Smith v. Anderson, No. C-1-95-320.
| Decision Date | 22 February 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. C-1-95-320. |
| Citation | 104 F.Supp.2d 773 |
| Parties | William H. SMITH, Petitioner, v. Carl S. ANDERSON, Respondent, |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Ohio |
Henry Louis Sirkin, Sirkin Pinales Mezibov & Schwartz, Cincinnati, OH, Laurence E Komp, Ohio Public Defender's Office, Columbus, OH, for William H Smith, petitioner.
Charles L Wille, Assistant Attorney General, Capital Crimes Section, Columbus, OH, Betty Montgomery, Ohio Attorney General, Columbus, OH, for Carl S Anderson, respondent.
This matter is before the Court on Petitioner William H. Smith's Second Amended Petition for a Writ of Habeas Corpus (doc. 46); Respondent State of Ohio's (hereinafter, "the State" or "Respondent") Amended Return of Writ (doc. 47); and Petitioner's Traverse in Response to Respondent's Return of Writ (doc. 51). The Court also takes into consideration Respondent's Motion to Supplement the State Court Records (docs. 59, 60, & 61).
Petitioner William H. Smith (hereinafter, "Smith" or "Petitioner") petitions the Court for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to Title 28 U.S.C. § 2254, et seq.1 Specifically, Petitioner challenges the constitutional sufficiency of his state court convictions as to: Count I for murder during a rape; Count II for murder in the course of an aggravated robbery; Count III for rape; and Count IV for aggravated robbery. Petitioner also challenges the constitutionality of the state court's imposition of a sentence of death for his murder conviction.
The Ohio Supreme Court set out the factual history of this case when it considered Petitioner's direct appeal of his trial court convictions highlighting the evidence adduced at Petitioner's trial. See State v. Smith, 61 Ohio St.3d 284, 285-87, 574 N.E.2d 510, 512-14 (1991). The Court repeats this factual history here.
On Saturday afternoon, September 26, 1987, Mary Virginia Bradford, age forty-seven, visited the Race Inn, a neighborhood bar in Cincinnati, Ohio. While at the Race Inn, she had several beers and met, talked, and danced with William H. Smith, appellant, a regular bar patron. She left the Race Inn around 11:45 p.m.
Around 4:00 p.m., on September 27, Marvin Rhodes, Bradford's boyfriend, stopped by her apartment because he had not seen her since Friday, September 25. No one answered the doorbell, but Rhodes found the door unlocked and went in. Rhodes saw blood near the front door and found Bradford in the bedroom. Feeling her face, he found no life in her body and called the police.
Responding police officers found Bradford lying stabbed to death on her bed, nude from the waist down. On the floor, near her bed, police found a woman's pants and panties, blood-stained and turned inside-out, and, on the bed, an oxygen machine used by asthmatics. Forensic examination disclosed a .13 percent blood-alcohol level and revealed sperm in her vagina and on her abdomen.
Near the front door of the apartment, police found a chair, with a pool of blood on it, and, on the floor, blood smears including a bare bloody footprint leading to the bedroom. The apartment was otherwise exceptionally neat and clean, with no signs of disorder, disarray, or a struggle, and police found no murder weapon in the apartment. One color television, one black and white television, and a stack stereo with two speakers were missing from Bradford's apartment.
Dr. Harry J. Bonnell, Chief Deputy Coroner, testified that Bradford died as a result of ten stab wounds to her upper body and consequent loss of blood. She was five feet, three inches tall, weighed one hundred sixteen pounds, and a portion of her lung was missing, which explained her asthmatic condition. Bonnell numbered the wounds one to ten for descriptive purposes (but not indicative of the order in which inflicted).
The most lethal wounds, causing incapacitation within five minutes, were wound eight, a four-inch wound into Bradford's right lung and heart, and wound nine, a four-inch wound into the sternum and the heart's right ventricle. Wound seven, a five-inch puncture into the rib and liver, and wounds eight and nine all fractured bony structures. Wound two, four inches in depth, crossed her neck from left to right. Wound ten punctured the liver and was no more than four inches in depth. Two wounds, one and five, showed no signs of hemorrhage and thus were inflicted after death when the heart was not pumping sufficient blood. Wounds one, three, four, and six were superficial. Bradford's body exhibited no other evidence of injury or trauma such as bruises or defensive wounds, and Bonnell observed no twisting motion in the stab wounds that would indicate a violent struggle. All the wounds could have been inflicted by the same single-edged knife.
On September 28, 1987 homicide detectives went to where Smith lived, the home of Bertha Reid, Smith's mother, which was about four blocks from Bradford's home. When police arrived, Smith was not at home, and Reid let the officers in. While at Reid's home, police noticed a television set matching the description of one of the two sets missing from Bradford's home. Thereafter, police secured a warrant, found the missing two televisions in Reid's home, and seized them.
Reid testified that when her son came home around 2:00 a.m. on September 27, he did not act unusual, nor did he appear to be drunk, high, or upset. However, Smith did carry into Reid's home the two televisions in question along with a large stereo system and two speakers. Reid asked where he got the televisions and stereo, and Smith replied that his girlfriend Carolyn gave them to him. Reid did not accept her son's explanation, telling him he would "have to explain to me a little more about what's going on." Later that morning, Smith and his cousin, Greg, took the stereo and two speakers away but left the televisions.
Reid also showed police clothing that her son had worn on September 26 and 27, which police seized. Subsequent forensic analysis revealed that Smith's shirt and shoes bore traces of human blood.
On September 28, 1987, police apprehended and took Smith to police headquarters for questioning. After being advised of his rights, Smith agreed to talk to the police. Smith initially asserted that he had driven Bradford home that night but he had just dropped her off. He later admitted that he had been in her apartment but had left when her boyfriend arrived.
Smith told police that he met Bradford at the Race Inn, later drove her and her girlfriend to another bar, and then drove Bradford home. While at her house, Smith claimed that someone he thought to be Bradford's boyfriend arrived, and Smith decided to leave quickly. After Smith left, he realized that he had left a packet of cocaine, worth $2,500, at Bradford's house. After he returned, Bradford's boyfriend and the cocaine were both gone. Smith then talked with Bradford.
According to Smith, Bradford was stabbed in the stomach during the ensuing struggle and fell onto a chair. He removed the knife from her stomach, and she dragged or walked by herself to the bedroom. He recalled stabbing her in the neck in the bedroom after she called him a "motherfucker," but he did not admit inflicting the other stab wounds. When she was lying on the bed, he took her clothes off and got back on top of her and had sex again. Police asked:
Q. [A]fter you had sex with her the second time, after she was stabbed, then what'd you do?
. I gathered up my things together and started taking her stuff downstairs.
. What'd you take out of there?
. Her two TV's and her stereo.
Smith said he made four trips carrying her things down to his car and that he took her things in order to sell them. Although Smith initially claimed that he did not know whether Bradford had stopped breathing, he later admitted he decided to have sex with her again because "she was still breathing then." He said that he pulled his penis out as he started to climax and finished ejaculating on her stomach. He did this because he was thinking about getting out of the apartment. Smith claimed he threw the knife into the Ohio River and sold Bradford's stereo in Dayton. However, police recovered her stereo in Cincinnati. When police interviewed Smith they also seized a pair of undershorts from him stained with blood of the same type as Bradford's.
Smith was indicted on two counts of felony-murder, Count I alleging murder during rape, and Count II alleging murder in the course of aggravated robbery. Each count contained two death penalty specifications, one alleging aggravated murder during rape and the other alleging murder during aggravated robbery. Count III alleged rape and Count IV alleged aggravated robbery. Smith pled not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity, but he later withdrew the insanity plea. A panel of three judges convicted Smith as charged. After a hearing, the panel sentenced Smith to the death penalty on each murder count. The court of appeals affirmed the convictions and death penalties.
William H. Smith was indicted on October 21, 1987, on two counts of aggravated murder, one count of rape, and one count of aggravated robbery (doc. 47). Upon arraignment, Smith first entered a plea of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity as to all...
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