United States v. Lee

• Decision Date: 08 January 2014
• Docket Number: No. 11–1380.,11–1380.
• Citation: 715 F.3d 215
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee v. Daniel Lewis LEE, also known as Danny Lee, also known as D L Graham, also known as Daniel Lewis Graham, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

715 F.3d 215

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee

v.Daniel Lewis LEE, also known as Danny Lee, also known as D L Graham, also known as Daniel Lewis Graham, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 11–1380.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: March 13, 2013.

Filed: April 29, 2013.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Jan. 8, 2014.^*

Laurence E. Komp, argued, Manchester, MO, Julie Brain, FPD, Karl Schwartz, AFPD, Wilmington, DE, David A. Ruhnke, Montclair, NJ, on the brief, for Appellant.

John Michael Pellettieri, argued, Washington, DC, for Appellee.

Before MURPHY, SMITH, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.

MURPHY, Circuit Judge.

Daniel Lewis Lee and codefendant Chevie Kehoe were convicted of conspiring to violate and violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1962(c)-(d), and of three murders in aid of racketeering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1959. The government sought the death penalty for both Lee and Kehoe, but only Lee received a death sentence. Kehoe was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of release. After Lee's conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal, United States v. Lee, 374 F.3d 637 (8th Cir.2004), cert. denied,545 U.S. 1141, 125 S.Ct. 2962, 162 L.Ed.2d 892 (2005), Lee brought this action seeking habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Lee claims in part that he received ineffective assistance of counsel during voir dire and that his sentence violated the United States Constitution. The district court ¹ denied his petition, but granted him a certificate of appealability on “whether the death penalty is being unconstitutionally applied” in this case. We then expanded Lee's certificate to include the question of whether he received ineffective assistance based on counsel's use of peremptory strikes during voir dire. We now affirm.

I.

The facts of the offenses for which Lee was convicted in this case are reported in our affirming opinion. See Lee, 374 F.3d at 641–43. Lee was a member of the Aryan Peoples' Republic or the Aryan Peoples' Resistance, a white supremacist organization formed by codefendant Kehoe. Its goal was to establish an independent nation of white members of the Christian Identity faith in the Pacific Northwest. With robbery in mind, Lee and Kehoe traveled to the Arkansas home of gun dealer William Mueller in January 1996. They waited there until Mueller returned home with his wife and her eight year old daughter. Kehoe and Lee then incapacitated the couple and asked the child where they could find cash, guns, and ammunition. After that Kehoe and Lee killed Mueller and his wife, and Kehoe killed the young girl.

Kehoe and Lee were indicted on several charges including racketeering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c), conspiracy to commit racketeering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d), and three counts of murder in aid of racketeering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1959(a)(1). The government noticed its intent to seek the death penalty against both defendants. 18 U.S.C. § 3593(a). Lee and Kehoe were tried together.

Jury selection took place over five days in March 1999, and defense counsel for Kehoe and Lee were given thirty peremptorystrikes. A consultant assisted the defense with “jury composition, selection and statistical breakdown.” The record does not reflect whether the jury consultant assisted counsel for both Lee and Kehoe. It also does not conclusively show the extent to which counsel for the two defendants worked together to create a jury selection strategy. The district court explained to the jurors during voir dire that the defendants were alleged to “hold white supremacist, white separatists and race-based opinions and attitudes.” It advised the venire members to “please raise [their] hand” if they had “such strong feelings against [a] person who possesses such race-based beliefs or opinions that you could not give that person a fair trial based upon the law and the evidence in the case.” One venire member was dismissed by the district court after he explained that “the racial undertones of the case would bias [him] toward the state and [he] would not be able to give [the defendants] a fair evaluation.”

Kehoe and Lee jointly exercised all of their thirty peremptory strikes against Caucasian venire members, and the government exercised two of its twenty peremptory strikes against African American venire members. The equal protection clause forbids a prosecutor from exercising peremptory challenges based on race because that harms the rights of defendants, the rights of excluded jurors, and the integrity of the criminal justice system. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 89, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). That prohibition has been extended to race based challenges made by defense counsel because the exercise of a racially motivated peremptory challenge in a criminal case by any party is state action which violates the United States Constitution. Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 54–55, 112 S.Ct. 2348, 120 L.Ed.2d 33 (1992).

Defense counsel in this case explained that while “the government struck two African Americans” and the “defense struck none,” it was choosing not to challenge the constitutionality of the peremptory strikes under Batson. The district court observed that there was “not any under-representation” because nine of the twelve seated jurors were African American, as were three of the six alternates. The district court nevertheless asked the government to provide a rationale for its two strikes of African American venire members. The government explained that one had given “relatively nonresponsive” answers at times and the other had “expressed deep religious convictions.” The district court accepted those explanations. The government then noted that Kehoe and Lee had only stricken Caucasian venire members and that under McCollum and Batson “the right being safeguarded ... is equal protection under the laws.” The district court stated that it could “get into a whole thing of having [the defendants] justify every white strike,” but since “[n]o one has made a Batson challenge,” it was “not going to do it.” The court concluded that the trial “will just go forward.”

An attorney who represented Kehoe has since signed an affidavit explaining that the Caucasian venire members were stricken from the jury as a strategic choice. He explained that

[s]electing a jury with as many black jurors as possible was a strategic decision made by defense counsel ... because (1) blacks are more likely than whites to discredit government testimony, (2) research of attitudes indicates that blacks are generally less likely to give the death penalty, and (3) it was felt that blacks were less likely to give the death penalty than whites in this particular case.

The case proceeded to trial before the seated jurors. Kehoe's mother testified that Lee and Kehoe had confessed to the murders. She related that Kehoe had told her that Lee had participated in murdering the adults, but that Kehoe had killed the child himself because Lee refused to do it. The government also introduced physical evidence, including a hair similar to Lee's which had been found on a cap allegedly used during the murders. Photographs of racially offensive tattoos on Lee's body were also introduced by the government. At the close of trial the jury returned a guilty verdict against both defendants on all counts.

Lee and Kehoe had separate sentencing hearings before the same jury, and the government indicated its intent to seek the death penalty for both. Under the Federal Death Penalty Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 3591–93, a jury may impose the death penalty only if it determines that aggravating factors proved by the government sufficiently outweigh any mitigating facts proved by the defense. See United States v. Purkey, 428 F.3d 738, 749 (8th Cir.2005). At the hearings for both Kehoe and Lee the government argued that five aggravating factors supported a death sentence: (1) the murders had been committed for pecuniary gain, (2) more than one person had been killed during a single criminal episode, (3) substantial planning and premeditation for the murders had occurred, (4) each defendant would be a future danger, and (5) the eight year old girl had been a vulnerable victim.

Kehoe's sentencing proceeded first, and he argued that 16 mitigating circumstances weighed against death. One or more jurors found the existence of each of the 16 mitigating factors, including that Kehoe was the product of a dysfunctional family, that he was influenced by his parents to accept extremist political views, and that he could live a productive life in prison. The jury also rejected several of the aggravating factors put forward by the government, including that Kehoe would be a future danger and that he had committed the murders after substantial planning. The jury unanimously decided against a death sentence for him and in favor of life imprisonment without the possibility of release. Each juror certified that Kehoe's race and religious beliefs had not influenced his or her decision. See18 U.S.C. § 3593(f).

The United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas then informed the district court that she no longer wished to seek the death penalty for Lee, but the Department of Justice's death penalty protocol required the prosecutor to request withdrawal of a death notice from the Attorney General's Review Committee on Capital Cases. Since Attorney General Janet Reno was unavailable at that time, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder convened the other members of the review committee and determined that the death notice against Lee would not be withdrawn. Thereafter the government presented its position that death was the appropriate sentence for Lee because he would be a future danger and he had a history of committing other violent crimes. Lee cited 14 mitigating factors before the jury, including that he suffered from mental...