Sanders v. Moore, 5:97CV118OC-10GRJ.
| Decision Date | 14 August 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 5:97CV118OC-10GRJ.,5:97CV118OC-10GRJ. |
| Parties | Dorsey A. SANDERS, III, Petitioner, v. Michael W. MOORE, et al., Respondents. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Florida |
James D. Middleton, Middleton & Prugh, P.A., Melrose, FL, for Petitioner.
Bonnie Jean Parrish, Office of the Attorney General, Department of Legal Affairs, Daytona Beach, FL, for Respondents.
This is a habeas corpus proceeding brought by a state prisoner, through counsel, under 28 USC § 2254. The Petitioner is serving consecutive sentences of life imprisonment for murder and has now been incarcerated for over ten years.
The case presents a set of circumstances, both factually and legally, that can only be described as bizarre.
After hearing the oral arguments of counsel, and after study of their briefs and the record as a whole, I have decided that two of the Petitioner's interrelated constitutional claims have merit. He was denied his right of confrontation under the Sixth Amendment. The writ should issue commanding that he be retried or released.
On Friday, August 3, 1990, John Barrett entered the home of JoAnn Sanders in Floral City, Citrus County, Florida, and brutally murdered four men. The victims were Jerry Clark, the fiancee of JoAnn Sanders, who lived with her in the home; Roger Wilson, a carpenter who was renovating the home; Larry Johnson, the owner of a neighboring business; and Robert Hemingway, an employee of Mr. Johnson. Roger Wilson was shot in the head; the other three victims were beaten to death and their throats were cut.
After investigation, four people were indicted and charged with those murders and other associated offenses. The indictees were: Dr. Dorsey Sanders, Jr., a veterinarian and the former husband of JoAnn Sanders; their son, Dorsey Sanders, III (the Petitioner in this case); Scott Burnside, who was Dr. Sanders' step-son-in-law;1 and John Barrett, the actual perpetrator.
The State's theory of the prosecution was that Dr. Dorsey Sanders, Jr., and JoAnn Sanders had been involved since 1985 in a bitter dissolution of marriage proceeding; that in the summer of 1990, Dr. Sanders was anticipating the imminent entry of an adverse judgment in favor of JoAnn Sanders that could effectively undo his efforts to shield from judgment a sizable ranch near Melrose in Putnam County; that Dr. Sanders conspired with Dorsey Sanders, III, the Petitioner, and with Scott Burnside, to solicit John Barrett to murder JoAnn Sanders as a means of thwarting the anticipated judgment; that Barrett, acting as an instrument of that conspiracy, went to JoAnn Sanders' home on August 3, 1990, for the purpose of killing her; that JoAnn Sanders and the four victims were in the home together when Barrett arrived but JoAnn Sanders left before Barrett accomplished his mission; and, later in the day, Barrett murdered the four remaining occupants.
Each of the four indictees was tried separately. The first to be tried was the Petitioner, Dorsey Sanders, III, then thirty-three years old. His trial began on July 22, 1991. He was found guilty by the jury on July 26, 1991.2 The death penalty had been sought, but the jury recommended sentences of life imprisonment (verdict returned on July 27, 1991), and consecutive life sentences were imposed on August 19, 1991.3
The next to be tried was John Barrett. His trial began on July 29, 1991, immediately after the verdict was returned in Petitioner's trial. Barrett was also convicted and the trial judge imposed a sentence of death, overriding the jury's recommendation of life imprisonment. However, the conviction and sentence were reversed on appeal (see Barrett v. State, 649 So.2d 219 (Fla.1994)). Barrett was subsequently retried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment.4
The next to be tried was Scott Burnside who had become a fugitive at the time of the indictment in 1991. He was apprehended, tried and convicted in 1993, but his conviction was also reversed on appeal (see Burnside v. State, 656 So.2d 241 (Fla. 5th DCA 1995)). He was then retried, convicted, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.5
In the meantime, Dr. Dorsey Sanders, Jr., was tried and acquitted by his jury with the result that the alleged originator of the plot goes free, the intended victim is alive and well, and their son, convicted of conspiring to murder his mother, is serving consecutive sentences of life imprisonment for the killing by John Barrett of four innocent bystanders. And that is not the only bizarre aspect of the case. The Petitioner's direct appeal focused upon, among other issues, the admission against him of an incriminating statement made by Barrett to a friend in Ohio where Barrett had fled immediately after the murders. The Petitioner's appeal was denied and his conviction and sentence were affirmed by the Florida appellate court without opinion. Sanders v. State, 613 So.2d 64 (Fla. 5th DCA 1993), cert. denied, 509 U.S. 924, 113 S.Ct. 3041, 125 L.Ed.2d 727 (1993). But when the same issue based on admission of the same evidence was subsequently raised in Burnside's direct appeal, the same appellate court found error and reversed. Yet, still later, when the Petitioner attempted to raise this issue of inconsistent adjudications through a petition for habeas corpus filed with the state appellate court, his claim was denied without explanation or opinion; and, when he then asserted the issue in his post conviction proceedings under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850, the claim was denied on the basis that the issue had already been decided in the habeas proceeding, a procedural bar which the appellate court enforced based upon an unexplained finding of no "manifest injustice" (see Sanders v. State, 689 So.2d 410, 412 (Fla. 5th DCA 1997)), despite an earlier observation by the state trial judge that there was a manifest injustice!6
In his direct appeal, and/or in his post conviction proceedings under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850, the Petitioner exhausted his state court remedies, within the meaning of 28 USC § 2254, as to each of his present claims. The state concedes this (Doc. 7 at 9-10). The state does suggest that the Petition is untimely, but this contention has no merit. The Petition (Doc. 1) was filed on April 14, 1997, within the one year grace period following enactment of the AEDPA effective April 24, 1996. See Wilcox v. Florida Department of Corrections, 158 F.3d 1209, 1211 (11th Cir.1998), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 840, 121 S.Ct. 103, 148 L.Ed.2d 62 (2000) and Goodman v. United States, 151 F.3d 1335, 1337-38 (11th Cir.1998).
No evidentiary hearing is required because all of the facts germane to the Petitioner's claims of constitutional error are necessarily derived, in this instance, from the record of the state court proceedings. Bolender v. Singletary, 16 F.3d 1547, 1555 note 9 (11th Cir.1994), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 939, 103 S.Ct. 2111, 77 L.Ed.2d 315 (1983).
The Petition (Doc. 1) presents seven claims:
Ground One: Failure to give requested jury instruction on "independent acts" in violation of the 6th and 14th Amendments.
Ground Two: Admission into evidence of a co-defendant's inculpatory confession in violation of the 6th Amendment right of confrontation as applied in Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476 (1968).
Ground Three. Admission into evidence of a co-defendant's hearsay statements after conclusion of the alleged conspiracy in violation of the 6th Amendment right to confrontation.
Ground Four. Denial of Equal Protection and Due Process through inconsistent appellate decisions in parallel prosecutions for the same offenses involving the same facts and the same legal issue in violation of the 14th Amendment.
Ground Five. Denial of right to appeal by denial of right to submit a brief in violation of the 1st Amendment () and the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment.
Ground Six. Denial of the right of confrontation through admission of unreliable hearsay not within a firmly rooted hearsay exception to the hearsay rule in violation of the 6th Amendment.
Ground Seven. Denial of relief based upon newly discovered evidence in violation of the 14th Amendment.
The statute, 28 USC § 2254(d)(1), as amended by the AEDPA in 1996, provides that the writ shall not be granted to a state prisoner "with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim ... resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States..."
Construing the new statute in Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412-13, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 1523, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000) the Supreme Court held:
In sum, § 2254(d)(1) places a new constraint on the power of a federal habeas court to grant a state prisoner's application for a writ of habeas corpus with respect to claims adjudicated on the merits in state court. Under § 2254(d)(1), the writ may issue only if one of the following two conditions is satisfied— the state-court adjudication resulted in a decision that (1) `was contrary to ... clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,' or (2) `involved an unreasonable application of ... clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.' Under the `contrary to' clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by this Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than this Court has on a set...
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