Simmons v. Beard

• Decision Date: 22 February 2005
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 02-161-J.
• Citation: 356 F.Supp.2d 548
• Parties: Ernest SIMMONS, Petitioner, v. Jeffrey BEARD, Commissioner, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections; William S. Stickman, III, Superintendent of the State Correctional Institution at Greene; and Robert W. Meyers, Superintendent of the State Correctional Institution at Rockview, Respondents.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania

Page 548

356 F.Supp.2d 548

Ernest SIMMONS, Petitioner, v. Jeffrey BEARD, Commissioner, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections; William S. Stickman, III, Superintendent of the State Correctional Institution at Greene; and Robert W. Meyers, Superintendent of the State Correctional Institution at Rockview, Respondents.

Civil Action No. 02-161-J.

United States District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania.

February 22, 2005.

Robert B. Dunham, Matthew Lawry, Defender Association of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, for Plaintiff.

David J. Kaltenbaugh Office of the District Attorney, Ebensburg, PA, for Defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER

McLAUGHLIN, District Judge.

On June 4, 1993, a jury empaneled by the Court of Common Pleas for Cambria County, Pennsylvania, convicted Petitioner Ernest Simmons of robbery and first-degree murder in the death of eighty-year-old Anna Knaze. The following day, the jury sentenced him to death on his first-degree murder conviction.¹ At issue today is Simmons's Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. (Doc. 10).

Having reviewed the Petition, we find a consistent pattern of prosecutorial misconduct in the nature of withholding favorable evidence that could have been used to substantially impeach the testimony of the most pivotal prosecution witnesses. We also find that additional suppressed evidence could have been used to further weaken the prosecution's case. Because the long-suppressed information would have affected the trial in such a way as to undermine the Court's confidence in the jury's verdict, Simmons is entitled to a new trial under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). "When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material in the State's possession, it is ordinarily incumbent on the State to set the record straight." Banks v. Dretke, 540 U.S. 668, 675-76, 124 S.Ct. 1256, 157 L.Ed.2d 1166 (2004).

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

At approximately 5:00 p.m. on May 6, 1992, Stephen Knaze discovered the body of his mother, Anna Knaze, lying dead on the floor in her home. (6/1/93 Trial Tr.² at 61). Her purse was missing, and was never found. An autopsy performed by Dr. Vimal Mittal at approximately 10:00 a.m. on May 7, 1992, showed that: (1) Knaze had been manually strangled; (2) her spine was severed as a result of her back being hit either by a hard object or by blunt trauma possibly caused by a human fist; and (3) all of her ribs had been broken. (6/2/93 Trial Tr. at 18-20). Dr. Mittal ruled Knaze's death a homicide and listed the cause of death as manual strangulation causing asphyxia. (Id. at 28). He estimated that her death occurred between approximately 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on May 5, 1992. (Id. at 31-34; 6/4/93 Trial Tr. at 45).

Almost immediately, Simmons became a suspect in the crimes. On May 14, 1992, the police picked him up on an unrelated parole violation and incarcerated him in the Cambria County Jail. He remained incarcerated there and then at the State Correctional Institution ("SCI") at Cresson. On August 19, 1992, while he was still incarcerated for the parole violation, he was charged with the murder and robbery of Anna Knaze.

Simmons's trial commenced on June 1, 1993. It was presided over by the Honorable Thomas A. Swope, Jr. Kenneth Sottile, Esq., and Michael Filia, Esq., of the Cambria County Public Defender's Office, represented him. Linda Fleming, Esq., also of the Public Defender's Office, joined them in representing him during the penalty phase of the trial.

The Prosecution's Case

The prosecution's key witness at the trial was Margaret Cobaugh. To appreciate Cobaugh's importance to the prosecution's case, one needs to understand the manner in which it presented the case to the jury. It portrayed Simmons as a criminal who preyed upon the elderly. It argued that he "steals, and he robs, and he kills" them. (6/4/93 Trial Tr. at 88). Eighty-year-old Anna Knaze fell victim to Simmons, it contended. But Cobaugh, age sixty-one, had survived a separate attack. And through her testimony, it assured the jury in its opening statement, Cobaugh would provide evidence that would prove that Simmons murdered Knaze. (6/1/93 Trial Tr. at 16-17).

Cobaugh lived on Figg Street, which is located just a few blocks away from Knaze's Maple Avenue home. At trial, Cobaugh testified that during the early morning hours of May 6, 1992, she was walking home from a neighbor's house when she was attacked by a man who reeked of alcohol and who attempted, unsuccessfully, to anally and vaginally rape her.³ (6/3/93 Trial Tr. at 109-20). She identified Simmons as her attacker. (Id. at 120, 123). Most important, she testified that he threatened her during the attack: "If you open your motherfucking mouth, you'll get the same thing Anna Knaze got." (Id. at 117). At that time, Cobaugh explained, Knaze's body had not yet been discovered, and she did not understand the threat. (Id. at 127).

In its closing argument, the prosecution focused on the importance of Cobaugh's testimony. The threat that Simmons allegedly made to Cobaugh "is so significant" to the Knaze murder, it explained, because at the time of Cobaugh's alleged attack "[t]here was only one person who knew that Anna Knaze was dead. The killer[.]" (6/4/93 Trial Tr. at 100).

LaCherie Pletcher, Simmons's live-in girlfriend at the time of the Knaze murder, provided powerful circumstantial support for the prosecution's theory. Through Pletcher's testimony, it was able to demonstrate that it was possible that Simmons attacked Cobaugh because he was not at home during the early morning hours of May 6, 1992 — the time period in which Cobaugh's alleged attacked occurred. (6/2/93 Trial Tr. at 133-34, 138, 156; 6/4/93 Trial Tr. at 90). Pletcher also testified that when Simmons eventually did arrive home, he was drunk, thereby corroborating Cobaugh's testimony that her attacker reeked of alcohol. (Id. at 133-34, 156; 6/3/93 Trial Tr. at 118-20).

In addition, Pletcher testified that in mid-April 1992, she found a photo driver's license of an elderly woman living on Figg Street in Simmons's wallet. (6/3/93 Trial Tr. at 177). After viewing Cobaugh's then-current driver's license during the trial,⁴ she testified that she believed that the license she found in Simmons's wallet had been Cobaugh's. (Id.) The prosecution also introduced evidence to establish that, in April 1992, Cobaugh's purse had been reported missing from the senior activities center where she worked, and that among the items stolen was her photo driver's license. Two employees from the center testified that sometime before Cobaugh's purse was reported missing, Simmons had visited the center asking if he could volunteer there. (6/3/93 Trial Tr. at 89-95). The prosecution contended that its witnesses' testimony established that Simmons stole Cobaugh's purse. It then suggested to the jury that, because Simmons had Cobaugh's license, he knew where she lived and was able to target her for attack. (6/4/93 Trial Tr. at 88, 97).

In addition to the alleged incriminating statement Simmons made to Cobaugh, the prosecution introduced testimony that placed Simmons outside of Knaze's home at around the time the murder could have occurred. Thelma Blough, Knaze's next-door neighbor, her son Gary, and his girlfriend, Tammy Ickes, each testified that they observed Knaze speaking with a black male between 11:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. on May 5, 1992. (6/2/93 Trial Tr. at 176-78; 6/3/93 Trial Tr. at 5, 22-23, 43). Each testified that they overheard the black male ask Knaze if he could use her phone because his car had broken down. (Id. at 176; 6/3/93 Trial Tr. at 5, 43). Each identified Simmons as the man they saw speaking with Knaze. (Id. at 178-79; 6/3/93 Trial Tr. at 8, 47).

Finally, through the testimony of Pletcher and Simmons's acquaintance, Kitty McKinney, the prosecution was able to establish a forty-five minute window of time the morning of May 5, 1992, during which Simmons's whereabouts could not be independently established. McKinney testified that Simmons gave her a ride that morning and dropped her off at a gas station around 10:30 a.m. (Id. at 162-63). She observed that he drove towards the Woodvale section of Johnstown, which is where Knaze resided. (Id. at 164, 167-69). Pletcher testified that Simmons picked her up at the Cambria County Domestic Relations Office at 11:45 a.m. (Id. at 128-31). The prosecution contended that Simmons murdered Knaze during the unaccounted for period of time between 10:30 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. (6/4/93 Trial Tr. at 89-90).

Simmons's Defense

The defense's main strategy was to undermine the credibility of each of the Commonwealth's material witnesses. First, it attempted to discredit Cobaugh's identification of Simmons and the link between her alleged sexual assault and the Knaze murder. During Cobaugh's testimony, it was revealed that she first reported her alleged assault around 9:30 a.m. on May 6, 1992, to Johnstown Police Officer Yvonne Krug. (6/3/93 Trial Tr. at 124-27, 165-69; Officer Krug's Report, Vol. 13). Cobaugh admitted that in her statement to Officer Krug, she did not report the threat that her alleged attacker had made to her regarding Knaze. (Id. at 127). In fact, the defense established, Cobaugh did not report the threat or any other link between her case and the Knaze crimes until more than five months later, when, on October 9, 1992, Detective Richard Rok, the chief investigator in the Knaze case, first interviewed her. (Id. at 129, 132-33, 142-43; Det. Rok's Report, Vol. 13, Pet.'s Ex. 2).

Cobaugh's October 1992 interview with Det. Rok was also the first time she identified Simmons as her attacker. (Id.) Prior to that, she could not provide the police with information to identify the man that allegedly assaulted her. She admitted that she told Officer Krug in May 1992 that she "did not get a good look at the suspect to see his face[.]"⁵ (Id. at...