United States ex rel. Logan v. Chandler
| Decision Date | 21 November 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 12 C 6170,12 C 6170 |
| Parties | United States of America ex rel. Leonard Logan, Petitioner, v. Nedra Chandler, Warden, Dixon Correctional Center, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Ordered accordingly. Tara Elizabeth Thompson, Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner.
Matthew Philip Becker, Office of the Attorney General, State of Illinois, Chicago, IL, for Respondents.
On November 17, 2000, an Illinois jury convicted Leonard Logan of the first-degree murder of Timothy Jones. The trial judge sentenced Logan to a prison term of forty-five years.
Logan has petitioned this Court for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He argues, in nine separate claims, that he received ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel; he was denied his right to due process; and insufficient evidence existed to support his conviction. For the following reasons, the Court denies all of Logan's claims except claim 2, one of his claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, and orders an evidentiary hearing on that claim.
The prosecutor then elicited testimony from Payton regarding her interaction with the police on March 19. She said the police first asked her about the two men they had seen in the hallway outside her door, and she admitted that she initially falsely denied knowing them. She also said she initially lied to the police in saying that the SUV had not left her home on the night of March 18. The police then took her to the police station and interviewed her again, on the night of March 19. Payton denied telling the police that Rodman had borrowed the SUV on the night of March 18 and brought it back within twenty minutes.
Payton admitted that she was then asked to take a polygraph examination and that after the examination, she was brought back to the police station in the early morning hours of March 20. She testified that after the polygraph results were given to her, she told the police that “Dino” (evidently a nickname for Logan) and another man had been in her apartment when the police came. Payton stated that the police told her that if she didn't identify the person for whom she had rented the car, she would be charged with murder. Payton said that she told the police that she had loaned the car to Rodman on March 19. She said that she was questioned constantly throughout the night and was not able to get any sleep. She ultimately told the police, due to being threatened with a murder charge, that she had rented the vehicle for “Dash,” who she said was Logan. At some point, Payton said, the police brought her a photograph of Logan, and she identified him as the person who had the car between 11:00 p.m. on March 18 and 2:00 a.m. the next morning. She said, however, that the police were not satisfied with her story because she had said she wasn't on the scene of the shooting, so they continued to badger her and interrogate her.
Payton admitted that she agreed to take a second polygraph test on the afternoon of March 20. She denied that her story changed after she was confronted with the test results. She denied telling the police that she was with Dino (Logan) and Rodman when they drove the vehicle to 75th and Yates, instead saying that the police told her that was what had happened. Payton also said that the police told her that Logan had made a comment about a “pussy motherfucker,” walked up to people at a pay phone at a gas station, and started shooting. Payton further stated that the police had given her other details of the crime.
Payton also claimed that when interviewed by a female detective named Van Witzenburg and an assistant state's attorney, people in the room (she was not sure who) told her what her story should be. Payton identified her signature and initials on a written statement, and she admitted that the statement contained a different story from what she had testified. Payton said that the prosecutor had gone through the statement with her and elicited its contents, including identifying Logan as “Dino.” Payton acknowledged that her signed statement reported that on March 18, Logan drove with her and Rodman to 75th and Yates, said, “There goes that pussy motherfucker,” got out of the car and shot with a handgun at a man talking on a pay phone. Her statement further reported that they then drove away in the vehicle, Logan noticed someone was following them, and he stopped the vehicle hoping to lose the car that was following. Her statement also reported that Logan then went to a building at the Stateway Gardens housing project and returned to the vehicle without the gun. Payton said, however, that these statements had come from the detectives and that they were untrue.
Payton admitted that on March 21, after the statement was completed, she was taken before a grand jury to testify under oath. She identified a transcript of her grand jury testimony, and it was read into the record. Before the grand jury, Payton had testified that on March 15, 1997, she rented a Nissan Pathfinder from Budget Rent–A–Car so that she could bring home an entertainment center she had purchased. On March 16, she met with a man named PeeWee at the Stateway Gardens Chicago Housing Authority complex. When there, she also saw Logan, whose nickname was Dino. On March 17, Logan made arrangements with her over the phone to borrow the car she had rented. Logan picked up the car and returned it approximately ninety minutes later. On March 18, 1997, Logan called Payton at work because he wanted to borrow the car again. Payton agreed, and Logan picked her up from work at 5:15 or 5:30 p.m. They ran some errands and then went to Stateway Gardens, where they met with Rodman. A few hours later, Logan drove the three of them down 75th Street. As they approached the intersection of 75th Street and Yates Boulevard, Logan noticed the victim. Logan then pulled the car into the gas station and got out of the car. Payton heard a gunshot approximately three minutes later, and she looked and saw a young man near the pay phones fall to the ground. Payton saw Logan firing the gun. Logan then got back in the car, put the gun on the seat between his legs, and drove away. As they drove away, Logan noticed a car following them, so he pulled into an alley. After five minutes, Logan drove to Stateway Gardens, where he went into a building. He returned approximately ten minutes later without the gun.
The transcript of Payton's grand jury testimony further reflected that she told the grand jury that on March 19, 1997, she saw Logan when he again borrowed the car. She stated that he was supposed to pick her up at work, but instead he called and asked whether Budget Rent–A–Car had called her about the car. Payton told him that the car was not due back until March 20. Later that night, Logan and another man came to Payton's apartment to set up her entertainment center. As they ate pizza, the police arrived, and Logan and his friend left Payton's apartment through the backdoor.
At Logan's trial, Payton testified that her signed statement and grand jury testimony had been fabricated and coerced by police detectives, who threatened to charge her with murder if she did not implicate Logan. On cross examination, she testified that she had been interviewed repeatedly by several detectives, through the night on March 18–19, with no sleep and nothing to eat. She said that she was constantly interrogated over a thirty-six hour period. She said that some of the statements in the signed statement and grand jury testimony were true, but others were untrue. She stated that in fact she was not in the vehicle at 75th and Yates on March 18 and did not know how Jones had been shot. Defense counsel also elicited that Payton was being held in custody on contempt charges and was facing a possible perjury charge but was willing to risk that to tell the truth.
c. Detective Alejandro Almazon; polygraph evidence
After testimony by a forensic pathologist regarding the cause of Timothy Jones' death, Chicago police detective Alejandro Almazon testified that he and detectives William Higgins and Edward O'Boyle went to the apartment of Latonya Payton at approximately 6:30 p.m. on March 19, 1997. The detectives first asked Payton about two African–American men they had seen in the hallway as they had approached her apartment. Payton denied knowing the men. The detectives then asked Payton about the SUV. Payton told them that she had rented it and that it had been parked in front of her building from the evening of March 18 through the time of the interview. When the detectives told Payton that the vehicle was involved in a shooting, she again told them that it had been parked in front of her building and that she had no knowledge of what they were talking about.
The detectives then asked Payton about beer bottles and two large pizzas that they observed in her apartment. At this point, Payton admitted that the two men whom the police had seen walking down the hallway were friends of hers and had been in her apartment. Payton told the detectives that another friend of hers borrowed the vehicle she rented on March 18, but this person was not either of the two men who had just left her apartment. Payton did not identify either of those two men by name. The detectives told Payton that the shooting was a homicide, and she agreed to go to the police station to speak with them about the shooting. The detectives also brought the SUV to the police station for evidence processing.
Almazon testified that at the police station, the detectives asked Payton about the events of March 18. Payton stated that at approximately 11:00 p.m. that night, her friend Rodman came over to her apartment with a man named either Keith or Kevin. Payton said that the men came over to assemble an entertainment center, but they did not put...
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