US ex rel. Kline v. Lane

Decision Date17 February 1989
Docket NumberNo. 87 C 1256.,87 C 1256.
Citation707 F. Supp. 368
CourtU.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
PartiesUNITED STATES of America ex rel. Phillip KLINE, Petitioner, v. Michael P. LANE, Respondent.

Marc Kadish, Chicago, Ill., for petitioner.

Joan Fickinger, Mark Rotert, Asst. Atty. Gen., Criminal Appeals Div., Neil F. Hartigan, Chicago, Ill., for respondent.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

LEINENWEBER, District Judge.

FACTS

In 1979 petitioner, Phillip Kline ("Kline"), was convicted of the murder of Bridgette Regli ("Regli") in the Circuit Court of Will County, Illinois and was sentenced to fifty to one hundred years imprisonment. Kline appealed and both the appellate court and the Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed his conviction. People v. Kline, 99 Ill.App.3d 540, 54 Ill.Dec. 697, 425 N.E.2d 562 (3rd Dist.1981), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 92 Ill.2d 490, 65 Ill.Dec. 843, 442 N.E.2d 154 (1982).

In 1984 Kline filed a petition for post-conviction relief in the Circuit Court of Will County. Following an evidentiary hearing the court granted the state's motion for a directed verdict and dismissed the petition. The appellate court affirmed the dismissal in an unreported opinion (People v. Kline, 138 Ill.App.3d 1167, 104 Ill.Dec. 379, 502 N.E.2d 876 (3rd Dist.1986)) and the Supreme Court of Illinois denied Kline's petition for leave to appeal in an unpublished order entered June 3, 1986.

In February 1987 petitioner filed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus with this court alleging: (1) he was denied his right of confrontation when the state prevented the defense from cross-examining the state's principal witness regarding her mental condition and her intent to divorce petitioner; (2) the state knowingly concealed exculpatory evidence from petitioner; (3) the state denied petitioner equal protection by charging him through an indictment instead of through an information which would have afforded him a preliminary probable cause hearing; (4) the state did not prove petitioner to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Respondent has moved for summary judgment. Because there is no genuine issue of material fact and because respondent is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, the motion for summary judgment is granted. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c).

DISCUSSION
1. Right of Confrontation Claim

The record indicates that the main evidence at trial linking petitioner to the murder of Regli was the testimony of petitioner's wife, Anna Kline ("Anna"), who testified that petitioner admitted to her that he was present when a co-defendant murdered Regli. The defense attacked Anna's testimony in both its cross-examination of her and its case-in-chief, establishing that, inter alia: Anna sold and used narcotics; she sought revenge against defendant for leaving her for another woman; she made a number of prior inconsistent statements; she engaged in adulterous relationships; and when Kline's mother refused to give Anna's share of the family-owned business to Anna she threatened that she would see Kline "rot in jail." The court would not however allow the defense to cross-examine Anna on her mental condition.

Petitioner claims that this was prejudicial error because at the post-conviction hearing Anna admitted that she had suffered a nervous breakdown in the months before trial. Thus had the court allowed petitioner to cross-examine Anna on this point, petitioner argues that the defense would have uncovered the fact of Anna's nervous breakdown to further impeach her. Instead, the defense was precluded from demonstrating Anna's lack of competency to testify.

In determining whether to grant petitioner relief the court will not invalidate petitioner's state conviction on an alleged evidentiary error unless the error so tainted the trial that it was fundamentally unfair. Cramer v. Fahner, 683 F.2d 1376, 1385 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1016, 103 S.Ct. 376, 74 L.Ed.2d 509 (1982). "Unless the claimed error amounted to a fundamental defect so great that it inherently resulted in a complete miscarriage of justice, the conviction should stand. State evidentiary rulings should rarely be the cause of habeas review." Id. (citations omitted)

Petitioner has not convinced the court that the trial court's ruling constituted so egregious an error. The modern decisional trend is to not allow cross-examination into a witness's psychiatric background where such cross-examination is sought as a means of attacking the witness's credibility. U.S. v. Lopez, 611 F.2d 44, 45 (4th Cir.1979).

"The rationale for such a restriction, as applied in the psychiatric area, is that many psychiatric problems or fixations which a witness may have had are without any relevancy to the witness' credibility, concerned as it is with whether the witness' mental impairment is related to `his capacity to observe the event at the time of its occurrence, to communicate his observations accurately and truthfully at trial, or to maintain a clear recollection in the meantime.'"

Id. Whether such cross-examination is to be permitted is an issue committed to the sound discretion of the trial court which is "entitled to weigh the potential unfairness of a free wheeling inquiry intended to stigmatize the witness against whatever materiality the evidence might have." Id. at 46. To enable the court to make this determination the party seeking to cross-examine "should make an offer of proof of the evidence it seeks to develop on the witness' mental impairment." Id.

In light of these principles, the court cannot conclude that the trial court's decision to preclude the defense from cross-examining on Anna's nervous breakdown constituted a "complete miscarriage of justice" so as to require habeas relief. See Cramer, 683 F.2d at 1385. In so ruling the court followed the modern trend and the defense provided no offer of proof to demonstrate that the court should rule otherwise. Moreover, the defense had other ample opportunities to attack Anna's credibility. The court's decision to deny the defense the opportunity to cross-examine Anna on her psychiatric problems cannot therefore be said to have denied petitioner a fundamentally fair trial.

Nor was petitioner's trial so fundamentally tainted by the trial court's decision to refuse to permit the defense to cross-examine Anna regarding the hiring of a lawyer for the purpose of divorcing petitioner. The record discloses that there was sufficient evidence adduced at trial to apprise the factfinder of Anna's plans for a divorce and property settlement. The trial court did not therefore deny petitioner his constitutional right of confrontation.

2. Concealment of Exculpatory Evidence

At trial Anna testified that petitioner confessed to her that the decedent, who was the high school photographer, had taken a picture of him transacting a drug deal with a co-defendant; that he responded by grabbing the camera away from the decedent, taking the film out and trying to destroy it; that he then threw the camera into the trunk of his car, out of which his co-defendant took a golf club and struck the decedent; that the decedent subsequently died; and that petitioner disposed of the decedent's camera. Petitioner now argues that when the state presented this "camera-motive" theory to the factfinder it at all times knew that neither the decedent's own camera nor any camera belonging to her high school was ever missing, yet it suppressed this "exculpatory" evidence from the defendant.

Petitioner's argument is based upon testimony adduced at the post-conviction hearing at which an officer testified that before trial he advised the prosecution that the decedent had not taken her camera to school on the day of her death, nor was any camera missing from her high school. As the appellate court noted, however, this information was arguably available to petitioner at trial. People v. Kline, No. 3-85-0359, slip op. at 6 (3rd Dist. Jan. 30, 1986) 138 Ill.App.3d 1167, 104 Ill.Dec. 379, 502 N.E.2d 876 (table). Petitioner's defense counsel received at trial a copy of the police report which indicated that the decedent's camera was not missing. Id. Petitioner also failed to subpoena anyone from the school to ascertain whether the school camera was missing. Id.

Thus petitioner passed up any direct review of this issue in the state court.

"Where a petitioner has, by his or her own inaction, failed to raise certain issues in state court at the appropriate time in order to preserve state judicial review of these issues, the claims are deemed to have been waived for the purposes of federal habeas relief unless the petitioner can demonstrate a `cause' for not raising the arguments earlier and `prejudice' resulting from the procedural default."

Lindsey v. Camp, 648 F.Supp. 1089, 1092 (N.D.Ill.1986) (citing Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 87, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 2506-07, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977)). Petitioner has made no effort to demonstrate any "cause and prejudice." Consequently, petitioner has waived this argument for federal habeas review.

Moreover, even if petitioner had preserved this argument he has not persuaded the court that he has stated a constitutional violation meriting habeas relief. Under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963),

"The suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violate(s) due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution."

Id. at 87, 83 S.Ct. at 1196-97 (emphasis added). Here the evidence in question was not material to petitioner's guilt or the punishment he received. Rather it was material only to his motive, an element that the state is not required to prove under Illinois law to establish guilt. People v. Reed, 23 Ill.App.3d 686, 693, 320 N.E.2d 249, 255 (1st Dist.1974). Thus the asserted suppression of evidence, even if true, did not rise to the level of a constitutional...

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  • Bowens v. Superior Court
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    • California Supreme Court
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    ...court that has considered this federal equal protection issue has come to the same conclusion. (See, e.g., United States ex rel. Kline v. Lane (N.D.Ill.1989) 707 F.Supp. 368; United States v. Simon (E.D.Pa.1981) 510 F.Supp. 232; State v. Clark (1981) 291 Or. 231, 630 P.2d 810, cert. den. 45......
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    • March 13, 2021
    ...that equal protection was denied when right to a preliminary hearing was superseded by a grand jury indictment); United States v. Lane, 707 F.Supp. 368, 373-374 (N.D. Ill. 1989) (rejecting claim that petitioner was denied equal protection in that he was charged by indictment which did not r......

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