Quintero v. Carpenter, 3:09-cv-00106

• Decision Date: 12 December 2014
• Docket Number: No. 3:09-cv-00106,3:09-cv-00106
• Parties: DERRICK QUINTERO, Petitioner, v. WAYNE CARPENTER, Warden, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Tennessee

DERRICK QUINTERO, Petitioner, v. WAYNE CARPENTER, Warden, Respondent.

No. 3:09-cv-00106

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE NASHVILLE DIVISION

December 12, 2014

Judge Sharp

DEATH PENALTY CASE

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Petitioner Derrick Quintero, a prisoner in state custody who is currently incarcerated on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, has filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 for the writ of habeas corpus. (Docket Entry No. 16.) Presently pending are Respondent's Motion for Summary Judgment (Docket Entry No. 98), and Petitioner's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment and for Evidentiary Hearing (Docket Entry No. 104) and Supplemental Motion for Evidentiary Hearing (Docket Entry No. 109). In compliance with the Court's Order of April 17, 2014 (Docket Entry No. 135), the parties have submitted revised summary judgment briefs in order to account for the impact on Petitioner's claims of the Sixth Circuit's intervening decision in Sutton v. Carpenter, 745 F.3d 787 (6th Cir. 2014). (Docket Entry Nos. 152, 153). The motions have been fully briefed and are ripe for decision. For the reasons set forth below, Petitioner's Amended Motion for Partial Summary Judgment and for Evidentiary hearing (Docket Entry No. 153) will be GRANTED with respect to his request for an evidentiary hearing to demonstrate Martinez cause and develop the merits of the unexhausted portion of Claim 15 of his petition and will be DENIED in all other respects. Respondent's Motion for Summary Judgment (Docket Entry No. 98) will be GRANTED with respect to Claims 3, 7, 10-14, 15 (in part), 18-20 and 27-29; and Petitioner's Claims 1, 2, 4-6, 8, 9, 16, 17, and 21-26 are found to be without merit and will be DISMISSED.

I. BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Petitioner was convicted on November 30, 1991, in Humphreys County, Tennessee of two counts of first-degree murder during the perpetration of first-degree burglary, for which he received one life sentence and one death sentence. (Docket Entry No. 32-3, at 230-31, 274-76.) He was also convictedof three counts of grand larceny, one count of petit larceny and three counts of first degree burglary. (Id. at 277-83.)¹ His co-defendant, William Hall, was also convicted and sentenced to death at the same trial.² For their convictions of larceny and burglary, Petitioner and Hall were both sentenced to eighty years of incarceration, which sentences were ordered to run consecutively to the life sentences imposed for their conviction of the first degree murder of Buford Vester. Petitioner's conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal. State v. Hall, No. 01C01-9311-CC-00409, 1997 WL 92080 (Tenn. Ct. Crim. App. March 5, 1997, as corrected on March 20, 1997), aff'd, 976 S.W.2d 121 (Tenn. 1998), app. for rehr'g denied (Oct. 19, 1998). The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in April 1999. Quintero v. State, 526 U.S. 1089 (1999).

Petitioner filed a petition for post-conviction relief and petition for writ of error coram nobis on May 18, 1999. (Docket Entry No. 34-9, at 6.) The petition was denied, and the denial was affirmed by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. Quintero v. State, No. M2005-02959-CCA-R3-PD, 2008 WL 2649637 (Tenn. Ct. Crim. App. July 7, 2008). The Tennessee Supreme Court denied review on December 8, 2008, and the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari on October 5, 2009. Quintero v. Tennessee, 558 U.S. 835 (2009).

Petitioner filed the current petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in this Court on November 12, 2009, after entering an appearance and being granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis for the purpose of filing a habeas petition in January 2009. There is no dispute that the petition is timely. Respondent filed an answer to the petition along with a copy of the underlying record, and the parties thereafter filed their respective motions for summary judgment and the supplemental briefing requested by the Court. The Court has permitted Petitioner to conduct limited discovery under Rule 6(a) of the Rules Governing § 2254 Cases.

II. STATEMENT OF FACTS

The Tennessee Supreme Court summarized the facts introduced at trial as follows:

The proof introduced by the State during the guilt phase of the trial demonstrated that Myrtle and Buford Vester were murdered in their home in the Leatherwood community of Stewart County, which is situated on Kentucky Lake and in close proximity to the Tennessee-Kentucky border. The Vesters were murdered sometime after their son left their home at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 19, 1988 and sometime before their bodies were discovered by their neighbor around 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, June 22, 1988.

Along with six other men, the defendants in this appeal, Derrick Quintero and William Hall, escaped from the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville during the early morning hours of June 16, 1988. Three of the escapees were apprehended in the vicinity of the prison on or before June 18, 1988. However, the other five escapees, including Quintero, Hall, James Blanton, Joseph Montgomery, and Ronnie Hudson left the area in a 1966 Chevrolet pick-up truck which they stole from Curtis Rogers who lived about one-half of a mile from the prison facility.

The Stewart County Sheriff's department was notified at 2:30 a.m. on June 16 that inmates had escaped from the penitentiary at Eddyville. After news of the escape had been broadcast to the public, the Sheriff's department received a telephone call from Zachery Pallay, a resident of the Leatherwood community, warning that Quintero was familiar with the area and would probably seek refuge there. The Sheriff's department's [sic] also received several reports of suspicious individuals in the Leatherwood area including a report of three men attempting to flag down a car. However, when a rash of burglaries broke out in the Leatherwood community, the Sheriff's department became convinced that the escapees were in the area. The burglarized residences in Stewart County were owned by Jim McMinn, Neal Foster, Essie Settles, Alfred Cherry, Thomas Harris, and John and Virginia Crawford.

Though it is not possible to determine from the record the precise order in which the burglaries occurred, the proof demonstrates that five of the six burglaries occurred before 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 19, 1988.

The first burglary was reported and occurred on June 18, 1988. That day, Jim McMinn of Clarksville, Tennessee, arrived at his cabin in the Leatherwood area at approximately noon. He left the cabin to go fishing in his boat at around 1:00 p.m. Upon returning to the cabin at 2:30 or 3:00 p.m., McMinn noticed a box of shotgun shells lying on the floor and discovered that his loaded .22 caliber pistol was missing from the bedroom. The telephone in his cabin had been removed from the wall, and the outside portion of the phone line also had been severed. McMinn went to his truck and discovered that the windows had been rolled up and the ignition destroyed with his ax. The telephone from McMinn's cabin was in the bed of the truck.

Following the report of the McMinn burglary on June 18, the Sheriff's Department initiated an intensive search of the area, utilizing helicopters, four-wheel drive vehicles, and tracking dogs. At one point law enforcement officers chased some individuals on foot through the woods, but they were not able to overtake the persons suspected to be the escapees.

At some point, perhaps during that chase, Hudson and Montgomery became separated from the defendants and Blanton. Hudson and Montgomery left the Leatherwood community and drove to Lebanon, Kentucky in a 1982 White Ford Fairmont they stole from Essie Settles, a resident of the Standing Rock Community, which is approximately six highway miles from the Leatherwood community. Montgomery'sfingerprint was found on Settles' garage door. Hudson's fingerprint was found inside the car when it was later recovered. Settles had seen the car in her garage around 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning and discovered that it was missing at approximately 1:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. The proof demonstrated that the car was stolen sometime Saturday night or before daylight on Sunday morning. Burned matches were found inside the garage indicating that it had been dark when the theft occurred. In addition, when she watered her flowers around 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, Settles noticed that someone had removed the hose from the outside faucet during the night. Settles stated that the hose had been connected when she had used it on Saturday evening around 6:00 p.m.

Hudson and Montgomery arrived at Hudson's brother's apartment in Lebanon, Kentucky on Sunday, June 19, at approximately 1:00 p.m. They were driving a white car with Tennessee license plates, which witnesses identified at trial as the vehicle which had been stolen from Settles. Hudson's brother and a friend accompanied the two escapees to a secluded area on the river where Hudson and Montgomery hid the stolen car among the weeds. Around 6:00 or 6:30 p.m., Hudson's brother left the two escapees in the company of Hudson's mother and sister. The next day, Hudson's sister, her two children, and Martha Grover picked up the two escapees and transported them to Grover's apartment where they stayed until early evening on Tuesday, June 21. The following day, Wednesday, June 22, Kentucky authorities apprehended both Hudson and Montgomery near the location where Settles' car had been hidden. Shots were exchanged prior to the convicts' apprehension. Hudson and Montgomery had in their possession McMinn's .22 caliber pistol and a .22 caliber pistol which had been stolen from another resident of the Leatherwood community, Neal Foster. Two live rounds were recovered from Foster's pistol, and four spent shells were recovered in the area. While this proof demonstrated that Hudson and Montgomery were some two hundred miles away in Lebanon, Kentucky when the Vesters were murdered in Stewart County, Tennessee,

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