Morgan v. Dickhaut

• Decision Date: 27 April 2012
• Docket Number: No. 10–1208.,10–1208.
• Citation: 677 F.3d 39
• Parties: David MORGAN, Petitioner–Appellant, v. Thomas DICKHAUT, Superintendent, Souza Baranowski Correctional Center, Respondent–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

677 F.3d 39

David MORGAN, Petitioner–Appellant,

v.Thomas DICKHAUT, Superintendent, Souza Baranowski Correctional Center, Respondent–Appellee.

No. 10–1208.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard Sept. 12, 2011.Decided April 27, 2012.

Catherine J. Hinton, with whom Rankin & Sultan was on brief, for appellant.

Amy L. Karangekis, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Martha Coakley, Attorney General, was on brief, for appellee.

Before TORRUELLA, LIPEZ, and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

In this appeal arising from a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition, David Morgan challenges his Massachusetts state court conviction of first degree murder. Morgan argues that the district court erred in dismissing his petition because the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) applied a beyond a reasonable doubt standard contrary to that articulated by the Supreme Court in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), in evaluating his claim that there was insufficient evidence presented at trial to support his conviction. Alternatively, Morgan argues that, even if the SJC applied the correct standard, it did so unreasonably, because the evidence presented against him was insufficient to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. We reject these arguments and affirm the district court's dismissal of Morgan's petition.

I.

A. Factual Background

Morgan does not dispute the SJC's account of the facts of this case, which we set forth almost in full below. We do so because the import of Morgan's sufficiency argument, which presents a closer question than some such arguments, cannot be understood without a full statement of the facts. Before doing so, however, we offer a brief introduction to the circumstances of the case and the individuals involved for clarity's sake.

Morgan and Wayne Rowe, the victim, as well as many of the witnesses in this case, were involved in the marijuana trade in and around Springfield, Massachusetts in early 1999. After the theft of marijuana and money from his apartment, Morgan suspected that Rowe was responsible and told several individuals of his suspicion and his intent to retaliate. The prosecution argued that this burglary provided a motive for the crime and offered several witnesses who implicated Morgan in the murder. Errol Lodge, a sometime customer of Morgan and Rowe, testified that he saw Rowe get into a car with Morgan and an associate, Floyd Johnson, on the day that Rowe disappeared. Richard McLean, a local business owner and an acquaintance of both Morgan and Rowe, testified that Morgan stated his intent to kill Rowe two days before Rowe's disappearance, and that Morgan made statements after the killing suggesting that he was responsible. Additionally, the prosecution offered several other witnesses, including Rowe's wife, who testified that Morgan made general threats to harm the person who broke into his apartment and specific threats to harm Rowe.

With that brief introduction, we turn to the SJC's recitation of the facts.

The victim was last seen in the late afternoon of March 3, 1999, getting into a four-door green sedan with the defendant[, David Morgan,] and Floyd Johnson, who was driving. He was not seen again until his body was recovered in Agawam, at the edge of the Connecticut River, on April 18, 1999. When his body was found the victim was wearing some of the same clothing he was wearing on March 3. He had suffered a gunshot wound to the head at close range. The medical examiner was able to recover the projectile, a .38 caliber metal jacket that could have been fired from a .357 Magnum or specific types of nine millimeter weapons.

In the days before his disappearance and murder, the victim was living in the basement of a residence in Springfield apart from his wife and children. The victim's wife testified that, on March 1, 2, and 3, 1999, after work, she picked up the victim and drove him to the defendant's apartment so that the victim could obtain marijuana to sell. The wife would drop the victim off at his residence each evening. On March 1, 1999, when the victim's wife took him to the defendant's apartment, the defendant approached the victim, who was sitting in the vehicle's passenger seat, and told him that his apartment had been broken into and that whoever had anything to do with it was “going to feel it.”

On March 3, after his wife had brought the victim to the defendant's apartment, she dropped him off at his residence at approximately 5 P.M. Sometime after that, Errol Lodge wanted to purchase marijuana from the victim. The victim invited Lodge to come to his residence and wait in the driveway for a delivery of marijuana. Lodge saw the defendant and Johnson pull up in a green sedan, and he saw the victim speak to the men and then get into the back seat of the vehicle, which sped away. Lodge waited for the victim for a while but left when he did not return.

In statements to police, the defendant did not deny that Johnson drove him in a green sedan to the victim's house between approximately 4 P.M. and 5 P.M. that afternoon. The defendant claimed that he and Johnson went there to pick up money the victim owed and that, once they did so, the pair left. The defendant also told police that the victim could not be trusted because he would “rob you.”

At about 8:30 P.M. the evening of March 3, the victim's wife tried contacting him by his pager and received no response, which was uncharacteristic. She tried several times that evening and in the days following, still receiving no response. She went to the victim's residence, and also searched for the victim for several days, before reporting him as a missing person on March 8. The victim's cellular telephone records showed no outgoing calls after March 3.

No physical evidence tied the defendant to the victim's murder. The gun was never found, and a search of the green sedan Johnson was driving, which was routinely cleaned, turned up no fingerprints that matched the victim's. A test of the vehicle yielded the possible presence of human blood on the rear exterior door handle on the driver's side. The defendant's conduct and statements he made to others both before and after the victim's disappearance implicated him in the murder.

1. Errol Lodge. After the break-in of his apartment, the defendant told Lodge what had happened and that he knew who did it; pulling a gun from his waist, he said that Lodge “will hear about the person.” On March 3, five days before the wife reported the victim missing, the defendant telephoned Lodge at home and, uncharacteristically, kept him on the line for two hours. In the course of the conversation, which was interrupted with the defendant's putting Lodge on hold and instructing him not to hang up, the defendant told Lodge that he had dropped the victim off “somewhere” and “cannot find [the victim]”; the victim's “wife reported him missing”; and “people said I killed him.”

When the defendant and Lodge were arrested in June, 1999, on charges of selling marijuana, the defendant told Lodge, “[y]ou cannot become an informant. You only charged for weed and weed is a misdemeanor. I will get you out. Don't tell them nothing. Don't tell them nothing.” In addition, the defendant gave money to Lodge's girl friend so she could move and paid for an attorney who visited Lodge in jail three or four times. After Lodge's arrest, the defendant kept in contact with Lodge's girl friend, something he had not done before. The telephone calls between the defendant and Lodge's girl friend continued until September, 1999. The defendant was supposed to meet the girl friend to talk because he knew Lodge was talking to police officials and was going to testify against him. The defendant never showed up.

2. The victim's wife. At some point during her search for the victim, his wife confronted the defendant, who told her that he did go by the victim's house on March 3, but that the victim did not get into the car with him. After speaking to more individuals, the wife later told the defendant that she knew he lied because she had a witness who saw the victim getting into the car with him. The defendant started yelling at her and told her to bring the witness to him; when the wife said that she was going to the police, the defendant stated, “[g]o to the cops because you can't prove nothing anyways.”

3. Richard McLean. Richard McLean testified that, before the victim's murder, the defendant and Johnson met with him and showed him a nine millimeter weapon in Johnson's possession; the defendant also possessed a gun. The defendant told McLean that he was going to kill the victim. McLean told the defendant to forget about it, and the defendant responded that if no one saw him do it, there was nothing anyone could do. McLean testified that the defendant also stated, “[a]s a matter of fact that mother fucker gonna be dead in a week anyway.”

Two days after the victim disappeared, the defendant met McLean and tried to buy a gun McLean was holding for the victim. McLean asked the defendant why he needed a gun, given that he had seen the defendant's gun. The defendant stated that he needed a “clean gun” because people associated with the victim were after him. When McLean resisted giving him the victim's gun, the defendant stated, “[w]ell, you don't have to worry about [the victim], because [you will] never see [him] again.... Trust me. You will never see [the victim] again.” Sometime later, the defendant told McLean that the gun that was used to kill the victim was a nine millimeter. In September, 1999, McLean had conversations with the defendant on at least two occasions. In the first conversation, the defendant told McLean that Lodge was going to testify against him for the victim's murder, because Lodge witnessed the victim's departure with the defendant and Johnson the day the victim disappeared. McLean testified that he stated, “[y]ou guys pick up somebody to kill...