State v. Allen

Citation861 S.E.2d 273,378 N.C. 286
Decision Date13 August 2021
Docket NumberNo. 115A04-3,115A04-3
CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of North Carolina
Parties STATE of North Carlolina v. Scott David ALLEN

Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Nicholaos Vlahos, Assistant Attorney General, for the State-appellee.

Olivia Warren and Michael L. Unti, Raleigh, for defendant-appellant.

EARLS, Justice.

¶ 1 This case involves numerous post-conviction claims raised by defendant Scott David Allen, who was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Christopher Gailey and sentenced to death in Montgomery County in 2003. Allen challenged his conviction and sentence on direct appeal, but this Court unanimously found no error. State v. Allen , 360 N.C. 297, 321, 626 S.E.2d 271 (2006). The Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari. Allen v. North Carolina , 549 U.S. 867, 127 S.Ct. 164, 166 L.Ed.2d 116 (2006). Subsequently, Allen filed a motion for appropriate relief (MAR) in Superior Court, Montgomery County (MAR court), in July 2007. Six years later, and before the MAR court ruled on his MAR, Allen filed a supplemental motion for appropriate relief (SMAR) amending some of his previous claims and adding two additional claims. The MAR court's dismissal of these claims forms the basis of defendant's petition to this Court.

¶ 2 Of the twelve total claims raised in Allen's MAR and SMAR, five of them directly relate to his allegation that his trial attorneys rendered unconstitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) during the guilt-innocence phase of his trial by failing to investigate, develop, and utilize various sources of exculpatory evidence. The evidence Allen presented in support of these claims includes affidavits from acquaintances of Allen and the State's primary witness, Vanessa Smith, implicating Smith in Gailey's murder, as well as a report from a crime scene expert concluding that in light of the physical evidence discovered at the scene of Gailey's death, Smith's account of Gailey's killing was "unfathomable." Notwithstanding this evidence and the centrality of Smith's testimony to Allen's conviction, the MAR court dismissed Allen's guilt-innocence phase IAC claims without conducting an evidentiary hearing to resolve disputed issues of fact.

¶ 3 Based on well-established precedent, we conclude that Allen is entitled to an evidentiary hearing on his guilt-innocence phase IAC claims. Allen has "present[ed] assertions of fact which will entitle [him] to ... relief ... if resolved in his favor." State v. McHone , 348 N.C. 254, 258, 499 S.E.2d 761 (1998). Therefore, under the statutory framework governing post-conviction review of criminal convictions in North Carolina, the MAR court was obligated to conduct an evidentiary hearing prior to ruling on his MAR and SMAR claims, because "some of his asserted grounds for relief required the [MAR] court to resolve questions of fact." Id. (interpreting N.C.G.S. § 15A-1420(c)(1) ). Accordingly, we vacate the portions of the MAR court's order summarily dismissing Allen's guilt-innocence phase IAC claims and remand to the MAR court to conduct a full evidentiary hearing.

¶ 4 In addition, we hold that the trial court erred in summarily ruling that Allen's claim alleging he was impermissibly shackled in view of the jury was procedurally barred. On this claim, we vacate the relevant portion of the MAR court's order and remand for an evidentiary hearing to obtain the facts necessary to determine whether his claim is procedurally barred and, if not, whether it has merit. We affirm the MAR court's disposition of all other claims raised in Allen's MAR and SMAR.

I. Factual Background
A. Gailey's death and Allen's trial.

¶ 5 In 1998, Allen escaped from a North Carolina Department of Corrections work release program. Shortly after fleeing, he reunited with Smith, with whom he had maintained an on-again, off-again romantic relationship. The couple drifted from hotel to hotel, living off settlement proceeds Smith received after her father's death. Allen and Smith regularly purchased and used large quantities of illegal drugs together. To evade detection, Allen obtained a friend's birth certificate and driver's license issued by the State of Washington. While travelling through Colorado, Allen became romantically involved with another woman, and Allen and Smith split up. The former couple returned to North Carolina separately in the spring of 1999. That summer, they began living together in a mobile home owned by a friend, Robert Johnson, near the Uwharrie National Forest. Various friends and acquaintances lived in the mobile home while Smith and Allen resided in it, including Gailey, Allen's friend and sometimes drug dealer.

¶ 6 Sometime during the afternoon of 9 July 1999, Allen, Smith, and Gailey entered the Uwharrie National Forest. At some point that evening, somebody shot and killed Gailey. His body was later found by a passerby driving an all-terrain vehicle. Smith eventually told law enforcement Allen killed Gailey to steal his money and drugs. Both Allen and Smith were charged with murder.

¶ 7 Approximately two weeks before Allen was brought to trial, Smith—who by that time had spent approximately twenty-three months in jail—entered into an agreement with the State. In exchange for her testimony against Allen, the State would drop the murder charges against her, and she would plead guilty to a lesser offense. At trial, Smith testified that Allen was the sole person responsible for Gailey's death and that Allen acted in cold blood. According to Smith, Allen assassinated Gailey by shooting him from behind, unprovoked, as they walked along a path in the woods.

¶ 8 Because Allen did not testify, Smith provided the sole narrative of the events directly precipitating Gailey's death. As we explained in our decision resolving Allen's direct appeal, Smith was "a witness with less-than-perfect credibility." Allen , 360 N.C. at 306, 626 S.E.2d 271. She was a chronic heavy drug user who admitted to smoking marijuana shortly before Gailey's death. She was involved in a tumultuous romantic relationship with Allen which he had recently broken off. She accused Allen of Gailey's murder only after confronting him in Denver, Colorado, where Allen had reunited with a different ex-girlfriend. She testified at the trial pursuant to a deal with the State which significantly reduced her potential criminal liability.

¶ 9 According to Smith's account of events, on 9 July 1999, Allen told her and Gailey he had stashed weapons in a cabin in the Uwharrie National Forest, which he thought they could recover and trade for money and cocaine. The trio left together in Gailey's truck to retrieve the weapons sometime in the afternoon, while it was still light out. The party began walking along a path through the forest. Gailey was carrying a duffel bag and a .45-caliber handgun. Allen carried a sawed-off shotgun. During the walk, Gailey and Allen used powder cocaine. Smith smoked marijuana. Smith testified that after at least an hour of walking, the path narrowed, and the three proceeded single file with Gailey leading the way, followed by Allen and then Smith.

¶ 10 At some point, Allen allegedly turned around, shoved Smith to the ground, and then without provocation began shooting at Gailey with the shotgun. Smith did not see Allen shoot Gailey, but she recounted hearing multiple gunshots. Smith and Allen then waited for "seven or eight hours" in a nearby cabin for Gailey to die. While they were waiting, Allen would periodically crawl towards Gailey's body and throw rocks at him to ascertain whether Gailey was still alive. When Allen and Smith finally left the cabin, they heard Gailey empty his .45-caliber handgun.

¶ 11 Allen and Smith left the forest together in Gailey's truck. Smith retrieved Gailey's wallet and their belongings from the mobile home. The two then drove to Shallotte and then to Albemarle in search of cocaine. However, by this point, Smith's memory had begun to deteriorate due to her drug use.

¶ 12 According to multiple witnesses, Smith and Allen ended up at a party at the home of one of Smith's friends, where they encountered a man named Jeffrey Lynn Page, who would later testify at Allen's trial. According to Page, who had never previously met Allen, Allen admitted that he had just shot a man in the Uwharrie National Forest and was looking to offload the dead man's truck. Allen told Page he had thrown rocks at Gailey's body to confirm he was dead because Allen knew Gailey was armed. Page bought Allen's truck at well below market value and then flipped it to a South Carolina junk dealer for a profit. Like Smith, Page was also charged in connection with Gailey's death—he was indicted for being an accessory after the fact to Gailey's murder—and testified at Allen's trial pursuant to an agreement with the State.

¶ 13 Sometime after selling Gailey's truck, Allen returned to Denver. Smith testified that one of her former romantic partners, who she reunited with shortly after Gailey's death, loaned her money and a car to travel to Denver1 where she was able to track down Allen. Allen and Smith fought. Smith returned to North Carolina. Upon her return, Smith went to law enforcement to accuse Allen of murdering Gailey.

¶ 14 Law enforcement officers who examined the crime scene discovered the following evidence:

• A .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun between Gailey's feet, loaded with a magazine containing five live rounds, and one spent .45-caliber shell casing jammed in the receiver;
• A number of live rounds of .45-caliber ammunition next to Gailey;
• A magazine containing live rounds several feet from Gailey's head;
• A black t-shirt draped over a rock with another smaller rock on top of it, approximately four feet from Gailey's body;
• A nylon handgun holster;
• Five expended shotgun shells;
• A hunting knife located on top of a duffel bag;
• A yellow container with $1,944.00 in cash on Gailey's body.

According to the State's forensic pathologist, Gailey died from two...

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