Simmons v. Bowersox
| Citation | 235 F.3d 1124 |
| Decision Date | 13 September 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-3643,99-3643 |
| Parties | (8th Cir. 2001) CHRISTOPHER SIMMONS, APPELLANT, V. MICHAEL BOWERSOX, APPELLEE. Submitted: |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit) |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Bowman and Beam, Circuit Judges, and Bogue, 1 District Judge.
Christopher Simmons was convicted in Missouri state court for the first degree murder of Shirley Crook and was sentenced to death. Simmons appeals from the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254.
Because we find the state court decisions involve neither an unreasonable application of federal law nor an unreasonable determination of the facts, we affirm. 2
On September 9, 1993, Shirley Crook was abducted from her home and murdered. Her face was covered with duct tape, her hands and feet were bound together, and she was thrown from a train trestle into the Meremac River. The cause of death was drowning.
On September 10, 1993, after receiving information that Christopher Simmons had been involved in the murder, law enforcement officers from the Greater St. Louis Major Case Squad arrested Simmons at his high school and took him to the Fenton Police Department in Jefferson County, Missouri.
Upon arrival at the department, three detectives took Simmons into an interview room. Detective Shane Knoll used an advice-of-rights form to read Simmons the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). Simmons then signed a waiver and the detectives commenced interrogation. This initial interrogation lasted approximately two hours and was not electronically recorded.
According to deposition and trial testimony by detectives, Simmons first denied any involvement in the crime. At various times, detectives moved within a foot of Simmons' face and Detective Knoll raised his voice. The officers told Simmons that they thought he was lying. The detectives also suggested that Simmons' accomplice had been arrested and was possibly confessing at that moment.
Eventually, Simmons asked everyone but Knoll to leave the room. Simmons then made a statement and agreed to repeat it while being videotaped. At the beginning of the videotape, Knoll showed Simmons the advice-of-rights form and confirmed that the form had been read to Simmons, that Simmons understood the form and had initialed and signed the Miranda waiver. Knoll then noted that the interrogation had been going on for approximately two hours, and the following exchange occurred:
During the videotaped interview, Simmons implicated himself and Charles Benjamin in the murder of Shirley Crook. Law enforcement officers also videotaped a re-enactment by Simmons at the crime scene.
Before trial, defense counsel moved to suppress Simmons' statements and, during trial, objected to testimony regarding the statement. His motion was denied and the objection was overruled.
At trial, Detective Knoll testified to the content of the statement Simmons gave as a result of the September 10, 1993, interrogation and described Simmons' reenactment of the crime. His testimony demonstrates that in the early morning hours of September 9, 1993, seventeen-year-old Christopher Simmons and fifteen-year-old Charles Benjamin entered the home of Shirley and Steven Crook to burglarize it. They opened a back window that had been left cracked open to accommodate a garden hose, reached through, unlocked the door, and entered the Crook home.
Once inside, Simmons turned on a hallway light, waking Mrs. Crook, who was home alone. Mrs. Crook sat up in bed and asked, "Who is there?" The two recognized one another from a traffic accident they had had in July of 1992. Simmons then entered her bedroom and ordered Mrs. Crook from her bed. When she did not comply he and Benjamin forced her to the floor. The two bound Mrs. Crook's hands behind her back, taped her eyes and mouth shut, and placed her in the back of her minivan. Simmons drove the van from Mrs. Crook's home in Jefferson County, Missouri, to a railroad trestle that spans the Meremac River in Castlewood State Park in St. Louis County, Missouri.
After Simmons parked the van near the trestle, he and Benjamin began to remove Mrs. Crook from the van and discovered that she had freed her hands and had removed some of the duct tape from her face. They then covered her head with a towel, securing it with her bathrobe belt, and restrained her hands with her purse strap and feet with electrical wire they found on the bridge. After walking her to the trestle, they bound her hands to her feet. Simmons then pushed her off the bridge into the Meremac River.
On redirect examination, Knoll testified that he did not know that Castlewood State Park existed or its location until Simmons led him there during the reenactment. Nor had he known other details of the murder that were later substantiated, such as that Shirley Crook's feet were bound with electrical cable, until Simmons told him during the interrogation.
The medical examiner testified that he identified Mrs. Crook's body from her fingerprints. He determined that the cause of her death was drowning and noted that she had been conscious prior to being pushed from the bridge. The examiner also reported that Mrs. Crook had sustained several fractured ribs and considerable bruising and that those injuries did not result from her fall from the railroad trestle.
Steven Crook, the victim's husband, testified that he was employed by a carrier service and had been making an overnight delivery on September 8, 1993. On the afternoon of September 9, 1993, upon discovering that his wife had not reported for work as she had planned, he returned home and found her missing. The bed clothes of their bed were in disarray, wads of duct tape were on the floor, and the couple's dog, Chrissy, was lying on the bed with her nose and legs tangled in duct tape and whimpering. Mr. Crook then contacted the police to report Shirley missing.
Friends of Simmons testified regarding statements Simmons had made prior to and after the murder. Christie Brooks testified that on the evening of September 8, 1993, Simmons told her he was planning to rob another house in the area-belonging to a man they had nicknamed "Voodoo"-on that night, and that Simmons had a ski mask, a dark button-up shirt with leather gloves taped to the sleeve, a small shotgun, and a large knife. He asked her for a gun because three people were to be involved and he only had two weapons.
Brian Moomey, another friend of Simmons, testified that prior to the murder, Simmons and Benjamin talked about robbing a house and killing a family, that Simmons told Benjamin that "they could do it and not get charged for it because they [were] juveniles, and nobody would think that juveniles would do it." Moomey also testified that, after the murder, Simmons bragged about killing a woman, that Moomey asked Simmons if he had killed the woman, and that Simmons said he had done so because she had seen his face.
John Tessmer testified that, on several occasions prior to the murder of Shirley Crook, Simmons talked to him about a plan to murder the "voodoo guy" by throwing him off a bridge in order to get "a bunch of money." Tessmer saw Simmons cutting masks from old sweatshirts and Simmons told him that the masks were for hiding their faces. Tessmer also testified that, while at Moomey's house, Simmons tried to persuade him to go along with the plan to kill someone by throwing the victim off the bridge and that "they'd never think that kids did it." On the evening of September 8, 1993, Simmons told Tessmer that he wanted to meet at Moomey's house at 2:00 a.m. In the early morning hours of September 9, Simmons and Benjamin met at Moomey's house. Tessmer went home.
The defense cross-examined the prosecution's witnesses at some length. In cross-examining Moomey and Tessmer, the defense highlighted their extensive criminal histories and their concerns that they may be suspects in the murder, and elicited inconsistencies between Moomey's trial testimony and statements he had previously made to law enforcement officials.
On June 16, 1994, in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, a jury convicted Simmons of the first degree murder of Shirley Crook. During the penalty phase of the trial, members of Mrs. Crook's family presented victim impact statements. In his penalty phase closing arguments, the prosecutor commented on Simmons' age and what effect the jurors' choice of penalty would have on his family.
The jury found three statutory aggravating circumstances: (1) the murder was committed for the purpose of receiving money or any other thing of value; (2) the murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding, interfering with, or preventing a lawful arrest of the defendant; and (3) the murder involved depravity of mind, and as a result thereof, the murder was outrageously and wantonly vile, horrible, and inhuman. Tr. Trans. at 1163-64. Consequently, the jury imposed the death penalty. The trial court entered judgment against Simmons and sentenced him to be executed in accordance with Missouri law.
Simmons sought post-conviction relief pursuant to Missouri Supreme Court Rule 29.15. After an evidentiary hearing, the court denied Simmons' Rule 29.15 motion. Simmons then appealed the conviction, death sentence, and...
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