Williams v. Armontrout
| Decision Date | 07 August 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 88-1027,88-1027 |
| Citation | 877 F.2d 1376 |
| Parties | Doyle J. WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. Bill ARMONTROUT, Warden, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Charles W. German, Kansas City, Mo., for appellant.
Stephen D. Hawke, Jefferson City, Mo., for appellee.
Before ARNOLD, Circuit Judge, BRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge, and John R. Gibson, Circuit Judge.
Doyle Williams appeals the dismissal of his petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254. In these proceedings, he challenges his Missouri conviction for capital murder, resulting in a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole for fifty years. Williams raises several issues in his appeal, including the admissibility of eyewitness identification testimony, the effectiveness of his trial counsel and allegations of misconduct by the State. We affirm.
On October 11, 1980, police recovered the body of Dr. A.H. Domann, who was last seen alive on October 6, 1980, from a clay pit north of Auxvasse, Missouri. Police found three .45 caliber bullets in Domann's body. In March of 1981, the State charged Williams with Domann's murder. A jury trial began the following October.
John Morgan testified that on October 7, 1980, Williams took him to the clay pit north of Auxvasse and told Morgan that he, Williams, had murdered Domann the day before. Morgan testified that Williams described the murder and following events in great detail. Morgan also testified that he and Williams had discussed killing Domann on several occasions in order to prevent Domann from testifying on a forgery charge against Williams.
Barbara Rea testified that Williams attended a party at her trailer home late in the day on October 5, 1980, at which Williams and other party guests fired weapons at a trash dump outside the trailer. Several party guests testified at trial. This testimony revealed that Williams brought to the party a briefcase containing several guns. At least one of those guns was a .45 caliber automatic pistol which party guest Randy Clardy fired, as did Doyle Williams. Betty Coleman, Williams' girlfriend, also possessed a .45 caliber automatic weapon which she fired at the party. Later, law enforcement officers recovered ten .45 caliber bullets and eight .45 caliber cartridge casings near the trash dump. Expert testimony at trial established that five of the expended bullets found at the dump were from the same gun that killed Domann. Further expert testimony excluded Betty Coleman's .45 caliber weapon as the gun used to kill the doctor. Police never recovered the murder weapon.
Jessie Purvis, a neighbor of Dr. Domann, testified that at approximately 5:45 a.m. on October 6, 1980, she saw Williams' white car in front of her house, just catercorner from Domann's house, on three separate occasions. Later that day, police officer Oscar Ross drove Purvis through Auxvasse, at which time she identified Doyle Williams' car as the car she had seen that morning. Purvis testified that she did not see a license plate on the front of the car. Officer Ross testified that Williams' car had only a rear license plate, none on the front.
Dedra Herdeg testified that on October 5, 1980, between 10:00 and 10:30 in the morning, while she worked as a clerk at a gas station convenience store, a man asked her for directions to Domann's house. At trial, Herdeg identified Williams as the person who sought directions from her. Williams claims that the admission of Herdeg's testimony violated due process because it was tainted by suggestive pretrial photo lineups and a suggestive hypnosis session.
Following trial, the jury convicted Williams of Domann's murder and sentenced him to life in prison without possibility of parole for fifty years. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, State v. Williams, 662 S.W.2d 277 (Mo.Ct.App.1983), and subsequently denied him post-conviction relief, Williams v. State, 730 S.W.2d 284 (Mo.Ct.App.1987).
Williams then filed this petition for writ of habeas corpus, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2254, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The district court denied the petition. This appeal followed.
A. Dedra Herdeg's In-Court Identification
Williams argues that Dedra Herdeg's in-court identification of him as the man who asked her for directions to Domann's house should be rejected as so unreliable as to violate his constitutional right to due process.
The State claims that Williams is procedurally barred from challenging Herdeg's in-court identification because Williams failed to contemporaneously object to the identification. However, on Williams' direct appeal from his conviction, the Missouri Court of Appeals exercised its discretionary power to determine whether plain error occurred and found that neither the hypnosis nor the lineup affected Herdeg's identification. State v. Williams, 662 S.W.2d at 281. Thus, the state court adequately undertook discretionary review of these claims and no procedural defect exists to bar federal review. See Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 135 n. 44, 102 S.Ct. 1558, 1575 n. 44, 71 L.Ed.2d 783 (1982).
Williams calls Herdeg's in-court identification so unreliable as to violate due process. Police first interviewed Herdeg on October 13, 1980, after learning that she had given someone directions to Domann's house on October 5, the day before the murder. At that time, police showed her seven photographs, five of men and two of women. Herdeg identified Williams as the man who asked directions to Domann's home. Only Williams' photograph, however, showed a man with glasses and a beard. Police displayed this same photospread to Herdeg on two separate occasions.
Sometime later, ostensibly in an attempt to help Herdeg remember and describe the automobile of the man who asked for directions, Herdeg permitted a police officer to hypnotize her. At the hypnosis session, a police officer showed her a photograph of Williams. Police displayed no other photographs to Herdeg, nor kept any sort of recording of the hypnosis session. The trial court granted Williams' motion to suppress the photographic lineup, but denied the motion to suppress any identification at trial.
Williams charges that the lineups and the hypnosis session violated his constitutional rights because those procedures served to impermissibly suggest Williams as the person having the conversation in question with Herdeg and led to her later in-court identification of Williams.
The first step in analyzing a due process challenge to an in-court identification is to determine whether the challenged confrontation between the witness and the suspect was impermissibly suggestive. Graham v. Solem, 728 F.2d 1533, 1541 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 842, 105 S.Ct. 148, 83 L.Ed.2d 86 (1984). The State admitted at trial the impermissibly suggestive nature of the photospreads shown to Herdeg. Nevertheless, the suggestiveness of a photospread alone does not require exclusion of the subsequent in-court identification. Id.; Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 198-99, 93 S.Ct. 375, 381-82, 34 L.Ed.2d 401 (1972).
The second step calls upon a court to determine whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the identification might stand as reliable even though the initial out-of-court identification procedure contained suggestive elements. Graham, 728 F.2d at 1541; Neil, 409 U.S. at 199, 93 S.Ct. at 382. In Neil v. Biggers, the Supreme Court set forth five factors to consider in evaluating the likelihood of misidentification: (1) the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime, (2) the witness' degree of attention, (3) the accuracy of the witness' prior description of the criminal, (4) the level of certainty demonstrated by the witness at the initial identification, and (5) the length of time between the crime and the initial identification. Id. at 199-200, 93 S.Ct. at 382.
Herdeg viewed the person who asked her for directions. It was approximately 10 a.m. and she was speaking to him, attempting to give directions. Ample opportunity existed for viewing the person. The circumstances disclose a likely degree of attention. Only she served as the attendant at a gas station convenience store. Herdeg testified that Williams asked for directions to the Domann house on October 5. She first picked Williams' picture out of the photo display on October 13. A delay of merely eight days between the time Herdeg saw the man who asked for directions and Herdeg's first identification of him does not significantly undermine the reliability of the identification.
These factors positively supporting proper identification, however, are outweighed on evaluation of the remaining factors, i.e the accuracy of Herdeg's prior description of the man who asked for directions and the level of certainty she demonstrated at the time of the initial identification. The record does not show that Herdeg gave any description of the person prior to being shown the photographs. At the hypnosis session, however, she described the man as not wearing glasses. Williams wears glasses. The record is unclear as to the degree of certainty Herdeg evinced when she picked Williams' picture out of the photo display. However, even if we assume that she was fairly certain, the only photograph in the lineup of a man with a beard was the photo of Williams, thus diminishing the value of any certainty Herdeg may have evinced. Furthermore, Williams attended a deposition taken of Herdeg. Defense counsel questioned Herdeg as follows:
Q. You are aware that Mr. Williams is sitting right here beside me, are you not, or are you?
A. No.
Q. Does that man look like the man in the picture?
Even when seated face-to-face...
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