Mamou v. Davis
| Decision Date | 08 December 2016 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL ACTION NO. H-14-403 |
| Parties | CHARLES MAMOU, JR., Petitioner, v. LORIE DAVIS, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Texas |
In 1999, a Texas jury convicted Charles Mamou, Jr. of capital murder and sentenced him to death. Mamou unsuccessfully appealed, sought state habeas remedies, and then filed this federal habeas petition. The respondent, Lorie Davis, has answered and moved for summary judgment. (Docket Entry No. 49). Based on the record, the pleadings, and the applicable law, the court grants the summary judgment motion, finds that Mamou has not shown a basis to grant the habeas relief he seeks, denies his petition, and does not issue a certificate of appealability. The reasons for these rulings are set out below.
This background summary is taken from the trial record. A Reliant Energy employee entered the backyard of a vacant house in southwest Houston to read a light meter on December 8, 1998. He saw the body of a young black female lying on the ground, face down, near an unfired bulletcartridge. The police soon identified the victim as 17-year-old Mary Carmouche.2 A single gunshot to her chest had caused her death.
No forensic evidence conclusively identified the killer. The State built its case primarily on eyewitness accounts of the events leading up to Mary Carmouche's abduction and on Mamou's own statements. Mamou was indicted, tried, and convicted for intentionally killing Mary Carmouche during a kidnapping. Trial testimony established that Mary's death was the last event in a drug transaction during which Mamou shot three other people, one of whom, Terrance Gibson, died. Mamou, with Samuel Johnson and Terrence Dodson, was in a group of drug buyers; Kevin Walter, Dion Holley, and Terrance Gibson were selling drugs.
Mamou was a drug dealer from Sunset, Louisiana. In late 1998, he bought cocaine from Kevin Walter, who was in Houston, Texas. Tr. Vol. 20 at 167. After that, Mamou repeatedly called Walter to buy more drugs. Tr. Vol. 16 at 26.3
Mamou came to Houston in early December 1998 to buy a large amount of cocaine. He called Kevin Walter and Dion Holley and asked them for a kilo. The price set was $20,000. Tr. Vol. 16 at 28. Mamou used the phone at his friend Howard Scott's apartment to arrange to meet Walter and Holley on December 6. The buyers-Mamou, Johnson, and Dodson-met the sellers-Walter, Holley, and Gibson-in a mall parking lot. Holley drove the buyers to the parking lot in a blue Lexus. Over several hours, the men traveled to various locations, unable to complete the deal because neither group would show the drugs or the money. The sellers eventually picked up Holley's friend, Mary Carmouche. Johnson and Mamou took Dodson home. The two groupsfinally met on Lantern Point Drive, a dark, isolated street. The two groups parked their cars facing each other, to make it look like one car was charging the other car's battery. It became apparent that this was not a drug deal, but rather what witnesses called a "jack on jack." Mamou did not want to buy cocaine; he intended to take it from the sellers and keep the money. The other group, Walter, Holley and Gibson, did not want to sell cocaine; they intended to take the buyers' money and keep the drugs.
Mamou had planned with Johnson and Dodson to pretend to have cash in a bag that was actually full of cut newspaper. When the exchange was to occur, one man would pull a gun on the sellers while Mamou took the cocaine.
Mamou, Walter, Holley, and Johnson all testified at Mamou's trial.4 While some details differed, their testimony provided a generally consistent narrative of the events leading up to Mamou shooting three men before abducting Mary Carmouche. Mamou and Gibson got out of their respective cars. Both were armed. Holley got out of the sellers' car to tell the other men that the location was not a good one. As Holley turned back toward his car, Mamou began shooting. Gibson was the only seller carrying a weapon. Tr. Vol. 16 at 95. He fell, fatally shot, and died from his wounds.5 Holley ran toward a nearby field, and Mamou shot him in the arm.
Walter grabbed the steering wheel of the blue Lexus to drive away. Mamou walked up and shot him through the window. Mamou opened the car door and, as Walter stepped out and said "whatever you do, don't hurt the girl," Mamou shot him again. Tr. Vol. 16 at 66, 134. The two men scuffled. Walter tried to run, and Mamou shot him in the back.
Walter ran past where Gibson was lying on the ground and bent down to grab a gun lying by Gibson's hand. Walter saw Mamou get in the blue Lexus and drive away with Mary Carmouche in the car. Johnson followed in the other car, but soon drove in a different direction. No witness saw Mary Carmouche after Walter saw her in the car with Mamou.
The police began investigating what they thought was a car jacking and kidnapping, not a drug transaction. Walter and Holley initially hid the drug aspect by telling police officers that he and the others he was with had stopped to help people who seemed to be having car trouble. Tr. Vol. 16 at 188-89. Walter and Holley claimed that the men they stopped to help had shot them and stolen the car with Mary Carmouche inside. After Walter and Holley revealed what had actually happened, the police learned Mamou's name and the phone number he used to plan the drug transaction. Further investigation led the police to interview Howard Scott, the person Mamou had stayed with. Scott testified that Mamou had left the apartment with Johnson the evening of December 6 and returned alone around 2:00 a.m. Tr. Vol.19 at 126.
Johnson testified that he did not see Mamou after the failed supposed drug deal but talked to him by phone. Tr. Vol. 19 at 43. Mamou later called Johnson and told him to "shut the hell up." Tr. Vol. 19 at 44-45.
Mamou later made statements to two men-Terrence Dodson and Anthony Trail-suggesting that he had killed Mary Carmouche. The day after the shootings, Trail picked up his cousins, Dodson and Mamou. Mamou showed the two men keys and told them that he had a Lexus, explaining that he had purchased it. Tr. Vol. 19 at 173, 174, 176. After Mamou returned to Louisiana, he called Dodson and talked "about the news reports about a Lexus . . . being taken." Tr. Vol. 19 at 178. Mamou told Dodson that there had been "a jack on a jack" at which a "[s]hoot out happened, and he burned off . . . [i]n the Lexus with the female." Tr. Vol. 19 at 180. Mamou told Dodson that "he shot her" after she "performed oral sex on him," because Tr. Vol. 19 at 180, 182.6
Trail also testified that Mamou told him about the Lexus. Tr. Vol. 20 at 8. Mamou asked Trail to drive to a dead-end street near Trail's house. Tr. Vol. 20 at 9-11. Mamou got out of the car, picked some eyeglasses off the ground, and got back in the car. He explained that he had left the eyeglasses when "he was with a female" who "was giving him oral sex." Tr. Vol. 20 at 12-13. The next day, Trail took Mamou to a bus station to go back to Louisiana. Mamou later called Trail and asked "what had been on the news about a missing person, Mary Carmouche." Tr. Vol. 20 at 15.
In addition to the witness testimony, circumstantial forensic evidence linked Mamou to the crime. Mamou's fingerprints were found on the discarded package containing the newspaper that Mamou wanted to pass off as money. Tr. Vol. 20 at 88. The police recovered the blue Lexus at the apartment complex where Scott lived. The police did not find Mamou's fingerprints on the Lexus. Nor did the police find the murder weapon. Forensic firearms testing provided evidence connecting Mamou to the murder.
Robert Baldwin, a criminalist in the Houston Police Department firearms lab, testified about the ammunition found near Mary Carmouche's body and at the Lantern Point Drive location where Holley and Gibson were shot. Baldwin testified that the unfired cartridge found near Carmouche's body had unique "magazine marks," indicating that it had cycled through the same gun magazine as one of the nine-millimeter casings found on Lantern Point Drive. Tr. Vol. 20 at 108. Baldwin also compared bullets taken from the bodies of Mary Carmouche and Gibson with a bullet fragment taken from Holley's arm. Baldwin testified that the bullets taken from Gibson's body and Holley's arm were fired from the same weapon and shared the same "class characteristics" as the bullet recovered from the body. Tr. Vol. 20 at 112. Baldwin could not exclude the possibility that the bullet that killed Mary Carmouche was fired from the same gun as the others. Tr. Vol. 20 at 111-13.7
The defense called two witnesses in the liability phase.8 Mamou testified on his own behalf. On direct, Mamou testified to what happened when he left Lantern Point Drive, after Holley andGibson had been shot. Mamou testified that when he drove away, he did not realize that Mary Carmouche was in the backseat of the blue Lexus. Tr. Vol. 20 at 143-44. When he figured it out, Mamou stopped and "told her to get out of the car," but "she did not." Tr. Vol. 20 at 145. Mamou testified that when he left Lantern Point Drive, Johnson followed him to Scott's apartment, and Johnson and a man named Shawn England, wearing hand covers to avoid leaving prints, searched the Lexus for drugs. Tr. Vol. 20 at 146, 149.9 Mamou testified that Mary Carmouche stood nearby talking to Johnson. According to Mamou, Mary Carmouche later left with Johnson and England. Tr. Vol. 20 at 145-50, 152.
The cross-examination focused on inconsistencies between Mamou's account and that of the other witnesses. Mamou responded by claiming that the other witnesses were lying and that he shot Gibson and Holley in self-defense.
After Mamou's testimony, the State called a police officer to...
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