Ryan v. Miller

• Decision Date: 28 August 2002
• Docket Number: Docket No. 01-2122.
• Citation: 303 F.3d 231
• Parties: Thomas RYAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. David H. MILLER, Superintendent, Eastern Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

303 F.3d 231

Thomas RYAN, Petitioner-Appellant, v.David H. MILLER, Superintendent, Eastern Correctional Facility, Respondent-Appellee.

Docket No. 01-2122.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: February 8, 2002.

Decided: August 28, 2002.

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Lawrence O. Kamin, Willkie Farr & Gallagher(Steven M. Monroe, Marsh & McLennan Companies, and Henry J. Kennedy, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, on the brief), New York, NY, for Petitioner-AppellantThomas Ryan.

Steven A. Hovani, Assistant District Attorney(James M. Catterson, Jr., District Attorney of Suffolk County, on the brief), Riverhead, NY, for Respondent-AppelleeDavid Miller.

Before POOLER and SOTOMAYOR, Circuit Judges, and GARAUFIS, District Judge^*.

POOLER, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner-AppellantThomas Ryan appeals from the January 26, 2001, memorandum and order of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York(Joanna Seybert, Judge), denying his application for a writ of habeas corpus, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254.A panel of this Court granted Ryan a certificate of appealability on August 28, 2001, on the sole issue of "whether, under the applicable standard of review, appellant is entitled to habeas relief on his claim that his right to confrontation under the Sixth Amendment was violated because the trial court permitted hearsay testimony of police witnesses Richard Jensen and Richard Reck which may have contained an implicit accusation."We find that the officers' testimony constituted hearsay containing an implicit accusation against Ryan, in violation of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, and that the state appellate court unreasonably applied clearly established Supreme Court precedent in denying Ryan's Sixth Amendment claim.Because we find that the error was not harmless, we reverse and remand for the granting of the writ.

Background

The Underlying Crime.

On April 20, 1979, John Pius, a thirteen-year-old boy from Smithtown, New York, left his father's house on his bicycle around 8:15 p.m.Approximately fifteen minutes later, a neighborhood girl saw him riding his bicycle toward Dogwood Elementary School.Pius never returned home.A member of an informal search party found his dead body at 1 p.m. the next day, nearly sixteen and one half hours after Pius was last seen, in the woods behind the elementary school.Pius died after attackers beat him, dragged him, and shoved dirt and rocks down his throat, which ultimately suffocated him.Sergeant Richard Jensen, who joined the Homicide Squad of the Suffolk County Police Department on April 24, 1979, just four days after Pius's death, supervised the investigation.Police eventually charged four boys, also teenage residents of Smithtown, New York, in Pius's death: Michael Quartararo("Michael Q."); Peter Quartararo, ("Peter Q."), the brother of Michael Q.; Robert Brensic; and Thomas Ryan, the petitioner-appellant.The crime achieved immediate notoriety in the small Long Island community and resulted in multiple trials and retrials of each of the four boys.

The Police Investigation.

Police focused their initial investigation on several local teenage boys — none of whom were ultimately charged — including John Sparling and Michael O'Neill.In the days immediately following the discovery of Pius's body, between April 22 and 24, 1979, Detective Richard Reck and Detective Gill questioned O'Neill and Sparling several times, once interrogating O'Neill for a period of several hours at the precinct.In addition, Jensen ordered his officers to keep O'Neill under police surveillance.Reck eventually learned that O'Neill was in the vicinity of Dogwood Elementary School on the night of April 20th.At some point, O'Neill told Reck that he saw Ryan and Brensic near the school on the night in question.Police initially directed their attention to Ryan, Brensic, and the Quartararo brothers as a result of this information.

In an effort to investigate the activities of Sparling and O'Neill, the police first approached Ryan, Brensic, and the Quartararo brothers on April 25, 1979.Reck explained that they sought to question the boys as potential witnesses to the crime.Specifically, Reck testified, "We asked them if they knew John Pius.We asked them if they knew Michael O'Neill and John Sparling, and we asked them their whereabouts on the night of the murder of the Pius boy."Apparently, one of the four boys told the officers that on April 20they were watching a baseball game at Smithtown East High School.Reck testified that Ryan responded affirmatively when the police asked if he had been at the high school that night.As part of the continuing investigation, Reck later discovered that Smithtown East High School's baseball field did not have night lights.

On April 28, 1979, in the course of surveilling O'Neill, police again encountered Ryan and Peter Q. Jensen requested that the two boys come to the precinct for questioning as potential witnesses in the John Pius murder, and the boys agreed.Upon arriving at the precinct, Jensen directed the boys to separate rooms of the same precinct complex for interviews.Reck interviewed Ryan, and Detective Palumbo interviewed Peter Q.¹(We present Peter Q.'s interview and confession in the next section.)At the start of Reck's interview with Ryan, Reck explained that he wanted to talk to Ryan as a potential witness and that he wanted to talk to him about O'Neill and Sparling.Reck initially focused his questions to Ryan on O'Neill's and Sparling's relationship with Pius and Ryan's knowledge of their activities on the night in question.The record suggests that Reck did not consider Ryan a suspect at this point in time, and Reck testified that he thought "Thomas Ryan was covering up for O'Neill."

Early in the interview, Ryan again told Reck that he was at Smithtown East High School watching a baseball game on the 20th.²After Reck informed Ryan that O'Neill had told police that he had seen Ryan driving his car near the elementary school on the night of the 20th, and that Ryan was towing Brensic, who was on a minibike, Ryan changed his story and admitted they were at the elementary school.Ryan explained to Reck that he and the other three boys had stolen a minibike, which is why they lied about where they were that night.Ryan eventually added the detail that John Pius saw them with the stolen minibike.After Reck confronted Ryan with confessions and inculpations made by Peter Q., and after Reck read Ryan his rights on the charge of murder, Ryan added that the boys drove to the school in search of Pius, hoping to "shut him up" about the bike, but they never found him.In addition, Reck testified that, during the course of the interrogation, Ryan asked him, "`What would happen to the kids that killed John Pius?'"Reck replied, "`What do you mean kids?... Why do you say more than one?'" and Ryan responded, "`That's just the way I worded it.'"Throughout the evening, Ryan consistently denied killing Pius or having any knowledge about the attack.

Although Reck read Ryan his Miranda rights on the charge of the murder of John Pius, the police released Ryan from custody later that night.³They continued to consider him a suspect and focused much of their investigation on him until they arrested him two and one half years later, on October 23, 1981.

Peter Q.'s Confession.

On April 28, 1979, as Reck and Gill questioned Ryan, Detectives Palumbo and Leonard interviewed Peter Q., in a separate interrogation room of the same precinct.During the course of his interview/interrogation, Peter Q. confessed several times, to several different versions of the murder.All of his confessions implicated Ryan and Brensic, although in different ways, and only some of his confessions implicated his brother, Michael Q., and himself.SeeQuartararo v. Mantello,715 F.Supp. 449, 454-56(E.D.N.Y.), aff'd,888 F.2d 126(2d Cir.1989).

For reasons that we explain below, neither side introduced into evidence Peter Q.'s actual confession.However, we present an overview of the confession here to provide context.After initially denying involvement in or knowledge of the murder, Peter Q. first told Palumbo that Ryan and Brensic killed Pius because they thought Pius saw the four boys with the stolen minibike.SeePeople v. Brensic,70 N.Y.2d 9, 517 N.Y.S.2d 120, 509 N.E.2d 1226, 1230, remittitur amended by70 N.Y.2d 722, 519 N.Y.S.2d 641, 513 N.E.2d 1302(N.Y.1987).Peter Q. denied any involvement by his brother, Michael Q., or himself.Seeid.Eventually, Peter Q. told Palumbo that his brother and he observed the attack but did not participate in it.Seeid.Finally, Peter Q. offered a third version of the murder in which all four boys participated.Seeid.After Peter Q. made this confession, the police brought Michael Q. to the precinct for questioning as well.

Both the New York Court of Appeals, in 1987, and the Eastern District of New York, in a 1989 decision affirmed by the Second Circuit, have held that Peter Q.'s confession was improperly obtained, unreliable as a matter of federal law, and inadmissible as evidence of guilt.SeeQuartararo,715 F.Supp. at 455;Brensic,517 N.Y.S.2d 120, 509 N.E.2d at 1233("Given this substantial evidence that the confession was but one of several, each containing material differences, that it was obtained from a juvenile after lengthy custodial questioning and that it was given under circumstances which suggest that it was induced by the hope of leniency, the confession should not have been placed before this jury as evidence of defendant's guilt.").Both courts found that the police employed illegal and coercive methods to induce Peter Q., an unrepresented, inexperienced, and confused juvenile, to give numerous inconsistent and unreliable confessions.SeeQuartararo,715 F.Supp. at 456-65;Brensic,517 N.Y.S.2d 120, 509 N.E.2d at 1229-33.The Eastern District...