Snachez v. Gilmore

• Decision Date: 20 October 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-2734,98-2734
• Citation: 189 F.3d 619
• Parties: (7th Cir. 1999) HECTOR REUBEN SANCHEZ, Petitioner-Appellant, v. JERRY D. GILMORE, Warden, Pontiac Correctional Center, Respondent-Appellee
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 619

189 F.3d 619 (7th Cir. 1999)

HECTOR REUBEN SANCHEZ, Petitioner-Appellant, v. JERRY D. GILMORE, Warden, Pontiac Correctional Center, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 98-2734

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Argued May 10, 1999

Decided September 1, 1999

Rehearing En Banc Denied October 20, 1999

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 96 C 3956--James F. Holderman, Judge.

Before BAUER, RIPPLE, and EVANS, Circuit Judges.

TERENCE T. EVANS, Circuit Judge.

Fifteen years ago Hector Reuben Sanchez was found guilty by an Illinois jury on several charges, including murder, attempted murder, rape, aggravated kidnapping, and deviant sexual assault. The jury concluded that Sanchez killed 21-year-old Michelle Thompson by strangling her after she was abducted and raped. The jury also found that Sanchez shot and seriously wounded Thompson's friend, Rene Valentine. In the second phase of the trial the jury determined that Sanchez should be sentenced to death.

At trial, Valentine testified that he and Thompson met at a Gurnee, Illinois, disco called "D. Laney's" on the evening of February 3, 1984. An hour after midnight, Valentine and Thompson were sitting in a car outside of D. Laney's when two men approached from behind. During the trial, Valentine testified that one of the men pulled him out of the car, led him to a nearby alley, and shot him. Valentine positively identified Sanchez as the culprit.

More damning trial testimony came from Walter Peters, Sanchez's companion on the evening of February 3. By the time of Sanchez's trial, Peters had already been tried and convicted for his role in Thompson's murder but had not been sentenced. Peters testified that he, Sanchez, and a man named Forest Heinz were surveying the layout of the Normandie Restaurant, near D. Laney's, with the intent to burglarize it later that night. After taking Heinz home, Peters and Sanchez (according to Peters' testimony) returned to the area and, upon seeing Valentine and Thompson alone in the parking lot, approached the pair. Peters said that Sanchez led Valentine away while he (Peters) pulled Ms. Thompson into his car. Peters said he heard a gunshot and then Sanchez returned to the car and reported that he had shot Valentine.

With Thompson handcuffed in the car, the two kidnappers drove to Sanchez's house in nearby Waukegan. After forcing Thompson inside the house, Sanchez raped her. Then, after hog-tying her with nylon cord (in addition to the handcuffs), Peters and Sanchez left the house for a short time. When the two returned to the room where Thompson had been bound, she was gone. They found her, unclad from the waist down, screaming for help outside a neighboring house. Sanchez led her back into his house and then returned to the neighbor's house to smooth things over.

When he returned from the neighbor's, Sanchez forced Thompson into the basement, where he raped her again and, upon finishing the assault, asked Peters if he "wanted any." Peters testified that he declined. Sanchez then strangled Thompson with a nylon cord and tightly wrapped a wire hanger around her neck. He then slammed her head into the floor and gave her lifeless body a couple of kicks for good measure. The two men collected Thompson's clothing (again, according to Peters) and jewelry and burned them in the fireplace. They then loaded Thompson's body into Sanchez's car, drove across the state line, and dumped her body in a rural area of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

In addition to the testimony of Valentine and Peters, Gene Gonyo, Sanchez's neighbor, testified that he heard a woman screaming outside his door around 1:30 a.m., and that he saw Sanchez lead the woman away from his house. Gonyo said he later saw Sanchez's car cruise down the driveway, lights off, and turn toward Wisconsin.

Scientific evidence--hair samples, fibers, etc.- -that added weight to the State's case against Sanchez was also introduced during the trial. Actually, more evidence of Sanchez's guilt was admitted, but what we have already noted is sufficient to demonstrate that the State had a reasonably strong case and that the verdict was supported by substantial evidence if that evidence was believed by the jury. And by its verdict, the jury showed that it believed the State's case.

The case was set to move to its sentencing stage the day after the jury returned its guilty verdicts. But things slowed down the next morning when the judge was told by jailers that Sanchez had tried to commit suicide. Sanchez, it seems, broke the lenses of his eyeglasses and used the broken pieces of glass to cut his arm. Sanchez was taken to a hospital and released in short order after treatment for his injuries. Sanchez was then returned to court where he met with his attorneys. Defense counsel reported that Sanchez was distraught and that he wanted his mitigation witnesses sent home. Counsel also related that Sanchez said he attempted to take his own life because he thought society was going to do it. Defense counsel requested that the jury be discharged and the sentencing hearing postponed until Sanchez had "gotten a hold of himself" and was able to cooperate more fully with counsel. Asked by the judge whether Sanchez was able to communicate with his attorneys, counsel replied that he seemed different from when he had spoken to him the preceding night. As evidence of the defendant's inability to "cooperate," counsel said that Sanchez had ordered the attorney to do the opposite of what counsel had intended to do. Following this colloquy, the trial judge concluded that there was no bona fide doubt as to Sanchez's fitness to proceed on to the sentencing phase of the trial. The judge denied the defense postponement motion, and the penalty hearing got under way. Sanchez waived a jury determination on his eligibility for the death penalty and the judge found him eligible. The jury then reconvened for the second stage of the penalty phase. The government's aggravation evidence related primarily to the unsolved 1975 murder of a woman named Sharon Egerer, which two witnesses (one a participant in the crime) pinned on Sanchez. Sanchez took the stand at the sentencing hearing and denied responsibility for either Michelle Thompson's death or the murder of Ms. Egerer. Sanchez testified about his abusive relationship with his father; he testified that, despite being functionally illiterate, he held the same job for 15 years and saved enough money to buy a house; he testified that he helped his family even while in prison. Unmoved, apparently, by these pleas, the jury sentenced Sanchez to death.

Sanchez filed a number of direct and collateral attacks and, ultimately, the Illinois Supreme Court rendered three opinions, the first in 1986 and the last one 10 years later. People v. Sanchez, 115 Ill. 2d 238, 503 N.E.2d 277 (1986), cert. denied, 483 U.S. 1010 (1987); People v. Sanchez, 131 Ill. 2d 417, 546 N.E.2d 574 (1989); and People v. Sanchez, 169 Ill. 2d 472, 662 N.E.2d 1199, cert. denied, 519 U.S. 967 (1996). In federal court, Sanchez filed a premature petition for a writ of habeas corpus in 1990, but that was dismissed without prejudice for failure to exhaust state remedies. In 1997, Sanchez filed the present petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the denial of which by the district court is before us on this appeal.

Sanchez's appeal raises issues regarding his sentencing proceeding but he tosses in an undeveloped claim that the Illinois Death Penalty Act is unconstitutional. On this point, in less than one page, Sanchez contends that the Illinois statute is infirm because, in his words, it "places a burden on a defendant to prove that the death penalty should not be imposed." This argument fails under Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990), where the United States Supreme Court held that so long as a state's method of allocating burdens of proof does not lessen the state's burden to prove every element of the offense charged, or in a case like this to prove the existence of aggravating circumstances, a defendant's constitutional rights are not violated by placing on him the burden of proving mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency.

One other matter can be quickly addressed before moving to the guts of this appeal. Sanchez maintains that his petition is not governed by the 1996 amendments to 28 U.S.C. sec. 2254, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), because he filed his first petition for relief in 1990. But we deal here with his second petition filed in 1997, and that is the year which controls whether AEDPA applies. It applies; he cannot move the date to pre-AEDPA times by relying on his old unexhausted petition.

Under AEDPA federal courts give deference to state court merit adjudications. To procure habeas relief under AEDPA a petitioner is required to show that state court determinations under review are either "contrary to" or employ an "unreasonable application of" federal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court. sec. 2254(d)(1). A petitioner can also attack a state court's adjudication on the grounds that it is based "on an unreasonable determination of the facts," but such attacks are accompanied by a rigorous burden of proof: state court factual findings are presumed to be correct unless the petitioner rebuts the presumption with "clear and convincing" evidence. sec. 2254(e)(1). Although state court legal conclusions, as well as mixed questions of law and fact, are reviewed de novo, that standard is also tempered by AEDPA's deferential constraints: the "criterion for assessing the reasonableness of a state court's application of Supreme Court case law, pursuant to sec. 2254(d)(1), is whether the determination is at least minimally consistent with the facts and circumstances of the case." Sweeney v. Parke, 113 F.3d 716, 718 (7th Cir. 1997). The upshot of all of...