Powell v. Warden of the Sussex I

• Decision Date: 15 September 2006
• Docket Number: Record No. 042716.
• Parties: Paul Warner POWELL v. WARDEN OF THE SUSSEX I STATE PRISON.
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Page 289

634 S.E.2d 289

Paul Warner POWELL v. WARDEN OF THE SUSSEX I STATE PRISON.

Record No. 042716.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

September 15, 2006.

Jonathan Shapiro (James G. Connell, III, Richmond; Devine & Connell, on brief), for petitioner.

Katherine P. Baldwin, Senior Assistant Attorney General (Robert F. McDonnell, Attorney General; Jerry P. Slonaker, Senior Assistant Attorney General, on brief), for respondent.

Present: All the Justices.

OPINION BY Chief Justice LEROY R. HASSELL, SR.

I.

In this habeas corpus proceeding, we consider whether petitioner, who was convicted of capital murder for the killing of Stacey Lynn Reed during the commission of or subsequent to an attempted rape in violation of Code § 18.2-31(5), suffered prejudice within the meaning of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984) because his trial counsel failed to object to the admission in evidence of a form that contained an inaccuracy regarding petitioner's criminal history.

II.

In September 2000, Paul Warner Powell was sentenced to death for the capital murder of Stacey Lynn Reed. On direct appeal, this Court reversed the conviction and remanded the case to the circuit court for a new trial on a charge no greater than first-degree murder for the killing of Stacey Reed, if the Commonwealth be so advised. Powell v. Commonwealth, 261 Va. 512, 552 S.E.2d 344 (2001).

After the proceeding was remanded, Powell wrote a letter to the Commonwealth's Attorney who had prosecuted Powell during the first trial. Powell described, in detail, the murder and attempted rape of Stacey Reed, and he provided facts that were previously unknown to the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth then nolle prossed the indictment in the remanded case. A grand jury for Prince William County subsequently indicted Powell for the capital murder of Stacey Reed during the commission of or subsequent to an attempted rape. Powell was tried by a jury that convicted him of capital murder and fixed his punishment at death. The circuit court entered a judgment confirming the jury's verdict and we affirmed that judgment. Powell v. Commonwealth, 267 Va. 107, 590 S.E.2d 537 (2004).

Subsequently, Powell filed a petition for habeas corpus in this Court alleging numerous claims, including ineffective assistance of counsel. During the sentencing hearing, the Commonwealth introduced in evidence, without objection, Exhibit 51 that is attached to this opinion. Exhibit 51, captioned Powell's "Virginia Criminal Record," consists of five pages and was generated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Crime Information Center. Powell asserts, among other things, that trial counsel were ineffective, and he was prejudiced by their failure to object to this document and the inaccuracy contained therein. We entered an order rejecting all Powell's habeas corpus claims. Powell v. Warden of the Sussex I State Prison, Record No. 042716, 2005 WL 2980756 (Nov. 8, 2005).

Powell filed a petition for rehearing and requested that this Court reconsider its order dismissing his habeas claims, including his claim that he was denied effective assistance of counsel because of counsel's failure to object to an erroneous entry on page three of Exhibit 51. This Court granted Powell a rehearing limited to that one claim, and we placed this matter on our argument docket.

III.

The following facts were presented to the jury that found Powell guilty of capital murder and fixed his punishment at death. In January 1999, Robert Culver and his fiancée, Lorraine Reed, lived together in Manassas, Virginia, with Reed's two daughters, Stacey Lynn Reed and Kristie Erin Reed. On January 28, 1999, Powell went to the Reeds' home. Stacey, then 16 years old, left home to go to work, and Powell remained there alone with Kristie, who was 14.

That afternoon, Kristie called her mother by telephone and informed her that Powell refused to leave the home. Kristie's mother told Kristie to order Powell to leave. Kristie was concerned because Powell "kept walking back and forth down the hallway looking in the rooms."

On the afternoon of January 29, 1999, Kristie arrived home from school and was startled to find Powell in her house. She asked Powell "where Stacey was." He replied, "she was in her room." Kristie walked to Stacey's room, but Stacey was not there. Then, Kristie turned to enter her own room and saw Stacey's body lying on the floor.

Powell, who had followed Kristie to the bedroom, ordered Kristie to go downstairs to the basement. Kristie knew that Powell customarily armed himself with a knife. She had previously observed Powell with a butterfly knife and "another long knife that was in a brown pouch type thing."

Powell forced Kristie to accompany him to the basement, where he ordered her to remove her clothes. She took her clothes off because she "didn't want to die." Powell told Kristie to lay on the floor, and then he raped her.

After Powell raped Kristie, he dressed himself, and he used shoelaces taken from Kristie's shoes to tie her feet together. He also used shoelaces to tie her arms behind her back. Someone knocked on the door to the house, and Powell went upstairs, leaving Kristie naked and bound on the basement floor.

While Powell was upstairs, Kristie was able to free her hands, and she tried to "scoot" across the floor and hide beneath the basement steps. Powell returned to the basement, removed Kristie's eyeglasses, and strangled her until she was unconscious. Powell stabbed Kristie in the stomach, and the knife stopped within a centimeter of her aorta. He slashed her in her neck numerous times, and the repair of the knife wounds required 61 sutures. She had multiple stab wounds to her neck and abdomen. She also had wounds on her wrists.

Robert Culver arrived at the home at 4:15 p.m. on January 29, 1999. He could not locate Kristie or Stacey. He went to the girls' bedrooms and saw that Stacey's room was in disarray. He entered Kristie's room, turned on the lights, and found Stacey's body on the floor. He observed blood on her body and saw that she was not breathing.

When Culver went to the basement in search of a telephone, he discovered Kristie lying naked and bound on the floor, bleeding from her neck and stomach. He saw that she had been stabbed in the stomach and her "throat was slit pretty severely, many times." Culver found a telephone, dialed 911, and spoke to emergency response personnel. Although Kristie was experiencing life-threatening injuries, she was able to tell police officers and paramedics that Paul Powell was her assailant.

Stacey's death was caused by a stab wound to her chest. The wound pattern indicated that the blade of the knife pierced her heart and was twisted upon withdrawal. The blade of Powell's knife was consistent with the stab wounds.

There were numerous bruises on Stacey's head, neck, chest, abdomen, back, arms, and legs. She suffered stab wounds in her back and arm. She also had abrasions on her left hand and wrist that were characterized as defensive wounds. Stacey's body contained bruises on her lower neck that were consistent with someone stepping or stomping on her face and neck.

Police officers arrested Powell on January 30, 1999 at the home of a friend. The police officers also located a blue sports bag that belonged to Powell. A nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with a full magazine containing 10 Winchester nine-millimeter cartridges was in the bag. The bag also contained a survival knife with a five and one-half inch blade inside a black sheath and a butterfly knife with a five-inch blade. The survival knife sheath contained a dark reddish-brown stain. The DNA profile obtained from the stain on the sheath was consistent with the DNA profile of Stacey Reed and different from the DNA profile of Kristie Reed and Paul Powell. The probability of selecting an unrelated individual with a matching DNA profile at the Powerplex loci as contained on the sheath is approximately one in 1.1 billion in the Caucasian population.

After his arrest, Powell consented to several interviews with police officers. During one interview, he stated that he had been at the Reeds' home on January 29, 1999 and that Stacey was dead because "she was stupid." Powell told the police officers that he and Stacey had an argument because she had a black boyfriend, and Powell "didn't agree with interracial dating." Powell claimed that during the argument, Stacey attacked him and scratched his face, and then he pushed her to the floor. He claimed that Stacey attacked him again, and that she "got stuck" on his knife. Powell also initially denied raping Kristie.

In a second statement to police officers, Powell admitted that he raped Kristie. The detective who interviewed Powell testified that Powell stated that he had to kill Kristie because "she was the only witness and he would have to go to jail."

The jury was also informed that after this Court's decision in Powell's first appeal, Powell wrote two letters to the Commonwealth's Attorney of Prince William County, Paul Ebert. Below is the content of a letter that Powell wrote, dated October 21, 2001.

"Mr. Ebert,

"Since I have already been indicted on first degree murder and the Va. Supreme Court said that I can't be charged with capital murder again, I figured I would tell you the rest of what happened on Jan. 29, 1999, to show you how stupid all of y'all mother fuckers are.

"Y'all should have known that there is more to the story than what I told by what I said. You had it in writing that I planned to kill the whole family. Since I planned to kill the whole family, why would I have fought with Stacie before killing her? She had no idea I was planning to kill everybody and talked and carried on like usual, so I could've stabbed her up at any time because she was unsuspecting. "I had other plans for her before she died. You know I came back to the house after Bobby's lunch break was over and...