Stadler v. Curtin
| Decision Date | 22 January 2010 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 06-14286. |
| Citation | 682 F.Supp.2d 807 |
| Parties | David STADLER, Petitioner, v. Cindi S. CURTIN, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan |
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James S. Lawrence, Royal Oak, MI, for Petitioner.
Michigan prisoner David Stadler has filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his conviction for first-degree criminal sexual conduct and his prison sentence of twenty-five to forty years. The petition, filed by counsel, states ten claims. Stadler says he was deprived of due process of law as a result of the delay in bringing the charge, the denial of certain pretrial discovery motions, the destruction of exculpatory evidence, an improper pretrial photographic show-up, an improper jury instruction, the prosecutor's failure to produce witnesses, and the prosecutor's misconduct; he was denied effective assistance of competent counsel because his trial lawyer did not pursue an alibi defense and did not let him testify, and the trial court did not allow the petitioner to discharge the lawyer immediately before trial; and his sentence is improper because it is excessive under the Eighth Amendment and based on judge-found facts that were not determined by a jury in violation of the Sixth Amendment. The respondent filed an answer to the petition asserting that an adequate and independent state procedural ruling bars review of some of the claims by this Court, and the state courts' disposition of the rest of them did not result in an objectively unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court law. The Court finds that three of the petitioner's claims are barred by the doctrine of procedural default, and the balance do not warrant habeas relief on the merits. Therefore, the Court will deny the petition.
The victim of the sexual assault, identified here as N.C., says that the petitioner raped her at her home on June 14, 1997. N.C. reported the incident to police the next day, but then she refused to cooperate in the prosecution until she was contacted three years later by a detective who was reviewing old open files. She appar- ently agreed to testify, and a charge was filed against the petitioner in the spring of 2001. The petitioner was brought to trial eventually on November 8, 2002 after several pretrial motions were litigated.
N.C. testified at a preliminary examination and at trial that she first came into contact with the petitioner when he called her home, allegedly dialing a wrong number. N.C. nonetheless continued the conversation, and they talked on the phone six to eight times again. N.C. met the petitioner in person thereafter and saw him twice prior to the incident. They first met at a bar, where the N.C. had gone with friends and clients (N.C. said she was a nail technician) named Tracy and Kelly and Brian Bankey. The meeting was not pre-arranged; instead, N.C. said that the petitioner just showed up at the bar that night and approached her, even though she had not told him what she looked like. According to N.C, the petitioner walked over to her and asked her "if I was Trial Tr. vol. III at 56. She said they talked for about ten minutes. She did not introduce the petitioner to her friends. N.C. said she did not go out with these friends on a regular basis and could not remember their full names.
N.C. testified that the next time she saw the petitioner was when she was outside her home playing with her four-year-old son. She said that the petitioner walked up to her and told her he was visiting a friend, who lived across the street. N.C. said she then told her son to go inside, and she and the petitioner talked for about ten to twenty minutes. N.C. testified that she had not told the petitioner where she lived.
The rape occurred two to three weeks after the initial phone call. Although N.C. described some of the details of the interaction leading up to the assault inconsistently at the preliminary examination and at trial, she said that on June 14, 1997, the petitioner came to N.C.'s house near 10:00 p.m.; they planned to go out that evening. The two were on the couch either before or after N.C. was getting ready in the bathroom. At some point, the petitioner tried to kiss N.C, and she told him no. Then the petitioner made his advance, either as they were sitting on the couch or as he was standing in the door of the bathroom while N.C. was in the midst of getting ready for the evening. N.C.'s two versions of the events converged when she described the rape itself. She testified that the petitioner pushed her onto the couch and, in a struggle that ensued, ripped her sweatshirt. N.C. claims that the defendant proceeded to take her pants and underwear off, ignoring her pleas to stop. In the process, she ended up with a black eye and a bite mark on her right breast. She said that the petitioner then forced his penis into her vagina. N.C. testified that once the petitioner ejaculated, she immediately ran into the bathroom and cleaned herself. She said that when she came out of the bathroom, the petitioner was still sitting on her couch and, when asked to leave, inquired whether they were still going to a movie. She said no, and the petitioner left. As the petitioner was leaving, he said, "[G]ood luck with Matt." Trial Tr. vol. III at 90. N.C. testified that she told the petitioner that she had just split up with her son's father, but she did not recall ever mentioning that his name was Matt.
After the petitioner left, N.C. said that she took a shower and douched three or four times, cleaned off the couch with Ly-sol, locked all the doors, and, after taking three sleeping pills, went to sleep. She said that she did not call the police or her neighbors because she was embarrassed over what had happened, and that she let the petitioner into her house.
The next evening, N.C. saw her friend Jean and told her what had happened. At Jean's urging, the two went to the Sterling Heights, Michigan police station together that night. N.C. talked to two or three police officers and filled out a statement, but did not tell the police everything because she did not want to pursue prosecution. The police investigator took photographs of her black eye and the bite mark on her breast. She explained that she did not lie to the police, but she did not tell them all of the details of the assault. She claims that she told the police the first and last name of her assailant, a point that was hotly contested at trial and contradicted by testimony from police witnesses, who said N.C. only revealed a first name.
According to N.C, a police officer contacted her shortly afterward, and she told him that she had been raped. She acknowledged that she made several appointments to view a photo lineup but never kept those appointments. She said she just wanted to forget the incident and move on with her life. She said that she also wrote a letter to Matt (the father of her son) telling him what had happened but never told anyone else other than Matt and Jean.
According to testimony from a pretrial hearing challenging the photographic show-up, this case came to the attention of Sterling Heights police detective Thomas McMullen, who was investigating other cases involving the petitioner and reports of stalking and random phone calls to women. McMullen said he called N.C. and asked her if she would now be interested in going forward with a prosecution. She agreed. On March 9, 2001, McMullen went to N.C.'s apartment along with a female detective and showed N.C. a prearranged photo array. He said that N.C. identified the petitioner, whose photograph was number five in the array, within "three seconds or less." Evid. Hr'g Tr., Oct. 18, 2002, at 13. A formal prosecution followed.
The petitioner filed several pretrial motions in the state trial court. In October 2001, the petitioner moved for discovery of the names of the people at the bar the night N.C said she first met the petitioner. He also said he wished to take a polygraph test to exonerate himself, although he changed his mind about that later and ultimately expressed satisfaction with the discovery information provided. In August 2002, the petitioner filed motions to dismiss for failure of the prosecution to provide discovery, for assistance in locating witnesses, and to dismiss for pretrial delay. The court denied the motions to dismiss. As for the delay in bringing the charges, the court found that the cause was attributed solely to N.C.'s reluctance to pursue prosecution, and the state played no role and did not delay to obtain a tactical advantage. In September 2002, the petitioner moved the trial court to exclude similar act evidence, and the motion was granted. In October 2002, the trial court held a hearing on the petitioner's motion challenging the pretrial identification and found that the procedure used by Detective McMullen was not unduly suggestive.
In the meantime, the State offered several plea agreements to the petitioner, including an agreement to dismiss the original charge if the petitioner would plead guilty to (1) fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, a two-year misdemeanor; or (2) third-degree criminal sexual conduct, capped at Macomb County jail time; or (3) assault with intent to do great bodily harm. On May 3, 2002, the petitioner pleaded no contest to the offense of assault with intent to do great bodily harm. However, at his sentence hearing on June 11, 2002, the petitioner moved to withdraw his plea, and on June 25, 2002 the trial court granted his request. At that time, the petitioner had retained new counsel.
Trial began on October 30, 2002. During her testimony, N.C. acknowledged that she had destroyed potential evidence when she cleaned...
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