State v. Hannah, A-74-19
| Decision Date | 18 August 2021 |
| Docket Number | A-74-19,A-75-19 |
| Parties | State of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent/Cross-Appellant, v. Wilbert Hannah, a/k/a Rabe, Defendant-Appellant/Cross-Respondent. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
Argued January 4, 2021
Reargued March 31, 2021
On certification to the Superior Court, Appellate Division.
Andrew R. Burroughs, Designated Counsel, argued the cause for appellant/cross-respondent (Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney; Andrew R. Burroughs, on the briefs).
Ednin D. Martinez, Assistant Prosecutor, argued the cause for respondent/cross-appellant (Esther Suarez, Hudson County Prosecutor, attorney; Ednin D. Martinez, on the briefs).
Daniel A. Finkelstein, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for amicus curiae Attorney General of New Jersey (Gurbir S Grewal, Attorney General, attorney; Daniel A. Finkelstein, of counsel and on the brief).
ALBIN J., writing for the Court.
The Court considers whether Wilbert Hannah was denied a fair trial because critical evidence was withheld from the jury that supported his third-party-guilt defense. Hannah has presented two alternative grounds for post-conviction relief to the Court --either the evidence in question was newly discovered and would have altered the outcome of his trial or his counsel had the critical evidence in his file and was derelict in not using it, rendering him constitutionally ineffective.
In August 1993, Hannah and co-defendant William LaCue were indicted for murder and other offenses. The State presented testimony that shortly after midnight on June 7, 1993, Jersey City police officers responded to a report of gunshots and found the lifeless bodies of Angel Salazar and Luis Flores in a parked car. In the driver's seat lay Salazar with a gunshot wound to his left temple. Directly behind him in the back seat lay Flores with three gunshot wounds to the right side of his face and a fourth to his right shoulder.
The central pillar of the State's case was the testimony of LaCue. As part of a cooperation agreement with the State LaCue gave three recorded statements to the police. In the first two, he told the police that he alone killed Salazar and Flores. In his third statement and again later in his trial testimony, LaCue stated that Hannah, who was also known by the name of Rabb, shot Salazar from the front passenger seat. The State also introduced testimony from Rosa Flores, Salazar's wife and Flores's sister, and Hazel Forrester, who had been in a relationship with Hannah. Rosa Flores testified that a person who identified himself as Rabb spoke to Salazar on the phone at around 11 p.m. on June 6, and that Salazar and Flores left after the call. Hazel Forrester testified that Hannah appeared at around 11:30 p.m. at the apartment where she lived with her sister, Arlene, that she overheard him telling her sister that he had killed a person named Fred (Salazar's nickname), that Hannah told her that he had killed someone, that Fred had previously called the apartment several times, asking for Rabb, and that the phone number on a bloody piece of paper recovered from Salazar's pocket after the shooting was her sister's. No DNA or fingerprint evidence linked Hannah to the victims' car.
Hannah testified that he, LaCue, and Maurice Thomas were heroin dealers, operating independently, in the same area of Jersey City. Among their drug sources were two New York suppliers, Salazar and Flores. Hannah testified that, on the evening of June 6, 1993, LaCue and Thomas were talking to the New York suppliers near their car while Hannah walked away to chat with a woman across the street. He heard gunshots and began to run. According to Hannah, Thomas and LaCue were the gunmen, and Thomas framed Hannah.
Certain evidence was never presented at trial. First, a six-page report prepared by Lieutenant Charles Redd of the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office provided a narrative of the homicide investigation and Thomas's importance to that investigation. The Redd Report revealed that investigators found in the victims' car a pager number listed to "Rabb." When that number was called, however, it was Thomas who responded to the page. As a result, Thomas was interviewed. Before his arrival at the Prosecutor's Office, Thomas made an anonymous telephone call to Jersey City Police Communications and claimed that Rabb and LaCue were responsible for the killings. During the interview, he told investigators that "he did not know the victims" or LaCue and that he was with his girlfriend, Arlene Forrester, and her sister, Hazel Forrester, at the time of the shootings. Thomas eventually conceded that he was not truthful when he denied knowing LaCue, and some of his statements about Hazel and Arlene were inconsistent. After Thomas left the interview, the police received another anonymous telephone call, stating that Hannah had confessed to killing the victims, not only to Thomas but also to the caller and Hazel Forrester. Afterwards, Hazel and Arlene were interviewed by the police, and Arlene admitted that she was the anonymous caller.
Because the defense did not call Lieutenant Redd as a witness, the jury never learned that Salazar and Flores had Thomas's pager number in their possession when they were murdered, nor did they hear that LaCue had left a message on Thomas's pager, asking to speak with him, the day after the murders.
The jury also did not hear the testimony of Thomas's mother, Mary Jones, who had information that not only inferentially implicated her son in the murders, but also provided a motive for her son to frame Hannah. Jones acknowledged that her son and Hannah were drug dealers who sometimes worked together, and she testified to a number of comments Thomas made to her that suggested he had participated in the killings and planned to frame Hannah for them. The court rejected defense counsel's argument that the testimony of Mary Jones was admissible under the co-conspirator's exception to the hearsay rule. Defense counsel did not argue that Thomas's admissions to his mother constituted statements against interest under N.J.R.E. 803(c)(25), nor did the court address that alternate ground for the admissibility of Jones's testimony. In her summation remarks, the prosecutor told the jury, "[T]here is not a stitch, a scintilla, a scintilla, a bit, an ounce, a piece of evidence, that links [Thomas] to that murder."
The Appellate Division affirmed, determining that Thomas's statements to Jones were not admissible as statements against interest. The Court denied certification.
In his first petition for PCR, Hannah asserted ineffective assistance of counsel by his trial and appellate attorneys, claiming, among their deficiencies, their failure to adequately present the case for the admission of the testimony of Thomas's mother. The PCR court denied the petition without an evidentiary hearing; after the Appellate Division remanded for a hearing, the PCR court again denied relief. The Appellate Division affirmed; the Court denied certification, and the federal district court denied Hannah's habeas corpus petition.
Hannah's copy of the case file, including trial discovery and transcripts, was lost during a lockdown at Trenton State Prison, and Hannah received a replacement copy. Hannah averred that, for the first time, he observed the Redd Report, which disclosed that Thomas responded to a pager number found in the victims' car.
In his second PCR petition, Hannah moved for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. In January 2008, the PCR court denied Hannah's petition without an evidentiary hearing. In February 2008, Hannah's former PCR counsel certified that, to his recollection, the Redd Report did not appear in the file provided to him by the Public Defender's Office. In February 2009, the Appellate Division reversed the second PCR court and remanded for an evidentiary hearing.
Before the evidentiary hearing, Hannah filed a motion to recuse the PCR judge because he had served as the Hudson County Prosecutor when that office opposed Hannah's PCR application. The PCR judge declined to disqualify himself and denied Hannah post-conviction relief. The Appellate Division held that the PCR judge should have recused himself and remanded for a new hearing before a different judge.
At the new evidentiary hearing in 2014, the new PCR judge denied Hannah relief, making factual findings that (1) "it is probable that [Hannah's] counsel was in possession of the [Redd] report" and that (2) "it [is] highly unlikely that the report was suppressed at trial," as well as legal findings the evidence would not have changed the outcome at trial. The Appellate Division affirmed, but nevertheless remanded for a hearing to "address whether the pager was newly discovered evidence." The Court denied certification.
In August 2018, a fourth evidentiary hearing was conducted. The court found that Hannah had not satisfied the three prongs of the standard for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. The Appellate Division affirmed on the ground that Thomas's statements were not admissible as statements against interest. In so holding, the appellate court seemingly accepted that Hannah did not have the Redd Report, despite the findings of the third PCR court, which were affirmed on appeal. The Court granted certification. 242 N.J. 502 (2020).
HELD: Based on the record, Hannah has established that his counsel rendered constitutionally deficient representation and that, but for counsels' errors, there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different. The Court reverses the judgment of the Appellate Division denying Hannah post-conviction relief, vacates his judgment of conviction, and remands for a new trial.
1. Hannah's argument that the...
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