Smith v. Mitchell
| Decision Date | 28 October 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 00-4030.,00-4030. |
| Citation | 348 F.3d 177 |
| Parties | William H. SMITH, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Betty MITCHELL, Warden, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ARGUED: Laurence E. Komp, (argued and briefed), appeal. Baldwin, MO, H. Louis Sirkin, Laura A. Abrams, Jennifer M. Kinsley (briefed), Sirkin, Pinales, Mezibov & Schwartz, Cincinnati, OH, Missouri, for Appellant.
Henry G. Appel, (argued and briefed), Charles L. Wille (briefed), ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE OF OHIO, CAPITAL CRIMES SECTION, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.
ON BRIEF: Laurence E. Komp, Baldwin, Missouri, H. Louis Sirkin, Laura A. Abrams, Jennifer M. Kinsley, SIRKIN, PINALES, MEZIBOV & SCHWARTZ, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellant. Henry G. Appel, Charles L. Wille, ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE OF OHIO, CAPITAL CRIMES SECTION, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellee.
Before: SUHRHEINRICH, BATCHELDER, and COLE, Circuit Judges.
SUHRHEINRICH, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which BATCHELDER, J., joined. COLE, J. (pp. 215-218), delivered a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.
In April 1988, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Common Pleas, Hamilton County, sentenced William H. Smith ("Smith" or "Petitioner") to death for the aggravated murder of Mary Bradford. The Ohio state courts denied all of Smith's claims for relief, as did the federal district court on habeas. Smith now appeals from the judgment of the district court denying his application for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, challenging both his conviction and sentence. The principal issue on appeal is whether trial counsel were ineffective for failing to present mitigating evidence at sentencing. For the following reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
The following facts are taken from the Ohio Supreme Court's opinion on direct appeal.
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 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, bloodstained and turned inside out, and, on the bed, an oxygen machine used by asthmatics. Forensic examination disclosed a .13 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 lungs was missing, which explained her asthmatic condition. Bonnell numbered the wounds from 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 or 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 defense 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 house. 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 television sets 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 and 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 police. Smith initially asserted that he had driven Bradford home that night but 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:
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.
State v. Smith, 61 Ohio St.3d 284, 574 N.E.2d 510, 512-14 (Ohio 1991).
Smith was indicted on October 21, 1987, on two counts of aggravated murder, pursuant to Ohio Rev.Code § 2903.01(B) (Counts I & II), and one count of rape (Count III), and one count of aggravated robbery (Count IV). Counts I and II each contained two death penalty specifications, one alleging aggravated murder during rape and the other alleging murder during aggravated robbery. Smith initially entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity as to all charges.1 As a result, the trial court ordered that Smith be evaluated with respect to his mental state at the time of the alleged offense. Smith was evaluated by three experts, Nancy Schmidtgoessling, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist of the Court Psychiatric Center, Roger H. Fisher, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist, and Glenn Weaver, M.D., a psychiatrist. Dr. Schmidtgoessling evaluated Smith on November 27, 1987, and on ...
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