Mastracchio v. Vorse
| Citation | 274 F.3d 590 |
| Decision Date | 31 July 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 00-2558,00-2558 |
| Parties | (1st Cir. 2001) GERALD S. MASTRACCHIO, Petitioner, Appellant, v. GEORGE VOSE, DIRECTOR, DEP'T OF CORRECTIONS, STATE OF RHODE ISLAND, Respondent, Appellee. Heard |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit) |
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND. Hon. Ernest C. Torres, U.S. District Judge
[Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Paula Lynch Hardiman, Assistant Public Defender, for petitioner.
Annie Goldberg, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Sheldon Whitehouse, Attorney General, was on brief, for respondent.
Before Selya, Circuit Judge, Gibson,* Senior Circuit Judge, and Lipez, Circuit Judge.
Asserting that the prosecution failed to divulge the full extent of special favors showered upon its star witness, petitioner-appellant Gerald S. Mastracchio, a state prisoner, unsuccessfully sought a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. The petitioner now appeals that court's order of dismissal. Although the state court did err in three respects and the petitioner's arguments are ably presented, we nonetheless find that these errors are not of a magnitude that would warrant federal habeas relief. We therefore affirm the order of dismissal.
Our factual account derives primarily from the copious records of prior court proceedings. Readers who hunger for additional facts should consult the trio of earlier opinions authored by the Rhode Island Supreme Court. See State v. Mastracchio, 546 A.2d 165 (R.I. 1988) (), aff'd after remand, 605 A.2d 489 (R.I. 1992); Mastracchio v. Moran, 698 A.2d 706 (R.I. 1997) ().
On December 15, 1979, the lifeless body of thirteen-year-old Richard Valente washed ashore on a beach bordering Narragansett Bay. An autopsy revealed that Valente had been badly beaten, but that drowning caused his death. The autopsy further revealed that a plastic plate had been inserted into his head some time prior to his demise.
A few weeks earlier the police had caught Valente engaging in petty larceny, and he had laid blame on the petitioner (then age seventeen). Armed with this knowledge and with a witness who had seen the petitioner in Valente's company several days before the body surfaced, the police launched an investigation. When the investigating officers were unable to tie the petitioner to the slaying, the investigation stalled.
While these events were transpiring, Peter Gilbert, a career criminal, was incarcerated in Florida. He escaped in 1983 and eventually telephoned the petitioner's father, Gelardo Mastracchio (Gelardo). Gelardo, a notorious organized crime figure, invited Gilbert to return home and partake of various illicit enterprises. Gilbert accepted this invitation and surreptitiously repaired to Rhode Island. He remained in Gelardo's employ until the authorities arrested him in February of 1985. Sensing that Gelardo had a hand in his capture, Gilbert agreed to assist the authorities.
Gilbert's cooperation proved fruitful, shedding light on numerous unsolved crimes. Of particular interest here, he told the state police that the petitioner had bragged about killing a friend by beating him, transporting him to the Jamestown Bridge, and throwing him over while still alive. Although Gilbert did not know the victim's identity, he quoted the petitioner as saying (i) that he had committed the murder to prevent his victim from talking to the authorities, and (ii) that his victim had never been the same since he had a plastic plate inserted into his skull following an automobile accident. This testimony filled the gaps in the dormant investigation, and a state grand jury soon indicted the petitioner for Valente's murder.
Gilbert remained in the protective custody of the Providence police department from and after the time that he began to warble. During his debriefing, he implicated James Broccoli and Lawrence Mastrofine in the robbery of a liquor store. Shortly before their trial, he testified in a voir dire hearing regarding the promises, rewards, and inducements given to him in exchange for his cooperation. The testimony revealed a variety of benefits received by Gilbert including payment of personal expenses averaging $1,500-$1,800 per month, a thirty-day stay with his family during the holidays, conjugal visits at a local motel, twenty-five to fifty excursions to restaurants, easy access to alcohol throughout the course of his custody, and unlimited telephone privileges.
Gilbert was vigorously cross-questioned by defense counsel about these matters and about the conditions of his confinement. He was less than forthcoming. A representative sampling of the cross-examination follows:
Q. You pay for that food?
A. Yes. Someone goes shopping and gets groceries.
Q. You give them the money?
A. I don't give them the money, the Attorney General's Office gives them the money.
Q. You sure that comes out of the fifteen or eighteen hundred?
A. I don't see the money. When I need groceries the money is made available to buy groceries.
. . . .
Q. Have you been provided with any types of rules and regulations, either verbally or in writing, concerning your conditions of confinement while in the custody of the Providence Police, things you can do and things you cannot do?
A. What I can do is pretty much limited. I'm locked up. I got cell bars in the window. I -- two doors -- three doors that are locked. I'm confined to a three-room area. That's my exercise. I don't have no exercise yards.
. . . .
Q. All you do is just live from day to day and week to week and month to month and you get your food and clothing, you get your haircuts and glasses, and then someone tells you that is costing them between fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred dollars a month; is that fair to say?
A. Sure.
. . . .
Q. Besides the thirty dollars a week that you're given by welfare do you receive any other cash from either the Providence Police or the Attorney General's Department for spending money?
A. No.
. . . .
Q. Is that what you told the Attorney General, you don't have an [sic] drug problem?
A. No. I used cocaine when I was on the street, but I have no drug problem. I took care of it myself within my own mind and body. I'm no longer dependent or need any of that stuff. I haven't had it for twenty-three months.
. . . .
Q. . . . . Did you take any trips or have you taken any trips while you have been in the custody of the Providence Police?
A. Yeah. . . . I went to Florida. I went to Florida to go to court.
. . . .
Q. In addition, to Florida and Maine has there been any other?
A. No. All I can remember is going to Florida twice and Maine once.
The voir dire hearing took place on January 9, 1997. The petitioner's trial began approximately two months later. Gilbert's testimony was essential to the prosecution's case; he, and he alone, placed the petitioner at the murder scene. The petitioner's trial counsel, Dale Anderson, was fully apprised of what had transpired at the Broccoli/Mastrofine voir dire hearing, and the prosecutor anticipated a full-blown attack on Gilbert's credibility. He attempted to blunt the force of this attack by delineating, in his case in chief, the range of benefits that Gilbert had received. To that end, the following exchange occurred during Gilbert's direct examination.
Q. Of the fifteen to eighteen hundred dollars you get per month, do you see any of that cash, physically, yourself?
A. No, I don't get it. Whatever bills are incurred are paid from that.
. . . .
Q. Would you explain the circumstances of your custody at this time?
A. My family is kept in a [sic] undisclosed location in protective custody. Myself, I'm in a lockup situation, in the custody of the Providence Police Department. I have a 24-hour guard, seven days a week.
Q. And describe the facility that you're in?
A. I live in what could be described as a cellblock area. Bars on the window, there are three locked doors, successive locked doors, with a [sic] armed guard, and I have no access to the outside world or anything like that.
As expected, Anderson mounted a vigorous challenge to Gilbert's credibility. In cross-examination, he relied heavily on the Broccoli/Mastrofine voir dire transcript. Anderson asked Gilbert about the conditions of his confinement, his checkered past (a sorry record that included murder, armed robbery, fraud, and burglary), and his well-documented penchant for prevarication. Anderson also inquired about Gilbert's affinity for narcotics, but Gilbert denied having used drugs since his arrest two years earlier.
On March 19, 1987, the jury found the petitioner guilty of Valente's murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. In contrast, Gilbert received what amounted to a ten-year incarcerative sentence (i.e., a nominal fifty-year sentence, with forty years suspended) for his myriad offenses, to be served in the protective custody of the Providence police department.
On June 11, 1988, Gilbert was still serving his sentence. On that date, he died from a heart attack that occurred while he was driving unaccompanied to a skydiving lesson. Because of the exotic purpose of the sojourn, the absence of any police escort, and the presence of cocaine in the vehicle, this incident touched off a furor concerning the nature of Gilbert's confinement. A spate of investigations revealed that Gilbert's jailers had permitted him to take extraordinary liberties both before and after the petitioner's trial. Many of these special favors had not been disclosed to the petitioner, including, inter alia, the receipt of sums of cash ($20,000 over the course of the six months...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Lisker v. Knowles
...false evidence, even false evidence presented in good faith, hardly comports with fundamental fairness."); see also Mastracchio v. Vose, 274 F.3d 590, 600 (1st Cir.2001) ("[A]s a legal matter, the Supreme Court precedent on this issue is clear. When any member of the prosecution team has in......
-
Sleeper v. Spencer, Civil Action No. 03-30061-MAP.
...F.3d 24, 36 (1st Cir. 2002). "Federal habeas review of a state court's factual findings is similarly constrained." Mastracchio v. Vose, 274 F.3d 590, 597 (1st Cir.2001). State court factual findings control unless Petitioner can show that they were "based on an unreasonable determination of......
-
Rosencrantz v. Lafler
...evidence—when the witness has already been sufficiently impeached at trial.") (internal citations omitted); Mastracchio v. Vose, 274 F.3d 590, 604 (1st Cir.2001) (concluding that, because perjury came from an already "sullied witness," it "was unlikely to have tipped the balance and changed......
-
Simpson v. Spencer
...petitioner must clear a high hurdle before a federal court will set aside any of the state's factual findings." Mastracchio v. Vose, 274 F.3d 590, 598 (1st Cir.2001). Specifically, the petitioner has "the burden of rebutting the presumption of correctness by clear and convincing evidence." ......
-
A recipe for bias: an empirical look at the interplay between institutional incentives and bounded rationality in prosecutorial decision making.
...488, 492 (9th Cir. 2000) (finding prosecutor's failure to immediately correct witness's false statement improper); Mastracchio v. Vose, 274 F.3d 590, 602 (1st Cir. 2001) (finding prosecutor's failure to correct witness's false statement improper); Morris v. Ylst, 447 F.3d 735, 744 (9th Cir.......