Roberts v. Singletary

• Decision Date: 05 June 1992
• Docket Number: No. 91-0571-CIV-KING.,91-0571-CIV-KING.
• Citation: 794 F. Supp. 1106
• Parties: Rickey Bernard ROBERTS, Petitioner, v. Harry K. SINGLETARY, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida

794 F. Supp. 1106

Rickey Bernard ROBERTS, Petitioner, v. Harry K. SINGLETARY, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections, Respondent.

No. 91-0571-CIV-KING.

United States District Court, S.D. Florida.

June 5, 1992.

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Thomas H. Dunn, Asst. Capital Collateral Representative, Office of Capital Collateral Representative, Tallahassee, Fla., for petitioner.

Ralph Barriera, Asst. Atty. Gen., Miami, Fla., for respondent.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER DENYING PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS

JAMES LAWRENCE KING, District Judge.

THIS CAUSE comes before the Court upon the Petition of Rickey Bernard Roberts, a person in state custody, for a Writ of Habeas Corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. After a jury trial in December 1985, Petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder, armed sexual battery, armed kidnapping, and two counts of armed robbery. At the conclusion of the penalty phase, the jury recommended a sentence of death. The trial judge, after independent consideration of the facts of the case, accepted the recommendation of the jury and imposed a death sentence. After Roberts' convictions and sentences were affirmed on direct appeal, the defendant filed a state habeas petition under Fla.R.Crim.P. 3.850. The denial of all post-conviction relief was subsequently affirmed by the Supreme Court of Florida.

This petition for federal habeas corpus asserts twenty-five claims for relief, alleging violations of the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. A final full evidentiary hearing was held on March 31 through April 2, 1992 during which the parties presented all relevant testimony, fully briefed the issues and orally argued the issues.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Michelle Rimondi, 16, her friend Jamie Campbell, 16, and George Napoles, 20, drove to a beach bordering the causeway, connecting Key Biscayne to the mainland, in the late evening of June 3, 1984. After pulling off the causeway and parking, the three shared some wine in Napoles' four-door Dodge Omni. Campbell fell asleep in the front passenger seat soon after they arrived. Eventually, Napoles became inebriated, and climbed into the back seat of the car to sleep off the wine while Rimondi remained in the front driver's seat of the car.

Michelle Rimondi testified that she saw a brown 1975 Toyota proceeding over the causeway from the mainland toward Key Biscayne at approximately 2:40 a.m. She observed the car cross over the median strip and proceed slowly back toward the mainland. As the driver approached the beach area on the side of the causeway where Rimondi and her two sleeping companions were parked, he pulled off the roadway and parked near their car. She attempted to rouse her sleeping companions, without success, expressing her concern and desiring to leave to go home.

She observed a man get out of the Toyota and approach her vehicle where he asked for identification and demanded to know what they were doing. Rimondi and Napoles got out of the car and handed Napoles' driver's license to the driver of the Toyota, believing him to be an undercover beach patrol police officer.

Prior to taking Napoles' driver's license back to the Toyota where he examined it under the interior light, the man leaned into the Omni vehicle to look at the sleeping Jamie Campbell. Rimondi and Napoles waited by the Omni until the man finished his examination of the driver's license, returned and ordered them to submit to a search.

In the search, the man fondled Michelle Rimondi, causing her to become further alarmed and Napoles to become suspicious of the man's intentions.

At this juncture, Napoles demanded police identification, which the man said was in his Toyota vehicle. Napoles accompanied the man to his Toyota vehicle where, upon arrival, the man reached into the back seat and pulled out a baseball bat. The man, gripping Napoles with one hand while holding the baseball bat in the other, marched him back to the Omni automobile, where he ordered Napoles to reassume the frisk position and Rimondi to look away.

With her arms and hands on the roof of the Omni automobile, she peeked under her arm and observed the man hit George Napoles on the back of his head with the bat. As Napoles commenced to fall forward, the man struck him again in the back and as he smashed face down on the rocky shore, the man continued to repeatedly beat the victim with the baseball bat.

The man from the Toyota whose actions are described in the foregoing paragraphs is the Petitioner in the federal habeas corpus proceeding, Rickey Bernard Roberts.

With the bat still clenched in his fist, Roberts seized Rimondi, pulled her to the ground and ordered her to remove her clothes, with the threat that she "was going to get just like George or worse" if she disobeyed. Upon hearing the approach of another car, the defendant made Rimondi get up from the ground and get into his Toyota. He backed his car along the beach beside the causeway until the car had gone by, parked and raped Rimondi.

After the rape, and during the next several hours, Rimondi attempted to pacify the defendant by conversing with him and assuring him that she did not mean him any harm. During this period she told him she would like to be driven home and the defendant agreed, driving on the causeway toward the toll booths at the Miami end of the causeway.

Prior to getting to the toll booths the defendant realized that he had dropped his wallet at the scene of the murder and decided to go back to get it. When Roberts arrived back where the Omni was parked, he went to where he had left the unconscious, beaten George Napoles, still lying face down on the rocks, and rolled him over on his back. At this point, Rimondi testified, Napoles was still alive. The defendant again looked into the car, ascertained that Jamie Campbell was still asleep, found his wallet and drove off, leaving the dying victim on the shore. After leaving Key Biscayne with Michelle Rimondi, Roberts stopped again and the second rape occurred. The defendant then drove her to where she was staying at her sister's boy-friend's house, and let her out.

Rimondi went into the house, woke her sister's boyfriend, locked the doors and windows, and called the police.

George Napoles' dead body was discovered on the beach adjacent to Rickenbacker Causeway in the early morning hours.

After receiving a tip that Roberts was responsible for the murder, detectives questioned him about the incident. At first, the defendant told the police he was at a local bar until midnight then returned home, remaining there all evening. Rimondi identified Roberts' car and police fingerprint experts discovered his palmprint on the roof of the Omni at the murder scene. Confronted with the car identification and palmprint, Roberts denied being on Key Biscayne at any time within the past two months. He later changed his version of the events, stating that he went to a waterfront restaurant/bar on Key Biscayne, but the establishment was closed. A search warrant executed on Roberts' apartment yielded clothes that matched Rimondi's description, as well as a photograph of Roberts, taken June 3, wearing those same clothes.

Three weeks after the defendant's arrest, he told Rhonda Haines that he ran into Napoles and Rimondi on the beach where they used drugs and drank together. Rhonda Haines, the girl with whom Roberts was living at the time of these events, testified that Rimondi agreed to have sexual relations voluntarily with both men. She further stated that Roberts told her that he hit Napoles with a bat and killed him because Napoles was bothering Roberts with complaints about how much time he was taking in the sexual act with Rimondi.

A subsequent theory of defense, first advanced in opening statement of counsel for the defense at the state court trial and relied upon by counsel in this federal habeas corpus petition is that George Napoles was murdered by two men (Ward and Cebey) who somehow appeared at the murder scene to protect Michelle Rimondi from the sexual advances of George Napoles.

During the trial, Roberts took the stand and testified that he had driven over on Key Biscayne on the night of June 3, 1984, where he had spent some time at a hotel bar and, on returning over the causeway to the mainland, picked up Michelle Rimondi who was hitchhiking on the causeway. He said that Rimondi asked him to go with her to pick up her purse from the car in which her friends were sleeping, which he agreed to do. While picking up Rimondi's purse from the Toyota automobile, he leaned over the car and looked in at the sleeping George Napoles and Jamie Campbell, placing his hand on the roof of the automobile.

After picking up Rimondi's purse, the defendant testified that he drove her home without any unusual incident. He denied raping the girl twice and murdering George Napoles.

The defendant was indicted for first-degree murder, armed sexual battery, armed kidnapping, and two counts of armed robbery on June 21, 1984. A trial by jury was commenced on December 3, 1985. After a three week trial, the jury deliberated for twenty-three hours and found Roberts guilty of first-degree murder, armed sexual battery, and armed kidnapping. He was acquitted of the robbery counts by the jury.

The sentencing phase was conducted on December 18, 1985. At the conclusion of that proceeding, the jury recommended the death penalty by a vote of 7-5. The trial court after independent consideration followed the jury's recommendation, found four statutory aggravating circumstances: (1) The defendant had been previously convicted of a violent felony; (2) at the time of the commission of the capital felony the defendant was under a sentence of imprisonment; (3) the capital felony was committed while the defendant was engaged in the commission of or the attempt to commit a sexual battery, and (4) the capital felony was "especially...