Smith v. Zant

• Decision Date: 26 August 1988
• Docket Number: No. 88-8436,88-8436
• Parties: William Alvin SMITH, Petitioner-Appellant, Cross-Appellee, v. Walter ZANT, Warden, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center, Respondent-Appellee, Cross-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 712

855 F.2d 712

William Alvin SMITH, Petitioner-Appellant, Cross-Appellee, v. Walter ZANT, Warden, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center, Respondent-Appellee, Cross-Appellant.

No. 88-8436.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Aug. 26, 1988.

Stephen H. Glickman, Zuckerman, Spaeder, Goldstein, Taylor & Kolker, Washington, D.C., Stephen B. Bright, Atlanta, Ga., for petitioner-appellant, cross-appellee.

William B. Hill, Jr., Dennis R. Dunn, Asst. Attys. Gen., Atlanta, Ga., for respondent-appellee, cross-appellant.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

Before KRAVITCH, HATCHETT and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge:

I.

William Alvin Smith, a Georgia prisoner, was convicted of armed robbery and malice murder and was sentenced to death for the offense of murder. On the morning of June 8, 1981, Smith walked from his home in Lexington, Georgia to a grocery store and service station owned by Daniel Lee Turner, an 82-year-old man known to Smith as "Mr. Dan." Only Smith now knows what happened inside the store, but it is not disputed that within a few minutes after Smith entered the store, Turner was lying unconscious in a pool of blood, having been stabbed seventeen times and beaten with a hammer.

Immediately after the attack on Turner, Smith noticed that his friend Willie Robinson was standing outside the door to Turner's store. Robinson did not enter the store, but Smith went to the door, which was open, and told Robinson, "Damn, I think I killed Mr. Dan," or words to the same effect. Smith asked Robinson not to tell anyone about the killing, but Robinson immediately left to inform the police. Smith then went back inside Turner's store, removed Turner's wallet, took money from the cash register, and fled, carrying the hammer with which he had attacked Turner. Eyewitness testimony by John Collins, who had stopped with his coworker Rita Ridgeway to purchase gasoline from Turner, established that Smith ran across the highway on which Turner's store was located.

Turner died at 8:10 p.m. that evening. Later that night, Smith surrendered to the police and was removed to the jail in Clarke County, which is adjacent to Oglethorpe County, where Smith resided and where the crime took place. The police advised Smith of his constitutional rights upon his surrender but did not question him until the next morning, after Smith had eaten and had an opportunity for sleep. At no point, however, did Smith meet with members of his family, and he was detained in a different county from the one in which his family resided.

On the morning of June 9, Sheriff Gene Smith and Deputy Sheriff John Cartee again advised Smith of his constitutional rights. Smith declined consultation with an attorney and, after stating that he understood his constitutional rights, gave the following statement:

I, William Allen [sic] Smith, make the following statement. I left home and went to my aunts, Ruby Dorsey. I left my aunts and went to John Howard Woods. I left John Howard and started walking through Black Bottom toward Lexington to go to Mr. Dan's store. I asked for a pack of cigarettes and saw he was by his self. I then grabbed him. He started resisting me and I pulled knife out of back pocket and started stabbing him. He was still scuffling and he fall at back of store. He had a hammer. I kept stabbing him until he dropped hammer. I picked up hammer and hit him twice with it. I heard something come to door. I went to door and saw Willie Robinson and I told him I had killed Mr. Dan. I went back in store from front door and got money from cash register and out of Mr. Dan's pocket. I then ran back up Black Bottom. I took my shirt and wrapped it around my hand that was bleeding, and also the hammer. I threw them on side of road up the street as I was running. I make this statement voluntarily without threat or promise of my own free will.

This confession was written down by Cartee and signed by Smith. Smith then made the following statement, which Cartee wrote on the back of the confession: "The reason for my actions, I was trying to get money for another car."

A grand jury charged Smith with malice murder ¹ and armed robbery. ² The state trial court held a hearing on the admissibility of Smith's confession, at which Sheriff Smith and Deputy Cartee testified. After considering their testimony, the court concluded "that the statement was freely and voluntarily made, with knowledge, et cetera" and allowed its admission. At trial, the state introduced the confession and a waiver of rights form signed by petitioner.

Smith took the stand on his own behalf and gave an account of the occurrences inside Turner's store. Although Smith's testimony is difficult to follow on a cold record, it is certain that he admitted stabbing and beating Turner. Smith's testimony differed in significant details, however, from the confession given to Sheriff Smith and Deputy Cartee. According to Smith's testimony, he asked Turner for a pack of cigarettes. Turner turned around to reach for the cigarettes, and Smith touched him on the shoulder for an unexplained reason. As Smith touched Turner, he noticed that Turner had a hammer in his hand, but Smith "[didn't] know where the hammer come from, off the counter or from where, you know." Smith testified that Turner "grabbed that hammer, you know, he started forcing his self, you know, and I got carried away.... All I know, I was stabbing. That's all.... [H]e started to the back and then he fell, and when he fell, the hammer, it fell, too, and I guess I picked the hammer up and hit him with it." Smith denied that he had intended to rob Turner when he entered the store and testified that he took Turner's wallet and the money in the cash register after encountering Willie Robinson.

Defense counsel then asked Smith whether he had any other statement to make to the jury. Smith replied, "Yes. I didn't mean to kill Mr. Dan and I ain't had nothing against Mr. Dan or nothing, and I'm sorry I did it." Smith further said that Turner had always been friendly to him and his family, and that he had frequently been in Turner's store but had never before stolen anything.

The jury found Smith guilty of both charges, implicitly rejecting his defenses of insanity and lack of intent to kill. After hearing further testimony at the sentencing phase of the trial, the jury accepted the state's contention that the murder of Turner was "outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim," see O.C.G.A. Sec. 17-10-30(b)(7), and imposed the death sentence.

Smith unsuccessfully appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court. Smith v. State, 249 Ga. 228, 290 S.E.2d 43, cert. denied, 459 U.S. 882, 103 S.Ct. 182, 74 L.Ed.2d 148 (1982). He also attempted, without success, to secure post-conviction relief from the Georgia state courts. Smith v. Francis, 253 Ga. 782, 325 S.E.2d 362, cert. denied, 474 U.S. 925, 106 S.Ct. 260, 88 L.Ed.2d 266 (1985). Smith then filed a petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. His petition alleged numerous grounds for relief from both his conviction and his sentence of death, including ineffective assistance of counsel, denial of an impartial jury, and improper introduction of his confession in violation of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

The district court held an evidentiary hearing on Smith's mental state during the period of the crime and immediately thereafter. Smith presented the testimony of Dr. Everett Kuglar, a board certified psychiatrist, and Dr. Brad Fisher, a clinical correctional psychologist, both of whom had examined Smith. The state introduced the testimony of Dr. Marcelo DeLaserna, an expert in psychological testing, who had not met or tested Smith. The testimony by Smith's experts tended to establish that Smith was mentally retarded and under severe stress during the pertinent period, and that Smith could not have waived his Miranda rights knowingly or intelligently if the nature of the rights and the consequences of waiver had not been slowly and painstakingly explained to him in a stress-free environment. The state's expert did not expressly disagree with this conclusion.

The district court issued a memorandum opinion holding that Smith had not validly waived his Miranda rights when he gave a confession to Sheriff Smith and Deputy Cartee. Smith v. Kemp, 664 F.Supp. 500 (M.D.GA.1987). THE DISTRICT COURt fURTHEr concluded that tHe introduction of Smith's confession was harmless error as to his conviction because "[t]he evidence in support of Smith's conviction for murder and armed robbery [is] overwhelming." Id. at 506. The district court did not believe, however, that the confession was harmless as to Smith's sentence of death, noting that when Smith took the stand at his trial, "[his] testimony ... was substantially more sympathetic than was the matter-of-fact written confession on the violent acts he had committed." Id. The district court therefore granted the writ of habeas corpus as to the death sentence, subject to the state's conducting a new sentencing hearing.

As Smith did not abandon his other grounds for relief, the state asked the district court to reach the remaining claims. The district court declined to do so, citing considerations of judicial economy. The state consequently sought appellate review of the district court's order granting habeas corpus based on the Miranda claim, and Smith cross-appealed from the district court's conclusion that the Miranda violation was harmless as to his conviction.

Neither party, however, requested that the district court expressly determine that there was no just reason for delay and expressly direct the entry of a final judgment on the Miranda claim. Cf. Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(b). In the absence...