Staten v. Davis

• Decision Date: 18 June 2020
• Docket Number: No. 17-99008,17-99008
• Parties: Deondre Arthur STATEN, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Ronald DAVIS, Warden, Warden, California State Prison at San Quentin, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

962 F.3d 487

Deondre Arthur STATEN, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.Ronald DAVIS, Warden, Warden, California State Prison at San Quentin, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 17-99008

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted January 13, 2020 Pasadena, California

Filed June 18, 2020

OPINION

GRABER, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner Deondre Staten appeals the district court's denial of habeas relief in this capital case. Petitioner was convicted in state court, after a jury trial, of murdering his parents. The jury returned verdicts of death for both murder counts. On federal habeas review, Petitioner alleges that he received ineffective assistance of trial counsel because his lawyer failed to present additional evidence of third-party culpability. His other claims allege that a contract for indigent defense services between Los Angeles County and the Pomona Contract Lawyers Association ("PCLA") violated his constitutional rights because it interfered with his ability to obtain second trial counsel. The district court denied his petition. Petitioner timely sought our review. We affirm.

BACKGROUND¹

A. The Crimes

Petitioner lived with his parents, Arthur and Faye Staten, in Los Angeles County. Petitioner's parents owned and managed a beauty supply store and salon. They had four life insurance policies worth, in total, more than $300,000. In August 1990, Arthur and Faye revised three of those policies to name Petitioner as the sole beneficiary and the fourth policy to name Petitioner and his brother as co-beneficiaries. The prosecution argued that Petitioner murdered his parents to obtain the proceeds from those policies.

The prosecution presented evidence that Petitioner and his father had a strained relationship, that they argued often, and that Arthur had evicted Petitioner from the parents’ house on prior occasions. Prosecution witnesses testified that Petitioner had boasted that he would "take his father out," that he would "take care of him," and that he would come into a large sum of money if his parents died. Two witnesses testified that Petitioner told them that they would be paid a "five-digit" sum of money if they would "bump off" two people who lived around the corner and owned a beauty supply and hair salon. A witness recalled that Petitioner, while watching a television program about the Menendez brothers,² commented that the brothers "did it wrong" and "shouldn't have gotten caught."

In September 1990, Arthur and Faye left for a vacation, leaving Arthur's truck at a relative's house and leaving Faye's car for Petitioner to drive. Arthur and Faye kept a .38 caliber revolver with a brown handle at the beauty supply shop. Petitioner's friend, John Nichols, testified that he saw Petitioner carrying that revolver about a week after Arthur and Faye left. Nichols testified that Petitioner told him on more than one occasion that he had hollow-point bullets in the revolver.

Two or three evenings before Arthur and Faye returned, Nichols and another friend were at Petitioner's house when Petitioner told them that he heard something in the backyard. Petitioner took the revolver and looked around in the backyard but said that he did not see anyone. Petitioner said that he was worried because he had received threatening phone calls from members of a local Latino gang, the East Side Dukes ("ESD"), whose territory bordered Petitioner's street. Petitioner and his family are African-American, and witnesses testified that there was animosity between the ESD and the African-American community. The following day, Petitioner showed his friends the letters "ESD" spray-painted on the backyard patio.

Arthur and Faye returned from vacation on October 11, 1990, and stayed with their relatives overnight and for most of the next day. Petitioner asked his cousin, who lived near where Arthur and Faye stayed, to call him when they left to drive home. Petitioner called his cousin repeatedly that day to find out when his parents would return home. Petitioner's friends testified that, throughout the afternoon, Petitioner was drinking malt liquor, acting fidgety, and wearing a characteristic pair of 501 Levi's blue jeans³ with the brown handle of a revolver sticking out of his waistband. Petitioner's relatives invited him to join his parents for dinner, but he declined. He told them that his mother's car was not working.

According to the timeline established by prosecution witnesses, Petitioner's parents left to drive home between 11:20 and 11:25 p.m. on October 12. Petitioner's neighbor, Bertha Sanchez, testified that she saw Arthur's truck arrive home at approximately 11:40 p.m. Sanchez and her husband testified that, sometime between 11:50 and 11:55 p.m., they heard three gunshots. Another neighbor testified that he also heard gunshots around that time. No witness testified to hearing shots fired later than that. At 12:04 a.m., Petitioner's aunt called the parents’ house; Petitioner answered. He told his aunt that his parents had not yet arrived home and that he was getting ready to leave. At 12:31 a.m., she called again and, when Petitioner answered, he told her that his parents had arrived home, but he did not offer to put them on the line as he normally did. At some point after midnight, Sanchez testified that she heard what she thought was Arthur's truck starting, driving away, and returning about 20 minutes later.

Around 1:00 a.m., Petitioner knocked on another neighbor's door and said that his parents had been killed. He was crying and seemed to be dry-heaving. The neighbor went with Petitioner to his house and found Faye's body face down near the entryway and Arthur's body in a bedroom. The words "ESD kills" were spray-painted on a mirrored wall in the living room.

When police arrived, Petitioner did not answer their questions and appeared to be in a trance-like state. The neighbor testified that Petitioner was overdoing or "faking" his state of mind, because he had been able to communicate earlier. Petitioner had a cut with dried blood on one finger and was wearing shorts. Later, at the police station, Petitioner collapsed and appeared unconscious but was revived and fully oriented by the time paramedics arrived, and he stated that he did not require medical attention.

Arthur died of a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, caused by a .38 or .357 caliber hollow-point bullet. Faye died of multiple stab wounds, seven of which could have been fatal. The police found no evidence of forced entry or robbery, and Faye's purse was left on a table in plain view with cash inside. Police found a book of historic Los Angeles Times headlines on a table in the den, open to the front page describing the Sharon Tate murders⁴ with a page of handwritten notes that appeared to be "verses to a potential song" on the facing page. Investigators found Petitioner's fingerprints on that page.

The prosecution and the defense stipulated that blood sample evidence taken throughout the house showed that some of the blood came from Arthur and that some of the blood could have come from either Petitioner or Faye. A partial handprint on the mirrored wall below "ESD kills" matched Petitioner's handprint. An expert testified for the prosecution that there was a 90-percent probability that the same person spray-painted the "ESD" on the back porch and "ESD kills" inside the house. The paint from both samples was made up of the same commercial formula, which matched a can of spray paint found in a hall closet.

On October 14, police arrested Petitioner's friend, Nichols, for a probation violation. Nichols agreed to cooperate with the police and met with Petitioner while wearing a wire. In the recording played for the jury, Petitioner claimed that he had gotten rid of the .38 revolver before his parents returned home. He asked Nichols to tell the police that Staten did not have a revolver, reassuring him that the police would not find it and that there would be no case if they stuck to their stories. In the recording, Petitioner said: "[T]hey can't do shit. All they can do is close the mother fucker. If they still can't find it, I'm still going to blame it on the Dukes."

After an initial investigation, the sheriff's department concluded that the murders were not gang-related. Detective David Watkins testified as a gang expert for the prosecution. He testified that the graffiti found on the back patio and in the house did not match the distinctive style favored by the ESD. Detective Watkins and two of the Statens’ neighbors drew examples of typical ESD lettering, and the prosecution presented exemplar photographs of ESD graffiti to the jury. Detective Watkins also testified that a gang would not place its graffiti out of public view, but would instead tag the front of the house and include the names of the targets and gang members to increase the level of intimidation.

Detective Watkins further testified that the ESD tended to kill in drive-by shootings or after calling someone outside. He had not seen the gang engage in a home-invasion murder of neighborhood residents. He also testified that the ESD generally focused on killing rival gang members and, when non-combatants were killed, it tended to be the result of collateral damage. ESD members denied involvement in the murders to an investigator. A neighbor also testified that he had asked ESD members about the murders and they denied involvement, even though they had readily admitted to a drive-by shooting at another house.

A relative of Petitioner's, with whom he stayed after his parents’ deaths, testified that she did not see him wear blue jeans until he bought a new pair about three weeks after the killings. She twice searched the Statens’ house, the beauty shop, and the salon, but she did not find any jeans in Staten's size. Detectives also searched for Petitioner's jeans and the missing .38 revolver, but found neither.

The defense theory at trial was that ESD gang members committed the murders when Petitioner left...