Moody v. Thomas

• Decision Date: 20 February 2015
• Docket Number: No. 2:12–cv–4139–LSC.,2:12–cv–4139–LSC.
• Parties: Walter Leroy MOODY, Petitioner, v. Kim T. THOMAS, Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Alabama

89 F.Supp.3d 1167

Walter Leroy MOODY, Petitioner

v.Kim T. THOMAS, Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections, Respondent.

No. 2:12–cv–4139–LSC.

United States District Court, N.D. Alabama, Southern Division.

Signed Feb. 20, 2015.

Anne E. Borelli, William M. Ermine, Federal Defenders, Montgomery, AL, for Petitioner.

Henry Mitchell Johnson, James R. Houts, Office of the Attorney General, Montgomery, AL, for Respondent.

MEMORANDUM OF OPINION

L. SCOTT COOGLER, District Judge.

This is a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 filed by Petitioner Walter Leroy Moody (“Moody”), now incarcerated at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama. Moody challenges the validity of his 1996 convictions for capital murder and first degree assault and sentences of death and life without parole in connection with the December 1989 pipe-bomb murder of Judge Robert S. Vance of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.¹ Upon thorough consideration of the entire record and the briefs submitted by the parties, the Court finds that Moody's petition for habeas relief is due to be denied.

I. THE OFFENSE CONDUCT

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals (hereinafter, the “ACCA”), in its opinion on direct appeal from Moody's conviction, set out the background facts of this case, as follows:

Around the second week of December 1989, four pipe bombs were sent through the United States mails to different locations in the southeastern United States. On December 16, 1989, the package containing one of those pipe bombs was delivered to the Mountain Brook, Alabama, residence of Judge Vance. The package was addressed to Judge Vance and showed the name and Newnan, Georgia, address of one of his judicial colleagues as the return addressee. When Judge Vance opened the package, the bomb inside detonated, killing him almost instantly. Judge Vance's wife, Helen Vance, was seriously injured by the blast. The pipe bomb was constructed of a steel pipe approximately five and one-half inches in length and one and one-half inches in diameter, sealed at each end with threaded end caps; it contained smokeless gunpowder and a homemade detonator fashioned from the hollowed-out barrel of a ballpoint pen. The device was designed to explode when the lid of the box in which it was contained was opened. Numerous nails had been secured to the pipe with rubber bands; the nails served as projectiles upon detonation.

Two days later, on December 18, 1989, Robert Robinson, a civil rights attorney in Savannah, Georgia, was killed after opening a package containing a similar pipe bomb, which had been delivered to Robinson's Savannah law office. That same day, a third pipe bomb was received at the courthouse of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia. A court security officer using an X-ray machine discovered the device, which was disarmed by bomb-squad technicians before it could detonate. The following day, on December 19, 1989, a fourth pipe bomb was received—this one at the Jacksonville, Florida, office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (“NAACP”); the bomb was discovered and disarmed before it could injure anyone.FN1

FN1. The pipe-bomb packages sent to Robinson and to the Jacksonville office of the NAACP bore false return addresses from Warner Robins, Georgia. The pipe-bomb package sent to the federal courthouse bore a false return address from Atlanta.

Testimony presented at Moody's trial indicated that the four pipe bombs were very similar in construction and design. All of the bombs had been placed in reinforced cardboard boxes that had been painted inside with black latex paint. All were delivered in packages wrapped in brown paper, tied with string, wrapped with the same kind of tape, posted with the same kind of priority mail stamps, and addressed with the same kind of mailing labels. The addresses on all the mailing labels appeared to have been typed with the same typewriter. All of the bombs were constructed of steel pipes filled with Hercules Red Dot brand smokeless gunpowder. While the pipe that made up the bomb that killed Judge Vance was sealed at both ends with end caps that had been screwed into place, the ends of the other three bombs had been sealed with welded end plates that were joined by a steel rod extending through the center of each pipe. The steel rods were secured at the ends by hexagonal nuts. Nails had been attached, by rubber bands, to the outside of each pipe, and each bomb had the same kind of triggering mechanism and detonator. All of the bombs used C-cell batteries as their electrical source, and all had the same type of modified battery holder in them. Typed notes threatening death were contained inside the boxes in which three of the four bombs had been sent. (Only the bomb sent to the federal courthouse in Atlanta was not accompanied by such a note.) There were numerous other similarities in the details of the bombs' composition, in the construction of the boxes that held the bombs, and in the packaging of the devices.FN2 Based on the many similarities, forensic investigators believed that all four bombs were made and sent by the same person.

FN2. Among the other similarities were the following: all of the devices had been packed with paper towels with a goose pattern on them; all had pieces of aluminum pie pans used in them; all had the same size paper clips in them; all had heavy-gauge aluminum wire in them; all had CCI brand pistol primer material in them; and all had the same electrical system in them, with the same color.

In the days that followed the killings of Judge Vance and Robert Robinson, every judge on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals received typed letters in which the sender took credit for the bombings and threatened the recipients with assassination, “because of the federal courts' calloused [sic] disregard for the administration of justice,” in the name of an organization known as “Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System.” Similar death-threat letters were received at the Atlanta and Jacksonville offices of the NAACP. A separate typed death-threat letter, addressed to news anchor woman Brenda Wood, was received at the WAGA television station in Atlanta.

The death-threat letters were all signed “010187” and specified that the writer was using this number as a secret code and that it was not to be disclosed to the public. All of the letters were postmarked from Atlanta and were posted with a 25–cent American–Flag–Over–Yosemite stamp. The packages containing three of the four pipe bombs were posted with the same kind of American–Flag–Over–Yosemite stamp. An analyst for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) concluded that the letters received by the judges on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals and at the Atlanta and Jacksonville offices of the NAACP had all been prepared with the same manual typewriter used to type the addresses on the mailing labels affixed to all four of the pipe-bomb packages. The letter addressed to Brenda Wood had been prepared with a different typewriter.

Testimony revealed that on August 21, 1989, about four months before the murder of Judge Vance, the NAACP regional office in Atlanta had received through the mail a tear-gas bomb, the triggering mechanism and packaging of which were similar in numerous respects to the four pipe bombs mailed in December 1989. The tear-gas bomb exploded when an NAACP employee opened the box in which it was packaged, filling the office with tear gas. Like three of the four December 1989 pipe bombs, the tear-gas bomb was accompanied by a typed death-threat note. The package containing the tear-gas bomb bore a false return address from Atlanta.

In the days following the receipt of the tear-gas bomb at the NAACP office, various news media outlets throughout the eastern United States received copies of a typed letter in which the anonymous sender complained about the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals' “callous disregard for justice”; in the letter, the sender issued a “Declaration of War” and threatened nerve-gas attacks against “densely populated cities.” All of the letters were posted with a 25–cent American–Flag–Over–Yosemite stamp.FN3 It was determined that the letters had been prepared with the same manual typewriter used to type the address on the mailing label affixed to the package containing the tear-gas bomb.

FN3. The letters were all postmarked on August 21, 1989—the day of the tear-gas bombing—and all had been sent from an Atlanta area post office. None contained a return address.

The State presented evidence indicating that the August 1989 tear-gas bomb and the four December 1989 pipe bombs—including the one that killed Judge Vance—were all constructed and sent by the appellant, Walter Leroy Moody, Jr., as part of Moody's declared “war” on the court system. That war stemmed from Moody's conviction in federal court, almost 17 years earlier, on charges of possessing a pipe bomb. In May 1972, a pipe bomb had exploded in Moody's residence in Macon, Georgia. That bomb, which had been contained inside a package addressed to an automobile dealer who had repossessed Moody's car, had exploded when opened by Moody's then wife, seriously injuring her. Moody had been arrested and charged with the manufacture and possession of a pipe bomb. During his 1972 trial on those charges in federal court, Moody had taken the stand in his own defense and maintained that a man named “Gene Wallace” FN4 had secretly planted the bomb in Moody's home, allegedly to harm Moody. The jury had found Moody guilty of possessing a pipe bomb, although it had acquitted him of the charge of manufacturing it. Moody served three years in the federal penitentiary for the conviction.

FN4. Gene Wallace's existence has never been documented; from all indications, he was an invention of Moody's mind.

After he was released from prison, Moody became obsessed with overturning his conviction, believing

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