Smith v. Thigpen, Civ. A. No. J83-0573(B).
| Citation | 689 F. Supp. 644 |
| Decision Date | 13 June 1988 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. J83-0573(B). |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Mississippi |
| Parties | Willie Albert SMITH, Petitioner, v. Morris THIGPEN, Commissioner, Mississippi Department of Corrections; Eddie Lucas, Warden, Mississippi State Penitentiary, et al., Respondents. |
Steven L. Winter, New York City, Robert J. Brantley, Jackson, Miss., for petitioner.
Marvin L. White, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, Miss., for respondents.
Willie Albert Smith brings this Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, attacking the judgment of conviction and death sentence entered against him on July 30, 1981, in the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit of Hinds County, Mississippi. For the reasons set out below, the Petition is denied.
Smith was convicted of the murder of Shirley Roberts during the course of a robbery in violation of Miss.Code Ann. § 97-3-19(2)(e). Roberts was abducted on the morning of March 15, 1981, from the parking lot of the convenience store where she worked. Smith was arrested near the store about an hour later, driving a car like the one in which Roberts' assailant had been seen. One of Roberts' shoes was found in the car, and her body was found behind Smith's nearby apartment.
The evidence against Smith in this case is overwhelming. Neither at the trial, nor at post-conviction proceedings in state court, nor in this petition has any evidence been put forward which exculpates him. At trial Smith relied for his defense on the insufficiency of the state's evidence and on his own rambling, incoherent and totally implausible alibi.
In this Petition, Smith raises the following principal claims:
These principal claims are addressed in separate sections below. In addition to them, Smith's Petition includes numerous other claims for which Smith has not provided legal support in his memorandum of law and which are too ill-defined to summarize here. The state responded to all of those claims by raising the jurisdictional bar of Miss.Code Ann. § 99-39-21 because the claims were not raised at trial or on direct appeal. Smith has not demonstrated cause to excuse his procedural default on those claims. The Court therefore finds the claims barred and will not consider them further.
The most substantial claim Smith raises regards the use of perjury by the state. Smith argues that his conviction rests on the in-court identification made by the two witnesses to the abduction and that the state knew those identifications to be perjured. These allegations were fully examined at a post-conviction evidentiary hearing in the Hinds County Circuit Court.
Smith attempts to characterize the state's case against him as dependent entirely on the allegedly perjured testimony. That testimony was, however, only a small part of the case. The bulk of the proof was presented through the testimony of police officers, forensic experts and other witnesses without reliance on the testimony of the eyewitnesses. To place the perjury claim in perspective, the Court presents below a detailed account of the story told by the evidence without reliance on the eyewitness testimony.
Shirley Roberts was the manager of Tote-Sum Store No. 6 on Robinson Street in Jackson, Mississippi. She was scheduled to open the store for business at 6:00 o'clock on Sunday morning, March 15, 1981.
Sgt. G.E. Oatis, Supervisor of the night shift of Precinct 2 of the Jackson Police Department, was on duty that morning. About 5:30 Sgt. Oatis stopped at the closed Tote-Sum Store to use the public telephone in the parking lot. Roberts' car was in the lot.
Two young men, Kenneth Thomas and James Wells, drove up while Oatis was there. Thomas got out of the car, approached Oatis and asked if there had been a robbery. Oatis asked what he meant, and Thomas explained that as he and Wells had passed the Tote-Sum Store a few minutes earlier, they had seen a black man forcing a white woman into a red Pinto. Oatis noticed that the chain used to secure the door of the store was lying on the pavement in front of the door although the door itself remained locked. Nearby lay a $20 bill, a set of car keys, and a silver-colored pair of brass knuckles. On the parking lot next to Oatis' patrol car lay a woman's tennis shoe and a pair of eye-glasses with a silver neck chain.
Oatis immediately radioed an alarm. It was 5:40 A.M. The police quickly learned that the car in the lot belonged to Roberts and that she was the manager scheduled to open the store that morning. While other police units responded to search the area for the red Pinto and the missing woman, Sgt. Oatis remained at the Tote-Sum Store, protecting the evidence for the mobile crime lab and awaiting a key to the door.
Shortly after 6:00, Willie Albert Smith was driving a red Pinto on Robinson Street toward Tote-Sum Store No. 6. As he neared the store, he noticed the police cars parked there, made a u-turn in the street and began to drive the other way. Smith testified that he thought the police were checking for drivers licenses and that he turned around because his license was at home and expired and because he had a bag of marijuana in the car.
From the Tote-Sum parking lot, Sgt. Oatis spotted Smith's red Pinto as it approached. Seeing the Pinto make a u-turn and head the other way, Oatis concluded that the driver had turned to avoid him. He pursued and stopped Smith. As he overtook the Pinto, Sgt. Oatis saw Smith lean over to reach under the right-hand seat of the car. Suspecting that Smith had hidden a weapon, Oatis checked under the seat when he stopped the car. He found a woman's tennis shoe. The shoe was an exact mate to the tennis shoe in the parking lot. Oatis placed Smith under arrest.
Smith denied knowing anything about the missing woman, and refused to talk about the shoe. Smith admitted, however, that he had borrowed the car from its owner, Charles McDonald, earlier that morning, and he agreed to lead the police officers to McDonald's house nearby. Smith was handcuffed and placed in Oatis' patrol car. One of Smith's hands was stained with blood.
Charles McDonald's mother admitted the police officers to her house and led them to her son's room. McDonald was in a deep sleep. After the officers waked him, McDonald explained that he had been at a party with Smith the night before, but had returned home and gone to bed at 4:30. Smith had ridden home with him and had asked to borrow the Pinto. McDonald stated that Smith left with the Pinto at 4:30. McDonald let Sgt. Oatis examine the clothes he had been wearing the night before. Sgt. Oatis examined them for tears or stains, but found nothing suspicious. McDonald's family members confirmed that McDonald had come home and gone to sleep when he said and that the clothes he showed Sgt. Oatis were the ones he had worn the night before. McDonald agreed to lead the police to Smith's house.
Smith lived in a small duplex apartment house about five minutes from Tote-Sum Store No. 6. The building had a small, enclosed porch. The front door of the building was missing; the interior hall was open to the street. The two apartments opened off of the hall. Smith's apartment was unlocked. Fearing for Roberts' safety, the officers immediately entered the apartment. They found Roberts' brown purse and a woman's white sweater lying on Smith's bed. On the floor by the bed they found a padlock with a set of keys, one of which was in the lock, a pair of dress shoes caked with fresh mud, and a pair of khaki pants wiped with mud. The pants were stained with blood. Mud and leaves were on the floor by the back door and in the kitchen.
Just behind the house was an area of heavy, wet mud and a broken down fence. Beyond the fence were woods. About 15 feet behind the house, at a point at which the fence had been trampled down into the mud, Officer Jerry Grice found the beginning of a trail which appeared to have been made by something being dragged. The drag trail began inside the fence and continued on the wooded side through the mud and into the heavy leaves which covered the floor of the woods. Officer Grice followed the drag trail 40 or 50 yards into the woods downhill to a small drainage ditch. Leaves and sticks had been piled in the water, but a human ankle was visible through the leaves. Shirley Roberts' body lay face down in the water under the leaves and sticks. The time was 7:12 A.M. Little more than an hour and a half had passed since Sgt. Oatis had radioed the first alarm.
At trial, Dr. Rodrigo Galvez, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, testified that Roberts had been strangled to death before being placed in the water. Her body bore numerous scratches, abrasions, and bruises, and on the left side of the head were two wounds which had been made by blows from a blunt instrument.
Charles McDonald, the owner of the Pinto, testified that the evening before the crime Smith had shown him a pair of brass knuckles which resembled the silver-colored pair found at the scene and introduced into evidence. McDonald said that Smith had shown him the brass knuckles before they left for the party and that Smith acted as though he had them at the party:
(Trial Record at 860-61, 862).
McDonald also testified that he did...
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