had gone to the home of a friend, Nancy Valle, with whom he had made an arrangement to pay fifty dollars a month to store clothes in her apartment and to stay occasionally. There, [Lopez] had changed out of the dirty clothes that he had been wearing.

On the basis of these statements, the police obtained [Lopez]'s written consent to search his pickup truck and to retrieve from Valle's apartment the clothes he had worn the previous day. Police officers subsequently recovered [Lopez]'s wet black pants from Valle's apartment and a number of items from [Lopez]'s truck, including a length of rope. Later that evening, [Lopez] was arrested on the charge of kidnapping. [Lopez]'s truck was towed to the garage of the Haverhill department of public works (DPW).

On July 8, 1994, eight days after [Lopez]'s arrest and nine days after the victim's disappearance, workers at a salvage yard in Haverhill discovered the victim's body in the trunk of a white Chrysler Cordoba automobile marked to be destroyed by a "crusher." The body was weighted down with a one hundred pound transmission, and a rope was looped around the neck and tied to the trunk hinges.

At trial, the Commonwealth presented substantial evidence of [Lopez's] guilt. There was testimony that [Lopez] had been seen at the salvage yard about one and one-half weeks before the victim's body was found. [Lopez] had been looking for a transmission, and had been directed to an area of the yard near the automobile in which the body was found. There was a section of fence missing from that same area of the yard, and a set of fresh tire marks near the missing fence section. Paint smears taken from a screwdriver found in [Lopez's] truck matched the paint on the automobile in which the body was found. Fibers consistent with those from the victim's multicolored shorts were found in [Lopez's] truck, and black fibers consistent with the truck's carpet were found on the victim's sandals. In addition, [Lopez's] black pants contained stains of iron and rust, white paint chips, and red fibers consistent with those from the victim's hooded shirt. The medical examiner testified that the victim had died approximately one week before his body was discovered, but, because of severe decomposition of, and insect infestation to, the body, it was impossible to determine whether the cause of death was strangulation, the weight of the transmission placed on the body, or the heat inside the trunk of the automobile.

The Commonwealth also presented the testimony of Angel Miranda, [Lopez's] cellmate while [Lopez] was held in a house of correction awaiting trial. Miranda testified that [Lopez] had told him that he had offered the victim ten dollars, driven him to a junkyard, strangled him with a brown towel until he was unconscious, and placed him inside the trunk of a car "marked to be crushed," with a transmission on top of him.

[Lopez], whose primary defense was alibi, presented witnesses to testify that he was with them at various times between 2 P.M. and 4:45 P.M. on the afternoon of the victim's disappearance. [Lopez] also presented witnesses to testify that he loved the victim and his brother, was often their principal caregiver, and had at one time filed neglect petitions against their mother. In addition, he attempted to impeach Miranda's testimony through the testimony of other house of correction inmates who suggested that Miranda may have fabricated [Lopez's] admission to avenge a beating. [Lopez] presented a forensic expert who criticized the Commonwealth's failure to perform certain tests on the paint and fiber samples recovered, and indicated that the tests performed by the Commonwealth were inconclusive.

[Lopez] also attempted to introduce another suspect for the murder through the testimony of John Roche, who lived on the road abutting the salvage yard. Roche testified that he made contact with the Haverhill police to report a suspicious truck he had seen on his road during the last week of June, 1994. Roche testified that he informed someone at the police department identifying himself as "Sergeant Smith" that there were three people in the truck, a woman and two men, one whom he described as "stocky, bald and Spanish." When [Lopez's] trial began two years later, and it was apparent that the police had failed to follow up on his information, Roche again made contact with the Haverhill police. A Haverhill police officer testified that the man described by Roche fit the description of a suspected area drug dealer, known as "Kojak," but that Kojak never came up as a suspect during the investigation of the victim's murder. [Lopez] did not testify in his defense.

After [Lopez] rested his case, the Commonwealth introduced the testimony of Julia Diaz. She testified that one day in October or November of 1993, a time when [Lopez] and Rodriguez were having problems in their relationship, [Lopez] told her that he was not a "sucker," and if Rodriguez left him, he would "hurt [Rodriguez] where it hurts the most." He then told Diaz a story he described as having happened in the Dominican Republic. [Lopez] stated that a couple there were "having problems," so the man took the woman's children and hid them for a few days, returning them safely only when the couple "got back together."

Commonwealth v. Lopez, 433 Mass. 406, 407-10, 742 N.E.2d 1067 (2001).

The Court notes that the first time Roche saw Kojak, the latter's truck pulled into and out of the driveways on either side of Roche's house before continuing on to the salvage yard. Tr. 15:132-34....