Taylor v. Maggio, s. 84-3108
| Decision Date | 27 February 1984 |
| Docket Number | 84-3141,Nos. 84-3108,s. 84-3108 |
| Citation | 727 F.2d 341 |
| Parties | Johnny TAYLOR, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. Ross MAGGIO, Jr., Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, Louisiana, and Harry Lee, Sheriff, Respondents-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
James O. Manning, Metairie, La., for amicus curiae James O. Manning.
Frank Sloan, Jefferson, La., for petitioner-appellant in both cases.
William C. Credo, III, Asst. Dist. Atty., Gretna, La., for respondents-appellees in both cases.
On Application for Certificate of Probable Cause and for Stay of Execution Pending Appeal.
Before RUBIN, JOLLY and DAVIS, Circuit Judges.
David Vogler left his home in Kenner, Louisiana around 8:45 p.m., on February 8, 1980. He told his wife that a black man had called him and requested to see a 1976 Buick the Voglers had displayed for sale in a nearby parking lot. The next morning Mr. Vogler was found, stabbed some twenty times, stuffed in the trunk of his car, where he had been left by his murderer to bleed to death. His car, a 1979 Cadillac, was parked in the lot where the Buick had been. The Buick was missing. 1
On June 14, 1980, Johnny Taylor, Jr. was stopped for a traffic violation in Millry, Alabama while driving the Buick. While a check of the Buick's registration was being conducted by the Millry police, Taylor fled. His companions, Linda Pugh and Samuel Young, were arrested when the registration check revealed that the Buick had been stolen and its owner murdered.
The next day, detectives Fayard and Congemi of the Kenner police department drove to Millry, Alabama. They interviewed Young and Pugh. They ascertained that the Buick was in fact the one stolen from the Voglers. In the trunk of the Buick they found receipts for body work done at a local garage. The garage owner gave them a copy of a repair estimate he had given Taylor on February 9, 1980, for body work and a paint job.
Taylor was soon arrested, on June 17, 1980, for an unrelated auto theft in Butler, Alabama. Detectives Fayard and Congemi questioned Taylor there on June 18, 1980. Taylor signed a written statement indicating he had not come into possession of the Buick until March 1980. When the detectives confronted Taylor with their knowledge that he had taken the car to a garage on February 9, 1980, Taylor stated that he had purchased the Buick on that date from Allen Thomas, a white male known to him, and a black man. At trial, Taylor testified that he identified the black man in his oral statement as "Charlie Robertson's brother-in-law." Fayard and Congemi did not recall hearing a name other than Thomas. The detectives did not reduce the second statement to writing because they were convinced that Taylor was lying.
Taylor's fingerprints and palmprints, as well as hair samples, were taken in Alabama and later sent by the Kenner police to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for comparison with latent prints lifted from the Cadillac in which Vogler's body was found. The FBI reported that Taylor's left palmprint matched a partial print found on the trunk lid of the Cadillac. Taylor's hair was also found to be similar to and indistinguishable from hairs found in the visor of the Cadillac. Taylor was indicted on June 28, 1980, and later extradited to Louisiana.
Taylor was tried for first degree murder in March 1981. He was represented by two experienced attorneys, James Manning and Maurice Bell. Bell, from Alabama, previously had represented Taylor and was retained. Manning was court-appointed. The state relied on Taylor's possession of the Buick almost immediately after its theft and Vogler's murder, Taylor's unsatisfactory explanations of how he came into possession of the Buick, and two pieces of evidence connecting Taylor to the crime scene: the partial palmprint and the hairs. Taylor testified that he had not even been in the state of Louisiana since 1978, and that his palmprint and hairs could not possibly have been lifted from the victim's Cadillac. Taylor's alibi witnesses, however, were not persuasive, and the jury found him guilty of first degree murder.
During the sentencing phase of Taylor's bifurcated trial, the state relied on evidence previously adduced to show the presence of two "aggravating factors" under the Louisiana death penalty statute. 2 Taylor was engaged in armed robbery when he murdered Vogler, and the murder was committed "in an especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel manner". 3 Taylor's attorney presented no new evidence at the sentencing stage. He began to argue that the unreliability of the evidence against Taylor was a factor which the jury should consider in deciding whether to recommend the death penalty. The trial judge forbade this line of argument because it went to the issue of guilt rather than to the appropriateness of capital punishment. Taylor's attorney made no other argument on Taylor's behalf. The jury recommended that Taylor be sentenced to die, and the trial judge later entered the death sentence.
Taylor appealed his conviction and sentence to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which affirmed them both. 422 So.2d 109. On direct appeal, he raised several claims not relevant here. He did, however, argue claims relating to the fingerprint evidence gathered at the crime scene. Taylor's defense at the trial was that his latent palmprint was somehow collected after his arrest in June 1980 (perhaps from the Buick) and placed in the files of the Jefferson Parish Crime Lab. On direct appeal, Taylor's attorney charged that the state had violated Taylor's due process rights 4 by discarding some fingerprints collected from the crime scene and misplacing others. The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected these arguments, discussing their merits at length. 422 So.2d at 113-115.
After his conviction was affirmed on direct appeal, Taylor sought a writ of mandamus in Louisiana state court for the purpose of obtaining the police records of the investigation of Vogler's murder, which were made available to him on April 27, 1983. These records included the one additional piece of evidence on which Manning based his collateral attacks on Taylor's conviction. That piece of evidence is a fingerprint log book maintained by the Jefferson Parish Crime Lab division. The entries relating to the prints lifted from Vogler's Cadillac are " 1/2 palm" in the "Good and filed" column and in the "No good" column, the numerals 4 and 1. It is Manning's contention that the entry of five "no good" prints, compared with the fact that five fingerprint lifts were taken from the Cadillac, proves that as of February 10, 1980, the state had no usable fingerprints from the crime scene. Manning argues, without evidentiary support, that the " 1/2 palm" entry must have been added after Taylor's arrest.
Using as exhibits the copies of the fingerprint log book entries obtained through his mandamus action, Taylor filed a petition for post-conviction relief in state court on May 22, 1983. He argued that his due process rights were violated by the use of manufactured evidence against him at trial and by the failure of the state to produce the fingerprint log book when he requested any exculpatory material in its possession. The claims were rejected, without a hearing, by the state district court on January 11, 1984, and by the Louisiana Supreme Court on February 3, 1984. On January 17, 1984, the state trial judge ordered Taylor to be put to death on February 29, 1984, between midnight and 3:00 a.m.
Taylor filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and an application for a stay of execution with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The district court considered and rejected without a hearing the two claims Taylor had presented in his state court petitions for post-conviction relief. The district judge, finding the manufactured-evidence claim "palpably incredible" and rejecting the Brady claim on the ground that the fingerprint log book was not exculpatory material, denied the petition for habeas corpus and the application for a stay of execution. He also refused to issue a certificate of probable cause, a prerequisite for appeal. 5 The district court's seventeen-page memorandum opinion was filed on February 15, 1984, 581 F.Supp. 359.
On that same date, Taylor retained a new attorney, Frank Sloan, and discharged Manning, who had represented him at trial, on direct appeal, and throughout his post-conviction proceedings. Sloan reviewed the trial record and, on February 20, 1984, filed with this court an application for a stay of execution and for a certificate of probable cause. Sloan's application requested an order staying Taylor's execution pending appeal from the district court's order of February 15. In addition, Sloan requested that this court consider two additional claims, which had not been presented previously to any court, under Fifth Circuit Local Rule 8.1.3. 6 The new claims were that Taylor had been deprived of effective assistance of counsel during both the guilt and sentencing phases of his trial. Because a member of this panel expressed concern that Sloan had not demonstrated cause for failing to present the new claims to either state courts or the federal district court, and because Sloan indicated to the Clerk of this Court that he would make an effort to exhaust state post-conviction remedies and to file a federal habeas petition with the district court, we have not previously acted on Taylor's application for a stay and for a certificate of probable cause.
Taylor immediately presented these new claims to the Louisiana Courts, and on February 24 the Louisiana Supreme Court denied his motions for relief, including the request for stay of execution. A second habeas petition was filed the next day, Saturday, February 25, with the federal district court.
Earlier today, after hearing arguments from counsel, the federal district court...
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