Reese v. Sec'y, Florida Dep't of Corr.
| Decision Date | 30 March 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 11–12178.,11–12178. |
| Citation | 675 F.3d 1277,23 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 866 |
| Parties | John Loveman REESE, Petitioner–Appellant, v. SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, Attorney General, State of Florida, Respondents–Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Frank John Tassone, Jr. and Richard Adam Sichta (Court–Appointed), Tassone & Sichta, LLC, Jacksonville, FL, for Petitioner–Appellant.
Meredith Charbula, Tallahassee, FL, for Respondents–Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Before CARNES, PRYOR and MARTIN, Circuit Judges.
John Loveman Reese, a Florida prisoner sentenced to death for the murder and sexual battery of Charlene Austin, appeals the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Reese contends that, during the sentencing phase of his trial, the lead prosecutor made several improper arguments that persuaded the jury to recommend a death sentence, in violation of his right to due process, and that the decision of the Supreme Court of Florida to deny him relief was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law or an unreasonable determination of the facts. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). The prosecutor argued that Reese's crime involved “every woman's wors[t] nightmare,” explained that there were no mandatory minimum sentences for burglary and rape and the minimum sentence for first-degree murder was life imprisonment with no parole for 25 years, compared Reese with a “cute little puppy” who grew up to become a “vicious dog,” and urged the jury to show Reese the “same mercy” he had shown Austin. The Supreme Court of Florida concluded that none of the prosecutor's arguments rose to the level of misconduct that would violate Reese's constitutional right to due process. Because no decision of the United States Supreme Court clearly establishes otherwise, we cannot say that the Supreme Court of Florida unreasonably applied federal law. Moreover, even under a de novo review, none of the prosecutor's comments were improper. We affirm.
Twenty-five year old Charlene Austin had a lot to live for. She was an attractive and athletic young woman who enjoyed a rich social life filled with family and friends. Austin saw her best friend, Jackie Grier, almost every day and enjoyed spending time with her boyfriend, Nick Olson, a soldier stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Grier had recently ended a relationship with an abusive boyfriend, John Loveman Reese, and Grier too was dating a soldier stationed at Fort Stewart. On weekends, Austin traveled from her home in Jacksonville, Florida, to Fort Stewart, to visit Olson and often stopped en route to visit her parents and cousins. Grier and Austin often traveled together to visit their boyfriends.
On Tuesday, January 28, 1992, Austin went to work after having returned from a trip to Fort Stewart. As a single woman living alone, Austin was conscious of her security and had burglar bars on her windows. But her home would not be a safe place when she returned.
Unbeknownst to Austin, Jackie Grier's former boyfriend, Reese, broke into Austin's home, while she was at work. Reese entered Austin's home around noon by using a pocket knife to open the back door. Reese then hid in a closet and waited for Austin to return from work for the evening.
After Austin arrived home around four o'clock in the afternoon, Reese for hours remained hidden, where he thought about the reasons Grier had ended their relationship. While Reese waited, Austin used the bathroom, took off her work clothes, chatted on the phone with Grier, took a nap, and watched television. Meanwhile, convinced that Austin had something to do with the break-up of his relationship with Grier, Reese steeled himself to attack and murder Austin.
Around ten in the evening, Reese felt confident that Austin had fallen asleep on her sofa so he emerged from the closet. Reese attacked the defenseless Austin and choked her, and she awoke. Austin struggled against Reese while he beat and dragged her to the bedroom. Reese threw Austin onto her bed and continued to choke her until she submitted to his sexual assault. After Reese raped Austin, he strangled her until she was unconscious. Reese then placed Austin, face down, on the floor. Spying an electrical cord near the foot of the bed, Reese grabbed it and wrapped the cord around Austin's neck. Reese pulled the ends of the electrical cord for three to five minutes to slowly choke the life out of Austin. After Reese was sure that Austin was dead, he left her naked body on the floor and went to a nearby Winn–Dixie to buy groceries.
The next day, Grier could not reach Austin, and she began to worry. Grier called her neighbor, Steve Watson, who agreed to accompany her to Austin's house. Grier and Watson found the back door of Austin's house unlocked and entered the home.
Grier immediately noticed that Austin's living room was in a state of disarray: broken pieces of knickknacks littered the floor, couch pillows were ruffled and appeared out of place, and the living room table had been carelessly pushed aside. With what must have been a deep sense of dread, Grier moved toward Austin's bedroom.
What Grier found confirmed her worst fears. Austin laid dead on the floor, covered with a blanket. Grier called the police, who later determined that Austin had been strangled with an electrical extension cord that was doubled and wrapped around her neck twice with the ends pulled through the loop.
When Grier returned to her home distraught to meet with Austin's parents, she was surprised to find Reese waiting for her. Reese professed his love for Grier and asked her to stick by him because something had happened, but Grier was too rattled from seeing Austin's dead body to ask him what he meant.
Grier told Reese that Austin had been murdered and invited him to go outside with her to console Austin's parents. Reese refused. Grier noticed that Reese had fresh scratches on his neck, forearm, and back.
After the police found Reese's palm print on Austin's bed, the police questioned Reese, and he confessed to the burglary, rape, and murder. Reese stated initially that he had broken into Austin's home to talk with her about Grier, but Reese admitted later that, before Austin had returned home, he had planned to hurt her. Reese confessed that he had hidden before Austin returned home. Reese also confessed that he emerged from hiding after Austin fell asleep on the sofa, grabbed her around the neck, dragged her into the bedroom, raped her, and then strangled her to death with an electrical cord.
The police arrested Reese, and while awaiting trial, Reese confessed to Grier that he had raped and killed Austin. A grand jury charged Reese with first degree murder, sexual battery with great force, and burglary with assault.
Multiple parties testified at Reese's trial, including Grier, a medical examiner, a forensic expert, and two detectives who stated that, when they had asked Reese if he had decided to hurt Austin while waiting for her to come home, Reese had replied “yes.” Reese also testified and confessed to the crimes. The jury found Reese guilty of all three crimes, and the trial court then conducted a separate sentencing proceeding before the jury.
In his closing argument that the murder was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” the prosecutor stated, “I would submit to you that the way that that defendant chose to kill Charlene Austin, what he forced Charlene Austin to experience is every woman's wors[t] nightmare.” The defense counsel objected on the ground that the prosecutor's argument violated the “golden rule,” which forbids counsel from asking the jury to place itself in the victim's shoes. Although the defense argued that the comment was improper because over half of the members of the jury were women, the court overruled the objection because the prosecutor did not literally ask the jurors to place themselves in the victim's shoes. The prosecutor continued to describe how Reese's crime was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel:
Charlene Austin was awaken[ed] from that deep sleep that the defendant had waited for her to fall into when he grabbed her from behind, she didn't know who was grabbing her.
Here was a stranger in her dark house grabbing her. It was too dark for her to see, to be beaten, to be raped, and then to be slowly strangled. That was her wors[t] nightmare come true.
And I ask you to look back[ ] and ... reflect ... on the evidence .... Was that especially heinous, was that especially atrocious and cruel?
.... I would submit to you that you must determine from the evidence what was going on in Charlene Austin's mind when the defendant was forcing her to endure that nightmare. Ask yourself from the evidence what she was experiencing, what was going through her mind ....
....
[Reese] wants you to forgive what was going through Charlene Austin's mind when she was brutally awakened by that defendant when he grabbed her around the neck. He wants you to forget the horror, the horror that must have been going through her mind as she fought for her life ....
... [H]e wants you to forget the questions that may have been going through her mind: Who is this? What is he doing to me? What's going on? Why is he pulling me to my bedroom?
He wants you to forget those questions that you know must have been going through your mind ....
....
.... That struggle with that defendant lasted, I would submit to you, for longer than 30 to 60 seconds .... [That time where] Charlene Austin ... was fighting for her life would have seemed like hours ....
....
Now at some point in time, at some point in time after she had been beaten, after she had been raped, she had hoped that she was going to live through this. That he would let her live. That he was going to show mercy on her ....
.... His treatment of Charlene Austin in his violence ... from the...
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