Rashad v. Walsh
| Decision Date | 14 August 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-1422.,02-1422. |
| Citation | 300 F.3d 27 |
| Parties | Rahim RASHAD, F/K/A Larry Graham, Petitioner, Appellee, v. James T. WALSH, Jr., Respondent, Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
William J. Meade, Assistant Attorney General, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with whom Thomas F. Reilly, Attorney General, was on brief, for appellant.
Max D. Stern, with whom Stern Shapiro Weissberg & Garin, LLP was on brief, for appellee.
Before SELYA, LYNCH and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.
This appeal requires us to address a series of pretrial delays (the causes and consequences of which are disputed) in light of the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial and the factors made relevant to that inquiry by the Supreme Court's landmark opinion in Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972). Inasmuch as the underlying case involves a state prisoner's attempt to secure a writ of habeas corpus, our task proceeds under the deferential standard of review mandated by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), Pub.L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996). Upon careful perscrutation of a tangled record, we conclude that petitioner-appellee Rahim RaShad did little to seek a speedy trial, and, concomitantly, suffered no cognizable prejudice from the period of delay attributable to the Commonwealth. With two of the four Barker factors weighted against the petitioner, we hold that the state court's rejection of his speedy trial claim was neither contrary to, nor an unreasonable application of, clearly established Supreme Court precedent. Accordingly, we reverse the district court's order granting habeas relief and direct that the petitioner's conviction be reinstated.
The events giving rise to the petitioner's conviction transpired on the night of May 26, 1984. The petitioner and his ex-girlfriend, Denise Rodriguez, made plans to attend a movie that evening. The show was sold out, so the petitioner suggested that the couple repair to his Boston apartment. At this juncture the participants' stories diverge.
Rodriguez says that she resisted the invitation, but was forced to go along. The petitioner initially took her to his place of employment, where he pushed her down a flight of stairs and began to beat her. He then led her to his apartment while twisting her arm. Once there, he raped her repeatedly. When that phase of the encounter ended, he tied her to a bedpost and raped her again. Afterwards, he stuffed a sock and a towel into her mouth, securing them with tape. When he left to run an errand, Rodriguez escaped and telephoned the police.
The petitioner's version is considerably different. He maintains that Rodriguez went to his apartment eagerly, snorted cocaine with him, and voluntarily engaged in recreational sex. The next morning, he went to the grocery store. When he returned, Rodriguez was gone. A friend told him that the police were looking for him. Police officers subsequently knocked on his door, but he did not respond. Instead, he gathered some belongings (including his cache of drugs) and, after the police left the premises, fled to Dorchester. He never returned to his apartment.
Much of what transpired thereafter is uncontested. Around the end of May, the petitioner learned that a rape complaint had been issued against him. He spent the next twenty-seven months avoiding the authorities. At various times during that period he resided in Dorchester, Brockton, and New York. His peregrinations ended in August of 1986, when the Boston police arrested him on an unrelated charge. He used a pseudonym ("Charles McCrary"), and was convicted under that name.1 The court sentenced him to serve a six-month term in a Massachusetts state penitentiary.
In September of 1986 (while serving that sentence), he sent a handwritten note to the clerk's office of the Boston Municipal Court. The note disclosed his true identity ("Larry Graham") and stated that he "would like to see about being brought forward" on the pending charges. On February 5, 1987 — while the petitioner was still incarcerated — a Suffolk County grand jury indicted him on charges of kidnapping, aggravated rape, and assault and battery. The next month, he completed serving his prison term, and the Massachusetts authorities immediately extradited him to Texas to face other unrelated charges. Thus, the petitioner was unavailable for arraignment on the new indictment. Aware of the problem, the presiding magistrate issued a default warrant "in order to get the process working under the [Interstate Agreement on Detainers] to bring [the petitioner] back to Massachusetts" so that he could stand trial. The Commonwealth, however, neither lodged a detainer nor took any other steps to regain custody of the petitioner while he was incarcerated in Texas.
The petitioner spent the next forty-two months in a Texas jail. During that time, he eschewed any contact with the Massachusetts authorities, although he claims to have tried to contact his lawyer anent the status of his case. Texas released him in August of 1990. When he thereafter attempted to obtain a Texas driver's license, the authorities came across the outstanding default warrant and detained him briefly. After checking with their Massachusetts counterparts, however, they informed the petitioner that, although there were charges pending against him in Massachusetts there was no basis for detaining him in Texas.
On the record before us, the petitioner's whereabouts for the next fifteen months are a mystery (there is some evidence that he was placed in a Texas pre-release program, but the duration and nature of that program is uncertain). Thus, our tale resumes in November of 1991, when the petitioner returned to Boston.2 For the following four months, he lived openly under his own name. During this period, he was twice stopped for traffic violations and once posted bail for a friend. Each time, the pending kidnapping/rape/assault charges escaped the authorities' attention.
The petitioner claims that he spoke to Rodriguez during this time frame, and that she told him that she did not think the charges against him were still pending. The petitioner made no effort to verify this fact (and, as matters turned out, Rodriguez was dead wrong).
In March of 1992, the chickens came home to roost. The petitioner was rousted during an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) sweep. He gave his name and birth date, but, when the INS uncovered the outstanding default warrant, he repeatedly denied any knowledge of the kidnapping/rape/assault charges. Although the exact wording of his statements is in dispute, the petitioner has admitted that he denied being the person named in the warrant (and the underlying indictment) in order to avoid being prosecuted for the offenses.
The INS delivered the petitioner to the Boston police, and the long-dormant indictment came to life. Trial was delayed for a span of roughly seven months due to the petitioner's serial motions for continuances. On October 7, 1992, with his trial finally set to begin, the petitioner moved to dismiss the case on the ground that the Commonwealth had abridged his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. The state trial justice held an immediate evidentiary hearing at which the petitioner testified to many of the events just described. The timing of the motion and the dispatch with which the trial justice sought to address it left little time for preparation, and the Commonwealth did not present any evidence. In any event, the trial justice denied the motion without issuing written findings. Later that month, a jury convicted the petitioner of simple rape while acquitting him on the other charges (including aggravated rape).
The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the conviction in an unpublished memorandum opinion. See Commonwealth v. Graham, 41 Mass.App.Ct. 1113, 671 N.E.2d 1016 (1996) (table). The court considered the petitioner's speedy trial claim under the Barker framework. It found the length of the pretrial delay sufficient to warrant further inquiry, but concluded that the other Barker factors preponderated in the Commonwealth's favor. In particular, the court attributed a sizable portion of the delay to the petitioner's actions; concluded that he had done very little to promote a speedy trial; and rejected his claim that the delay had caused actual prejudice. On December 31, 1996, the state supreme court denied further appellate review. Commonwealth v. Graham, 424 Mass. 1102, 674 N.E.2d 1084 (1996) (table). The petitioner then explored other state post-conviction relief procedures, the last of which terminated on April 23, 1998.
On June 29, 1998, the petitioner sought a writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court. After the application was narrowed to a single claim — that the Commonwealth had abridged the petitioner's Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial — the district court found in his favor. RaShad v. Walsh, 204 F.Supp.2d 93, 115 (D.Mass.2002).3 In reaching this result, the court first determined that the aggregate delay was sufficient to warrant a full-blown speedy trial inquiry. Id. at 102. In its view, the Commonwealth bore full responsibility for most of this delay, especially for (1) the five months between the petitioner's September 1986 letter to the Boston Municipal Court and his ensuing indictment; (2) the forty-two months that the petitioner spent in a Texas jail; and (3) the nineteen months between the expiration of the petitioner's Texas sentence and his eventual arrest. Id. at 103-08. The court then concluded that the petitioner had effectively asserted his speedy trial right, id. at 108-09, and that the length of the delay created a presumption of prejudice, id. at 110-11. The court added that, in all events, the totality of the petitioner's specific allegations...
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