McFowler v. Jaimet

• Decision Date: 13 November 2003
• Docket Number: No. 03-1162.,03-1162.
• Citation: 349 F.3d 436
• Parties: Clifton McFOWLER, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Danny D. JAIMET, Warden, Hill Correctional Center, Respondent-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

349 F.3d 436

Clifton McFOWLER, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Danny D. JAIMET, Warden, Hill Correctional Center, Respondent-Appellant.

No. 03-1162.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 27, 2003.

Decided November 13, 2003.

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Sarah C. Hardgrove-Koleno (Argued), Robert R. Stauffer, Jenner & Block, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner-Appellee.

Anne S. Bagby (Argued), Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, for Respondent-Appellant.

Before ROVNER, DIANE P. WOOD, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge.

Following a 1992 bench trial, an Illinois judge convicted Clifton McFowler of first-degree murder and ordered him to serve a prison term of forty years. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed McFowler's conviction, judging the testimony of Charlene Meredith, who placed McFowler at the scene of crime with a shotgun in his hand, sufficient to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt notwithstanding conflicts in the evidence as to whom Meredith had picked out of a lineup shortly after the murder. The district court (Hon. Joan B. Gottschall) granted McFowler's petition for a writ of habeas corpus, concluding that the Illinois Appellate Court had unreasonably applied Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), when it sustained McFowler's conviction based on Meredith's identification testimony. United States ex rel. McFowler v. Pierson, 2003 WL 76861 (N.D.Ill. Jan.8, 2003). In view of the irreconcilable inconsistencies in Meredith's own testimony, we share the district court's doubts about the reliability of her identification. "The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification." United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 228, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 1933, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967). However, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 commands great deference to the decisions of state courts. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d); e.g., Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685, 693, 122 S.Ct. 1843, 1849, 152 L.Ed.2d 914 (2002). Because we cannot say that the Illinois Appellate Court was objectively unreasonable in holding that Meredith's testimony provided sufficient support for McFowler's conviction, we are compelled to reverse the grant of McFowler's petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

I.

Sammy Logan was shot on October 9, 1989, when he answered a knock at the front door of his home. He lapsed into a coma and died three days later. An autopsy would reveal that he had been shot in the forehead and that the bullet had penetrated his brain.

Although the Illinois Appellate Court was not explicit on this point, it is undisputed that McFowler's murder conviction is premised not on the notion that McFowler shot Logan himself, but rather on the theory that McFowler is legally accountable for the acts of the person who did. The trial judge neglected to make this clear when he convicted McFowler, but his remarks at sentencing eliminate any doubt on this score. Indeed, the State defends McFowler's conviction solely on an accountability theory. Illinois law provides that "[a] person is legally accountable for the conduct of another when ... [e]ither before or during the commission of an offense, and with the intent to promote or facilitate such commission, he solicits, aids, abets, agrees or attempts to aid, such other person in the planning or commission of the offense." 720 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. 5/5-2(c) (West 2003). As we shall see, there is ample circumstantial evidence from which one reasonably might conclude both that McFowler was present at the scene of the murder and that he fled from the scene in the immediate aftermath. However, mere presence at the scene of a crime—even with knowledge that a crime is being committed—and flight from the scene do not suffice to establish accountability for the acts of a principal under Illinois law. E.g., People v. Williams, 193 Ill.2d 306, 250 Ill.Dec. 692, 739 N.E.2d 455, 472 (2000), cert. denied, 533 U.S. 953, 121 S.Ct. 2599, 150 L.Ed.2d 756 (2001). The State must also prove that the defendant intended to facilitate or promote the principal's criminal activity. E.g., People v. Stanciel, 153 Ill.2d 218, 180 Ill.Dec. 124, 606 N.E.2d 1201, 1210 (1992). The critical evidence pointing to McFowler's complicity in the murder came from Meredith.

In October of 1989, Meredith resided in a second-floor apartment at 3144 West Lexington Street in Chicago along with Logan (her boyfriend), Glenda Roberts (Meredith's sister), Percell Swinney (Roberts' boyfriend), and seven children. At approximately 11:45 a.m. on October 9, there was a knock at the front door of the apartment. At that time, Logan, Meredith, and Meredith's children were congregated in a bedroom opposite the kitchen. Against Meredith's advice, Logan left the bedroom to answer the knock, closing the bedroom door behind him. Through the closed door, Meredith subsequently heard a shot. Meredith's two-year-old son Davion opened the bedroom door, and at a distance of approximately sixteen feet, Meredith would later testify, she saw a somewhat short African-American man with a shotgun in his hand standing in the kitchen. He was wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt. Next to him, lying on the floor of the kitchen, was Logan. At first, the intruder's face was turned away from Meredith toward Swinney, who was standing in a doorway between the kitchen and the living room. But Meredith got a clear look at the intruder's face when he subsequently tripped over Logan's body. Meredith also heard a voice from somewhere else in the apartment say "if you are going to shoot him[,] shoot him." Tr. G22. Meredith grabbed Davion by the shirt and pulled him into the bedroom closet along with her other children. They remained in the closet for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes, until Meredith's sister came to find her. Meredith later saw that Swinney had been shot in the arm.

Police were summoned from a nearby police station by a neighbor who ran into the police station yelling that two men had just been shot. They arrived at the scene within minutes of the shooting. Officer J. Delpilar found Swinney sitting on the front steps of the building with a gunshot wound to his right arm. When he entered the second-floor apartment, Delpilar saw Logan lying on the floor in a pool of blood, unconscious but still breathing. Delpilar spoke with Swinney and the other witnesses and subsequently broadcast a description of three suspects: (1) an African-American male in his late teens or early twenties, approximately six feet tall, 180 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair, wearing a red and white jogging suit and gym shoes; (2) a second African-American male in his twenties, wearing an orange shirt and red jogging pants; and (3) a female African American aged eighteen to twenty, wearing white pants and tall black riding boots.

On further inspection of the scene, Delpilar found a set of automobile keys near the top of the stairs leading to the second-floor apartment where Meredith and Logan lived. Those keys, he discovered, fit the driver's side door and ignition of a gray Ford Escort parked in front of (and across the street from) the property. Officer Edward Kulbida learned from bystanders that the suspects had attempted to use that car as their getaway vehicle. (The keys found in the stairwell explain why the suspects had left the Escort behind and fled on foot.) Because Delpilar failed to handle the keys in such a way as to preserve any fingerprints on them, they were not tested for prints. However, prints lifted from the exterior of both the driver and passenger sides of the Escort matched McFowler and Byndum, respectively. It could not be said how long those prints had been on the car.

Touring around the area to the north of the crime scene, Kulbida and other officers soon spotted a woman—Shanie Flowers—matching the description of the female suspect. Flowers was making a call from a pay phone at 3258 West Flournoy, just two blocks away from the scene of the shooting. Flowers volunteered to the officers that the men they were looking for could be found in the second-floor apartment at that same address. Kulbida, along with Detective Wayne Gulliford and Officer Robert Gomez, entered the Flournoy apartment approximately thirty minutes after the shooting was reported. Inside, they found McFowler and Trenton Byndum, among other individuals. McFowler was lying in bed, wearing only blue jeans. Byndum was in the living room, wearing striped blue jeans, a sleeveless blue top, white socks, and no shoes. Gulliford spotted blood on Byndum's right sock. On the floor next to Byndum were a beige trench coat, a pair of Nike Air Flight athletic shoes, and a Payless shopping bag containing other items of clothing. Among the clothes found in the bag were a pair of red and white jogging pants, a shirt, and a jogging jacket, all stained with what appeared to be blood. Byndum and McFowler were placed under arrest.

During a subsequent search of the apartment, Detective Gregory Baiocchi discovered a black and white Converse athletic shoe for a right foot in the apartment's oven. The shoe had what appeared to be blood spots on it. Baiocchi recovered what appeared to be that shoe's mate in the Escort parked in front of the crime scene. Both shoes were submitted to a laboratory for testing, which confirmed that human blood was present on both shoes. The blood found on the left shoe was Type B; the right shoe contained an insufficient quantity of blood for typing. At trial, McFowler was asked to try the shoes on, and the shoes fit him. They also fit his lawyer. Logan's blood type apparently was Type B. (Type B blood was recovered from the crime scene.)

Also discovered at the Flournoy apartment (secreted behind bricks in the rear stairwell of the basement) were a Ruger Security Six revolver with two live .38-caliber rounds and...