Smith v. Farley

• Decision Date: 31 October 1994
• Docket Number: No. 88cv685.,88cv685.
• Citation: 873 F. Supp. 1199
• Parties: Tommie J. SMITH, Petitioner, v. Robert FARLEY, Superintendent Indiana State Prison, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana

873 F. Supp. 1199

Tommie J. SMITH, Petitioner, v. Robert FARLEY, Superintendent Indiana State Prison, Respondent.

No. 88cv685.

United States District Court, N.D. Indiana, South Bend Division.

October 31, 1994.

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Michael P. Rehak, South Bend, IN, F. Thomas Schornhorst, Bloomington, IN, for petitioner.

David A. Arthur, Indianapolis, IN, for respondent.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ALLEN SHARP, Chief Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

On November 25, 1988, the petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The petitioner and a co-defendant, Gregory Resnover (hereinafter Resnover) were convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the shooting death of Indianapolis policeman Jack Ohrberg ("Ohrberg").¹ The petitioner was sentenced to death and is on death row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana. Most recently, once again, oral argument and a hearing was held in Lafayette, Indiana on the 14th of October, 1994.

A. Historical Perspectives

In order to keep the nature of habeas corpus in the United States courts in proper perspective, it is helpful to briefly trace its origins. To be sure, the so-called Great Writ evolved on both sides of the Atlantic in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1679, a Restoration Parliament forced a Habeas Corpus Act onto a very reluctant and hostile King Charles II as a means of testing royal authority. That writ remained an essential feature of the Glorious Revolution and the English Bill of Rights a decade later. This writ also found favor with the American colonies as witnessed by the enactment of a Habeas Corpus Statute in 1692 in Massachusetts. It was also honored in a number of colonial charters and state constitutions which predated the Federal Convention in 1787. For example, the New Jersey Constitution of 1776 and the Georgia Constitution of 1777 contained specific provisions for a writ of habeas corpus.

In Article I of the Constitution of the United States, which defined congressional authority, the writ of habeas corpus was presumed to exist and an attempt was made to place limitations on congressional authority to suspend it. The ratifying conventions which considered the Constitution of the United States made many recommendations as the content of a Bill of Rights for it. A number of these suggested including a specific amendment guaranteeing the right to a writ of habeas corpus. The First Congress under the leadership of then Representative James Madison considered many of these habeas recommendations along with the contents of the "Declaration of Rights" in the various state constitutions, as well as the preceding English and colonial history, in formulating the contents of a Bill of Rights. A specific habeas amendment was not included in the amendments which were submitted to the states in 1789, ratified as of December 15, 1791, and now constituting the first 10 amendments plus the recently ratified 27th amendment.

Thus, one must look to Congressional enactments rather than to the facial fabric of the Constitution itself to understand the full dimensions of current usage in regard to federal habeas corpus. The first federal statute to deal with habeas corpus was the Judiciary Act of 1789, Ch. 20, S. 14, 1 Stat. 81, but it was limited to petitioners held in federal custody. The American Civil War put the provisions regarding habeas corpus in Article I of the Constitution to its greatest challenge. Immediately following that event, the Congress enacted the first truly elaborate federal Habeas Corpus Act in 1867, Ch. 28, S. 1, 14 Stat. 385, which, for the first time, permitted United States courts to hear habeas petitions from persons held in state custody. Interestingly, in an era when virtually all federal statutes used the masculine gender alone, the 1867 Habeas Corpus Act specifically used both the male and female gender in describing persons who were entitled to its benefits. The writ was available "in all cases where any person may be restricted of his or her liberty in violation of the Constitution, or of any treaty or law of the United States." In the 127 years since 1867, the United States courts have witnessed a massive growth in state prisoners seeking relief in United States courts, now under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 et seq., the present day progeny of the 1867 Act. It remains of high moment to note that this proceeding is made possible by reason of a specific Congressional enactment. Congress certainly has the authority to condition the entertainment in United States courts of petitions by state prisoners and has done so particularly in 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). The basic legislative purpose of § 2254(d) is to avoid the complete retrial of factual issues in United States district courts hearing state prisoner habeas petitions, especially where the highest court in a state has specifically delineated the relevant facts. This basic view accorded § 2254(d) is reflected in key decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and also represents a decent respect for federalism. Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979).

A United States court may have a problem when the highest state court or any other relevant state court has not properly delineated the determinative facts. See, Johnson v. Trigg, 28 F.3d 639 (7th Cir.1994). In this case, the highest court in Indiana without dissent has clearly and completely delineated the relevant facts, and the invitation to wade into a retrial thereof will be most respectfully declined. In this context, the Supreme Court of the United States has set forth the standards by which a United States district court must examine the state factual record for sufficiency of evidence.

Justice Stewart, speaking for the Supreme Court of the United States in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), stated:

A judgment by a state appellate court rejecting a challenge to evidentiary sufficiency is of course entitled to deference by the federal courts, as is any judgment affirming a criminal conviction. But Congress in § 2254 has selected the federal district courts as precisely the forums that are responsible for determining whether state convictions have been secured in accord with federal constitutional law. The federal habeas corpus statute presumes the norm of a fair trial in the state court and adequate state post-conviction remedies to redress possible error. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b), (d). What it does not presume is that these state proceedings will always be without error in the constitutional sense. The duty of a federal habeas corpus court to appraise a claim that constitutional error did occur — reflecting as it does the belief that the "finality" of a deprivation of liberty through the invocation of the criminal sanction is simply not to be achieved at the expense of a constitutional right — is not one that can be so lightly abjured.

Id. at 323, 99 S.Ct. at 2791. The Supreme Court in Jackson held:

We hold that in a challenge to a conviction brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 — if the settled procedural prerequisites for such a claim have otherwise been satisfied — the applicant is entitled to habeas corpus relief if it is found that upon the record evidence adduced at trial no rational trier of fact could have found proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Id. (footnote omitted). See also Sumner v. Mata, 449 U.S. 539, 101 S.Ct. 764, 66 L.Ed.2d 722 (1981); Dooley v. Duckworth, 832 F.2d 445 (7th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 967, 108 S.Ct. 1239, 99 L.Ed.2d 438 (1988); United States ex rel. Haywood v. O'Leary, 827 F.2d 52 (7th Cir.1987); Bryan v. Warden, Indiana State Reformatory, 820 F.2d 217 (7th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 867, 108 S.Ct. 190, 98 L.Ed.2d 142 (1987); Shepard v. Lane, 818 F.2d 615 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 929, 108 S.Ct. 296, 98 L.Ed.2d 256 (1987); and Perri v. Director, Department of Corrections, 817 F.2d 448 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 843, 108 S.Ct. 135, 98 L.Ed.2d 92 (1987).

Here, the focus must be on any claimed violation of the Constitution, treaties or statutes of the United States. See Bell v. Duckworth, 861 F.2d 169 (7th Cir.1988), cert. den., 489 U.S. 1088, 109 S.Ct. 1552, 103 L.Ed.2d 855 (1989). Under Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 106 S.Ct. 445, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985), the entire state court record has been independently examined by this court. See also, Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963). The conviction of this petitioner and the imposition of the death sentence has now been before the Supreme Court of Indiana on three separate occasions, and that court, thus far, without dissent, has affirmed both the conviction and the sentence against the various challenges that are well reflected in reported decisions. In recent times, the Supreme Court of Indiana has been most willing to exercise a high level of judicial review of death penalty cases and has been equally willing to enter reversals or remands of such convictions. Burris v. State, 558 N.E.2d 1067 (Ind.1990) and cases there collected; See also, Kennedy v. State, 620 N.E.2d 17 (Ind.1993); James v. State, 613 N.E.2d 15 (Ind.1993); Bellmore v. State, 602 N.E.2d 111 (Ind.1992); Evans v. State, 598 N.E.2d 516 (Ind.1992); Castor v. State, 587 N.E.2d 1281 (Ind.1992); Landress v. State, 600 N.E.2d 938 (Ind.1992) (aff'd on remand, 638 N.E.2d 787 (Ind.1994)). Most recently, that high court has granted yet another state review proceeding in a death penalty case that had been the subject to full federal review. Schiro v. Clark, 754 F.Supp. 646 (N.D.Ind.1990), aff'd, 963 F.2d 962 (7th Cir.1992), cert. granted, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 2330, 124 L.Ed.2d 243 (1993), aff'd, ___ U.S. ___, 114 S.Ct. 783, 127 L.Ed.2d 47 (1994). Even after Schiro returned to the Supreme Court of Indiana from the Supreme Court of the United States, an order was entered granting yet another...