Rhoades v. Davis
| Decision Date | 28 January 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 16-70021,16-70021 |
| Citation | 914 F.3d 357 |
| Parties | Rick Allen RHOADES, Petitioner-Appellant v. Lorie DAVIS, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, Respondent-Appellee |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
David R. Dow, University of Houston, Law Center, Houston, TX, for Petitioner-Appellant.
Jefferson David Clendenin, Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General, Financial Litigation & Charitable Trusts Division, Austin, TX, for Respondent-Appellee.
Before HIGGINBOTHAM, HAYNES, and GRAVES, Circuit Judges.
In 1992 a Texas jury convicted Rick Allan Rhoades of capital murder and he received a death sentence. After direct appeals and filing an unsuccessful state habeas petition, Rhoades petitioned for federal habeas relief. The district court denied his petition and declined to issue a certificate of appealability ("COA"). We granted a COA on three of Rhoades's claims, accepted further briefing, and heard oral argument. We now affirm the district court's denial of his petition.
On the morning of September 13, 1991, the bodies of brothers Charles and Bradley Allen were discovered by a neighbor. Almost a month later, Rhoades was arrested leaving the scene of an unrelated school burglary. While in custody for the burglary, Rhoades gave the police a written statement admitting to killing Charles and Bradley Allen.
In that statement, Rhoades related his activities on release from prison in Huntsville, Texas less than 24 hours before the murders occurred. Instead of reporting to his assigned halfway house in Beaumont, Rhoades travelled to Houston by bus. After an unsuccessful search for his parents, he went to an apartment complex where he had previously lived and proceeded to have several beers. In his statement, Rhoades recalled wandering around the neighborhood and encountering Charles Allen outside of his home around 2:30 a.m. After a quarrel, Charles entered his house. Believing he was planning to retrieve a gun, Rhoades went into the house after him. Rhoades picked up a small metal bar from a weight bench and entered the kitchen, where Charles Allen grabbed a knife. The men began fighting and Rhoades recounted hitting Charles Allen with the bar several times until he dropped the knife. At that point, Rhoades grabbed the knife and stabbed him a number of times. Bradley Allen entered shortly thereafter and started trying to punch Rhoades, who stabbed Bradley Allen with the knife. Rhoades took some cash and clean clothing, because his clothes had been bloodied. He saw on the news later that morning that the two men had died. In his statement, Rhoades mentioned that he had not told anyone about the murders and it had been "bothering [him] ever since." Rhoades claimed he could have outrun the police officer who arrested him for the school burglary, but was "tired of running" so decided to tell the police about the murders while in custody.
A Harris County jury convicted Rhoades of capital murder on October 2, 1992. During the punishment phase of the trial, the State presented evidence of Rhoades's Naval court-martial for unauthorized absences and other previous criminal convictions including convictions for burglary and auto theft. The State also presented Rhoades as a danger to other prisoners, proffering evidence that when Rhoades was an inmate in an Indiana prison, prison officials had recovered a shank and a razor blade from his cell. Between 1986 and 1990 Rhoades stacked up various arrests and convictions for auto theft, possession of a prohibited weapon, theft, burglary, and carrying a weapon. During the punishment phase, Rhoades's trial counsel presented the testimony of Patricia Spenny, Rhoades's birth mother; Donna and Ernest Rhoades, Rhoades's adoptive parents; Meyer Proler, an assistant professor of physiology and neurology at the Baylor College of Medicine; Novella Pollard, Rhoades's teacher in his prison GED program; and Windel Dickerson, a psychologist. On rebuttal, the State presented testimony of David Ritchie, the Harris County jailer and Roy Smithy, an investigator with the special prosecution unit in Huntsville who testified about prison procedures.1
On October 8, 1992, the jury answered two requisite questions: (1) whether Rhoades "would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society" and (2) whether there were "sufficient mitigating circumstances or circumstances to warrant that a sentence of life imprisonment rather than a death sentence be imposed." The jury unanimously answered "yes" to the first and "no" to the second and Rhoades received a sentence of death. The trial court denied Rhoades's motion for a new trial in December 1992.
On direct appeal, Rhoades raised eighteen points of error. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ("CCA") affirmed Rhoades's conviction and sentence in a published opinion in 1996.2 Rhoades initiated state habeas proceedings the following year, raising thirty-eight grounds of error. Finding that there were unresolved factual issues, the state habeas court ordered trial counsel to file affidavits responding to Rhoades's allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel. The affidavits of James Stafford and Deborah Keyser were timely filed and the State filed its answer to Rhoades's habeas petition in October 2000. Nearly fourteen years later, the trial court entered its findings of fact and conclusions of law, denying Rhoades's state habeas petition. The CCA affirmed the denial in 2014.3 With federally appointed counsel, Rhoades filed his federal habeas petition, raising five issues. The State filed a summary judgment motion in response and the district court entered an order denying Rhoades's petition, granting the State's summary judgment motion, and denying Rhoades a COA.
We granted a COA on three of Rhoades's claims for habeas relief: (1) that the convicting court unconstitutionally prevented him from presenting mitigating childhood photographs of himself to the jury during the sentencing phase; (2) that the convicting court unconstitutionally permitted the jury to hear testimony about the possibility of release on furlough for capital defendants sentenced to life in prison; and (3) that the State violated Batson when it exercised racially motivated peremptory strikes against two prospective jurors.4 We address each issue in turn.
First, Rhoades argues that the trial court erred in excluding eleven photographs from Rhoades's childhood offered as mitigation evidence during the sentencing phase of trial. Before calling Rhoades's adoptive mother, Donna Rhoades, trial counsel sought to introduce photographs of Rhoades as a child from the ages of approximately four to ten.5 Trial counsel argued that the photographs were admissible to counteract the dehumanizing photographs of Rhoades introduced by the State (e.g., his mugshots), to show the jury the defendant's development through his life and his human side, and to offset the effect of the emotional photos of the deceased victims and their families. The photographs depict typical childhood scenes such as Rhoades holding a trophy, fishing, and attending a dance. The State objected to the admission of the photographs as irrelevant, arguing that everyone was a child at one point, and that the photos did nothing to lessen his moral blameworthiness. The trial court agreed.6 The CCA affirmed, holding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the photos as irrelevant.7 Specifically, the CCA held that there was no relationship between photos of Rhoades as a child and his moral culpability for the double murder.8 On habeas review, the state court summarized the testimony of witnesses who testified on Rhoades's behalf during the punishment phase of the trial9 and determined that trial counsel was able to submit other mitigating evidence that humanized Rhoades.10 In his state habeas petition, Rhoades focused on the special issue of future-dangerousness, arguing that the photographs showed his ability to adapt to a structured environment.11 The state habeas court rejected that contention, finding that the "childhood photos are not relevant to the issue of whether the applicant would be a threat to society while living in a structured environment and do not show whether he would or would not commit future acts of violence."
The district court concluded that the state courts were not unreasonable in determining that the proffered photos were irrelevant to the jury's determination of the special issues12 and that any error was harmless because the photographs would have been "only a small thread in an intricately violent mosaic of Rhoades' life."13
The district court found persuasive the State's argument that any mitigating value of the photos would be eclipsed by the aggravating nature of the photos—essentially that Rhoades committed brutal murders despite being adopted into a loving family.14
It is our task to assess whether the state court's determination that the proffered childhood photos were irrelevant was an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law.15 The Supreme Court has adopted an expansive definition of relevant mitigation evidence.16 "Relevant mitigating evidence is evidence which tends logically to prove or disprove some fact or circumstance which a fact-finder could reasonably deem to have mitigating value."17 A state court cannot, therefore, exclude evidence from the jury's consideration "if the sentencer could reasonably find that it warrants a sentence less than death."18 This is a "low threshold for relevance."19
In Lockett v. Ohio , a plurality of the Court concluded that Ohio's death penalty statute was invalid because it did not "permit the type of individualized consideration of mitigating factors [the Court held] to be required by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments in capital cases."20 The Court determined that the Constitution...
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