Peeples v. Hurley
| Decision Date | 23 December 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. 4:13-CV-399 (CEJ),4:13-CV-399 (CEJ) |
| Parties | GREGORY PEEPLES, Petitioner, v. JAMES HURLEY, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri |
This matter is before the Court on the petition of Gregory Peeples for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254.
At the time the petition was filed, petitioner was incarcerated at the Northeast Correctional Center pursuant to the sentence and judgment of the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, Missouri.1 On March 25, 2009, a jury found petitioner guilty of leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident in violation of Mo. Rev. Stat. § 577.060, resisting arrest in violation of Mo. Rev. Stat. § 575.150, endangering the welfare of a child in the second degree in violation of Mo. Rev. Stat. § 568.050, and assault in the second degree in violation of Mo. Rev. Stat. § 565.060. Resp. Ex. B at 2-3, 49-52. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on drug possession and unlawful use of a weapon charges, and the prosecutor dismissed them after trial. The trial court sentenced petitioner as a prior and persistent offender and prior and persistent drug offender to concurrent five-year terms of imprisonment torun consecutively to his sentences in a previous case.2 Resp. Ex. B at 58-62. Petitioner appealed his conviction, and on February 2, 2010 the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed. State v. Peeples, 302 S.W.3d 783 (Mo. Ct. App. 2010); Resp.'s Exs. C, F.
Petitioner filed a timely motion for post-conviction relief pursuant to Missouri Supreme Court Rule 29.15, which the post-conviction court denied after receiving and considering deposition testimony as evidence. Resp.'s Ex. G, at 38-129. On November 20, 2012, the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of post-conviction relief. Peeples v. State, 386 S.W.3d 211 (Mo. Ct. App. 2012); Resp.'s Ex. K. On March 1, 2013, petitioner timely filed this petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254.
Police officers James Daly and Doug Reinholz were on patrol in a marked police vehicle in St. Louis City on October 7, 2007 when they observed and conducted a license plate check on a white Dodge Charger. Resp. Ex. A, Tr. 112. The records check indicated that a person associated with the vehicle was wanted for an ordinance violation in St. Louis County. The officers initiated a car stop with their emergency warning lights, and the car pulled over. However, as the officers walked toward the vehicle, the car drove off. The officers returned to their vehicle and followed. At the intersection of Osceola and Compton, the officers observed the white Charger collide with a red van. Tr. 113. The officers also observed the driver of the white Charger, identified as petitioner, climb out of the driver's sidewindow and flee on foot. The officers exited their car and chased petitioner, capturing him approximately 25 feet away.
Officers Daly and Reinholz arrested petitioner for attempting to leave the scene of an accident and conducted a search incident to arrest. Tr. 114. Officer Daly found and seized a loaded .45 caliber pistol, baggies of suspected crack cocaine and marijuana, and $230 in currency. At a pre-trial hearing on defendant's motion to suppress this evidence pursuant to an allegedly unlawful search and seizure, defense counsel argued that the prosecution had failed to establish reasonable suspicion for the initial stop by the officers. Tr. 126-27. The trial court denied the motion. Tr. 132.
At trial, Officer Daly testified that after he arrested petitioner, he returned to the white Charger and found a 12-year old girl, petitioner's daughter, sitting in the front passenger seat with neck and back injuries. Tr. 151. He described the vehicle collision between the Charger and the van as "incredible" and estimated that the Charger was traveling at 80 to 90 miles per hour when it entered the intersection. Tr. 152. He also described the damage to the van as "extensive" and estimated the damage to be over $1,000. Tr. 164-65. Officer Daly's partner, Officer Reinholz, also testified at trial. He described the collision as "probably one of the worse accidents I have seen." Tr. 210. After petitioner's arrest, Officer Reinholz attended to the passengers in the van and did not observe the search of petitioner incident to his arrest. Tr. 228.
Dianna Hernandez testified that she and four of her family members were passengers in the van with which the white Charger collided. Tr. 234. She stated that the accident caused her to bump her head. Her mother, Dianna Thurmond,was driving the van and testified as to the family's resulting injuries from the accident. Tr. 238. She stated that her daughter had been to the hospital six or seven times since the accident, and she also went to a clinic for headaches. Tr. 241. On redirect examination of Ms. Thurmond, the prosecutor moved to admit photographs of the van after the collision, which the court received into evidence over the defense attorney's objection. Tr. 244. Ms. Thurmond also testified that the estimated value of the van prior to the accident was $8,000 and that the van was totaled after the accident. Tr. 245.
A criminalist with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Crime Lab, Allyson Seger, testified that she tested the bagged substances found on petitioner at the scene of the accident and determined that one substance was cocaine base and the other was marijuana. Tr. 194-97. The supervisor of the firearm and tool mark section of the St. Louis City Police Department laboratory, Officer David Menendez, testified that he tested the weapon found on petitioner and concluded that the gun was operational. Tr. 202-04.
Defense counsel moved for a judgment of acquittal at the close of the state's case, which the trial court overruled. Tr. 255. Defense counsel then called Amber Turkington, a witness to the accident, to testify. She stated that she saw the officers' police vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed behind the white Charger prior to the accident and one of the officers arrest petitioner on the ground right beside the car. Tr. 258-62.
Additional facts will be included as necessary to address the merits of petitioner's claims for relief.
When a claim has been adjudicated on the merits in state court proceedings, habeas relief is permissible under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), only if the state court's determination:
28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)-(2).
A state court's decision is "contrary to" clearly established law if "it applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [the Supreme Court's] cases, or if it confronts a set of facts that is materially indistinguishable from a decision of [the Supreme Court] but reaches a different result." Brown v. Payton, 544 U.S. 133, 141 (2005). "The state court need not cite or even be aware of the governing Supreme Court cases, 'so long as neither the reasoning nor the result of the state-court decision contradicts them.'" Brown v. Luebbers, 371 F.3d 458, 461 (8th Cir. 2004) (citing Early v. Packer, 537 U.S. 3, 8 (2002)). "In the 'contrary to' analysis of the state court's decision, [the federal court's] focus is on the result and any reasoning that the court may have given; the absence of reasoning is not a barrier to a denial of relief." Id.
A decision involves an "unreasonable application" of clearly established law if "the state court applies [the Supreme Court's] precedents to the facts in an objectively unreasonable manner," Payton, 125 S. Ct. at 1439; Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405 (2000), or "if the state court either unreasonably extends a legal principle from [Supreme Court] precedent to a new context where it should notapply or unreasonably refuses to extend that principle to a new context where it should apply." Id. at 406. "Federal habeas relief is warranted only when the refusal was 'objectively unreasonable,' not when it was merely erroneous or incorrect." Carter v. Kemna, 255 F.3d 589, 592 (8th Cir. 2001) (quoting Williams, 529 U.S. at 410-11).
"To preserve a claim for relief, a habeas petitioner must have raised both the factual and legal bases of his claim to the state court, and afforded that court a fair opportunity to review its merits." Abdi v. Hatch, 450 F.3d 334, 338 (8th Cir. 2006) (internal citations and quotations omitted). When a habeas petitioner has defaulted on his federal claims in state court, "federal habeas review of his claims is barred unless he 'can demonstrate cause for the default and actual prejudice as a result of the alleged violation of federal law, or demonstrate that failure to consider the claims will result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice.'" Morgan v. Javois, 744 F.3d 535, 538 (8th Cir. 2013) (quoting Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750-51 (1991)). To establish "cause" for the default, a petitioner generally must "show that some objective factor external to the defense impeded counsel's efforts to comply with the State's procedural rule." Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478, 488 (1986). To establish actual prejudice, the petitioner "must show that the errors of which he complains 'worked to his actual and substantial disadvantage, infecting his entire trial with error of constitutional dimensions.'" Ivy v. Caspari, 173 F.3d 1136, 1141 (8th Cir. 1999) (quoting United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 170 (1982)) (emphasis omitted).
Petitioner presents six claims for relief: (1) trial counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate or call Breanna Peeples as a witness; (2) trial...
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