State ex rel. Woodworth v. Denney

Citation396 S.W.3d 330
Decision Date29 January 2013
Docket NumberNo. SC 91021.,SC 91021.
PartiesSTATE ex rel. Mark WOODWORTH, Petitioner, v. Larry DENNEY, Warden, Respondent.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of Missouri

396 S.W.3d 330

STATE ex rel. Mark WOODWORTH, Petitioner,
v.
Larry DENNEY, Warden, Respondent.

No. SC 91021.

Supreme Court of Missouri,
En Banc.

Jan. 8, 2013.
Rehearing Denied Jan. 29, 2013.

Opinion Modified on Court's Own Motion Jan. 29, 2013.


[396 S.W.3d 332]


Woodworth was represented by Robert B. Ramsey of the Law Offices of Michael R. Bilbrey PC in Glen Carbon, Ill.

The state was represented by Theodore A. Bruce and Stephen D. Hawke of the attorney general's office in Jefferson City.


LAURA DENVIR STITH, Judge.

Mark Woodworth was convicted of murder, assault, burglary and armed criminal action for the killing of Catherine Robertson and the serious assault of her husband, Lyndel Robertson. Mark 1 has now filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, petitioning this Court to vacate his convictions and grant him a new trial because newly discovered

[396 S.W.3d 333]

evidence shows that the State violated Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), by withholding material, favorable evidence and further shows that that the lack of disclosure of this Brady material was prejudicial and resulted in a verdict not worthy of confidence.

This Court appointed a special master under Rule 68.03 to take evidence and issue findings of fact and conclusions of law as to the allegations Mark made. After hearing numerous days of testimony, the master issued a report in which he found that the State had violated Brady in at least two important and material respects and that the State's failure to produce this Brady material, particularly when considered in light of other newly discovered exculpatory evidence, was prejudicial because it bolstered a key defense theory that another person had committed the crime and that the prosecution had focused improperly on Mark to the exclusion of pursuing the person Mark contends is the real perpetrator.

The judge had the opportunity to view and determine the credibility of witnesses and this Court affords his findings and conclusions the weight and deference given to the findings and conclusions entered by trial courts in court-tried cases. Here, substantial evidence supports the master's findings that Brady was violated and that the violations were prejudicial. Accordingly, this Court orders that Mark's convictions be vacated and orders him discharged from the custody of the department of corrections unless the State elects to retry him.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The following facts were adduced either at the first and second trials of Mark Woodworth or at the special master's hearings.

On the evening of November 13, 1990, Lyndel and Catherine Robertson were shot while sleeping in their rural Livingston County home. Mrs. Robertson was shot twice and died before paramedics arrived at the scene. Mr. Robertson survived three shots to the face and one to the shoulder. Investigators found no signs of forced entry, and there was no immediate indication at the scene as to who might have been the shooter.2 The police did not find a murder weapon.

Claude Woodworm and his family lived across the street from the Robertsons. Claude and Mr. Robertson were farming partners and shared equipment space in a machine shed on the Robertson property. The Woodworms had a son, Mark, then 16 years old, a quiet boy who struggled in school, was considered “slow,” and who lived at home with his parents and six younger siblings.

Investigators discovered a fingerprint on a partially full box of .22–caliber long rifle bullets allegedly located by Deputy David Miller on top of a workbench in the shed shared by the Woodworms and the Robertsons, but the print did not match any known prints on file at the time.3 Ballistics tests revealed that the bullet fragments

[396 S.W.3d 334]

recovered from Mr. and Mrs. Robertson had the same type of brass wash coating as the .22–caliber Remington bullets found in the machine shed. Investigators also learned that Claude Woodworm owned a .22–caliber Ruger pistol that he kept in his bedroom and that Mr. Robertson kept an identical Ruger pistol in his pickup truck. The investigators sent the two pistols and the bullet fragments to the Missouri State Highway Patrol crime laboratory for testing. The bullets were so damaged and distorted that it was impossible to conclude whether either gun fired the rounds.

The investigation then lay fairly dormant until July 1992, more than 18 months after the murder. At the master's hearing, evidence was presented showing that, as the months passed by without any arrests, Mr. Robertson became frustrated by the lack of progress in the investigation and hired a private investigator to conduct a separate examination of the case. This investigator, Terry Diester, had a prior relationship with the chief deputy in charge of the Robertson investigation. Mr. Diester, though not a member of law enforcement, was provided unfettered access to the sheriff's files regarding the Robertson case.

In private conversations with the chief deputy, Mr. Diester suggested that Claude Woodworth's son Mark should be a prime suspect in the case due to his familiarity with and proximity to the Robertson home and machine shed. Shortly thereafter, the sheriff's office brought Mark in for questioning. Mark denied any involvement in the shooting and agreed to provide his fingerprints. A thumbprint lifted from the .22–caliber shell-casing box on the workbench in the shed shared by the Robertsons and the Woodworths was found to match Mark's thumbprint.

At that point, investigators obtained a search warrant to reexamine Claude's pistol and, shortly thereafter, obtained a bullet fragment that just had been removed from Mr. Robertson's liver. Ballistics experts tested this fragment, as well as the fragments recovered from Mr. and Mrs. Robertson shortly after the shooting, and compared the fragments to the bullets found in the shed and to bullets test-fired from Claude's pistol. The experts found some similarities between the bullets test-fired from that pistol and the bullet fragments but concluded the evidence was insufficient to allow them to determine to a reasonable degree of certainty that the shooter used Claude's pistol to commit the crimes. Their tests did show, however, that his pistol was not excluded as the murder weapon, that three of the bullet fragments recovered from the Robertsons had individual characteristics that matched individual characteristics of bullets test-fired from Claude's pistol, and that one cartridge from the box of bullets the deputy said he found on the workbench had a mark consistent with a manufacturing defect that matched a similar manufacturing mark on the bullet fragment recovered from Mr. Robertson's liver.

Following the thumbprint match and the return of the ballistics tests that could not exclude the Woodworth gun as the murder weapon, Mr. Robertson began to lobby the Livingston County prosecutor to charge Mark with the Robertson crimes. He also presented the prosecutor with written reports that detailed the evidence Mr. Diester had compiled against Mark. When the prosecutor did not act on the evidence within the next two months, Mr. Robertson asked the circuit judge, Kenneth Lewis, to present the evidence against Mark to a grand jury. Judge Lewis did just that, stating later that Mr. Robertson's requests were what motivated him to convene a grand jury one month after Mr. Robertson's

[396 S.W.3d 335]

request and to appoint the attorney general's office to represent the State in the matter rather than the regular prosecutor, who withdrew when he learned that the judge and Mr. Robertson were insisting he proceed against Mark.

On October 29, 1993, nearly three years after the shooting, Mark was charged by indictment with second-degree murder of Catherine Robertson, first-degree burglary and first-degree assault of Lyndel Robertson, and two counts of armed criminal action. Although Mark was only 16 years old at the time of the shooting, the juvenile division certified Mark for trial as an adult based on the violent nature of the crimes and the fact that Mark was by that time 19 years old.

At trial, the evidence against Mark was entirely circumstantial. In addition to the matching thumbprint on the box of bullets and the bullet fragment evidence, investigators said Mark gave them conflicting information about how many times he had been in the shed, how often he shot his father's pistol and his feelings towards Mr. Robertson. Mark testified in his defense. He denied any involvement in the shooting and explained that his print may well have been on the ammunition box found in the shed shared by his family and the Robertsons because he and other farm employees used to target shoot using bullets from .22–caliber ammunition boxes in Mr. Robertson's truck. He also attempted to introduce evidence showing that another young man, Brandon Thomure, had motive and opportunity to commit the crime.

Mr. Thomure was the former boyfriend of the Robertsons' daughter, Rochelle. 4 The day after the shooting, police examined Mr. Thomure and found evidence of gunpowder residue on his hands. The police received reports that Mr. Thomure had abused Rochelle physically, that he impregnated Rochelle, that Rochelle terminated the pregnancy and that, not long before the shooting, Mr. and Mrs. Robertson offered to buy Rochelle a new car if she would break up with him. There was also evidence that while in the hospital Mr. Robertson told numerous people that it was “Brandon” who shot him or that he thought that it was “Brandon” who shot him. This made Mr. Thomure an early focus of investigation, but he claimed as an alibi that he was not in the area at the time of the shooting, and the police eventually stopped actively pursuing him as a suspect.

The trial court almost entirely excluded the evidence about Mr. Thomure and Rochelle and her family on the grounds that Mark could not show any direct evidence linking this young man with the crime. The...

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    ...case by a reviewing court" due to "the master's unique ability to view and judge the credibility of witnesses." State ex rel. Woodworth v. Denney, 396 S.W.3d 330, 336–37 (Mo. banc 2013) (internal quotations omitted). In light of this deference, "[t]his Court should exercise the power to set......
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