Williams v. L. Ryan

• Decision Date: 26 October 2010
• Docket Number: No. 07-99013.,07-99013.
• Parties: Aryon WILLIAMS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Charles L. RYAN, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

623 F.3d 1258

Aryon WILLIAMS, Petitioner-Appellant,

v.Charles L. RYAN, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 07-99013.

United States Court of Appeals,Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Nov. 5, 2009.

Filed Oct. 26, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED.

Julie Hall, Oracle, AZ, for petitioner-appellant, Aryon Williams.

Jeffrey A. Zick, Phoenix, AZ, for respondent-appellee, Charles L. Ryan.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Paul G. Rosenblatt, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-97-01239-PGR.

Before: MARY M. SCHROEDER, MARSHA S. BERZON and SANDRA S. IKUTA, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge SCHROEDER; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge IKUTA.

OPINION

SCHROEDER, Circuit Judge:

Aryon Williams was convicted in Arizona state court in 1992 and sentenced to death for the first degree murder of his former girlfriend Rita DeLao, and for the later robbery and attempted murder of Norma Soto. The Arizona appellate courts upheld his convictions and sentence. See State v. Williams, 183 Ariz. 368, 904 P.2d 437 (1995). In this habeas proceeding, the most significant issues concern a claim of concealment of partially exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), and the failure of the state court to consider mitigating evidence at sentencing in violation of Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978) and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 102 S.Ct. 869, 71 L.Ed.2d 1 (1982).

The evidence at trial included the testimony of Michelle Deloney, Williams' then girlfriend, that Williams had confessed to her he murdered DeLao. The murder occurred in a relatively remote area of Pinal County, Arizona and there were no eyewitnesses and little physical evidence. On the robbery/attempted murder charge, the victim, Norma Soto, testified at trial and identified Williams as her attacker.

Two years after the convictions were affirmed on appeal, an Assistant Attorney General for Arizona turned over to Williams' attorney a packet of jailhouse letters written before trial that suggested that Williams was not the actual murderer. These letters suggested that Williams had paid another man, Patrick Fields, to do the job. The jailhouse letters led Williams to two witnesses who said they had seen Fields disposing bloody clothing in a park a morning around the time of the murder. Fields turned out to have a history of assaulting women.

By the time Williams became aware of this evidence, these federal habeas proceedings had been instituted. The district court stayed the proceedings so that Williams could, in state court, exhaust a Brady claim arising from the jailhouse letters. The state court, however, refused to grant a request for a first extension of time to prepare a postconviction petition. Williams was, therefore, unable to exhaust state remedies. When he returned to federal court, the district court rejected the State's position that the Brady claim was procedurally barred, but denied the claim on the merits. Like the district court we consider this claim without regard to the deferential strictures of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”). We agree with the district court that it is not appropriate to view the claim as procedurally barred because Williams did not have an opportunity to raise it in state court. The district court granted a certificate of appealability (“COA”) and we have determined that this claim warrants an evidentiary hearing.

The district court also granted a COA for the claim that the trial court violated Williams' due process rights by failing to provide funds for a mental health expert at sentencing to establish drug dependence as a mitigating factor. Like the district court, we agree that the state court's rejection of this claim was not contrary to or an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent.

Of the numerous claims that had not been certified, but that have been briefed pursuant to our rules, we find one to be meritorious. Williams offered his addiction to crack cocaine as a mitigating factor at sentencing. The Arizona Supreme Court refused to consider this as a mitigating factor under applicable Arizona law because Williams did not show he was under the influence of drugs at the time of the murder. Because Williams' challenge to this determination raises a substantial constitutional issue, 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2), we certify the issue and decide it. As we have done in other cases emanating from Arizona courts in the same period, we find that the state court erred by its refusal to consider all mitigating evidence. See Eddings, 455 U.S. at 114-15, 102 S.Ct. 869; Lockett, 438 U.S. at 604-05, 98 S.Ct. 2954; Lambright v. Schriro, 490 F.3d 1103, 1114-15 (9th Cir.2007).

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The underlying facts of this case are set out in detail in the Arizona Supreme Court's opinion on direct appeal. State v. Williams, 183 Ariz. 368, 904 P.2d 437 (1995). We summarize them here.

On Saturday, January 27, 1990, Williams and DeLao made plans to spend the night together at Williams' apartment in Casa Grande. When DeLao called, though, Williams told her not to come over since his girlfriend Deloney was still at his apartment. DeLao came over nonetheless and had an argument with Williams outside the building. DeLao pulled a gun on Williams, but Williams was able to disarm her. Williams briefly returned to his apartment, then left it, and did not return until the following morning.

On Sunday morning, a hunter discovered DeLao's body on a dirt road about twenty minutes from Williams' apartment. DeLao had been shot three times and her body had suffered a number of gruesome injuries. She had been beaten, and tire tracks across her stomach indicated that she had been run over by an automobile. Bullets recovered at the scene were consistent with the gun Williams had taken from DeLao shortly before her death.

Deloney testified that Williams confessed to her on Monday that he was with several friends who killed DeLao. According to Deloney, Williams said he had only kicked DeLao, and that his friends had killed her. Williams denied ever confessing involvement in DeLao's death. Also on Monday, Williams drove Deloney to the place where DeLao's car had been abandoned, less than a mile from his apartment in Casa Grande. As Williams approached the car, a police officer processing the car stopped them, and Williams told the officer he thought it was DeLao's car.

Deloney testified that, two weeks after the murder, Williams told her that he had killed DeLao, admitting that he shot her, hit her with an iron, and ran over her repeatedly with his car. Williams told Deloney that if she ever told anyone, he would kill her.

Five weeks after the murder, Norma Soto, a Circle-K convenience store clerk, was shot several times during a robbery of the store. Soto survived and identified Williams as her attacker, testifying that he shot her after telling her to stop spreading the story that he had killed DeLao. Police soon arrested Williams for both the murder of DeLao and the robbery/attempted murder of Soto.

An Arizona jury, in a consolidated trial, convicted Williams in 1992 of the murder of DeLao, armed robbery, and the attempted murder of Soto. At trial, Deloney was the State's principal witness on the murder charge. She testified about Williams' confessions. The State also presented evidence that, prior to the murder, Williams had burned DeLao's car, shot at her apartment, and slashed her tires. Soto testified and identified Williams as the man who robbed the store and shot her. Williams testified in his own defense and denied any involvement in either criminal episode. Williams did not have a criminal record, although the State introduced evidence that he had abused crack cocaine and become physically abusive to Deloney. On the stand, Williams denied using drugs on the day of the murder.

At sentencing, Williams sought to have the state provide a mental health expert to explore whether his drug usage had affected his mental state when he killed DeLao. The trial court denied this motion, and the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the decision without discussion. See 904 P.2d at 450 (“Defendant also asserts ... that the trial court's denial of funds for an expert violated his right to due process and equal protection under the law. Under the facts of this case, we reject these claims as well.”).

Williams also offered his addiction to crack as a mitigating circumstance at sentencing. The trial court refused to consider Williams' drug use in mitigation. The Arizona Supreme Court agreed, holding that “[w]ithout a showing of some impairment at the time of the offense, drug use cannot be a mitigating circumstance of any kind.” Id. at 453.

After filing two unsuccessful state postconviction petitions in which he raised the sentencing claims of erroneous denial of a mental health expert and the refusal to consider his addiction as a mitigating factor, Williams instituted federal habeas proceedings. In 1997, while his federal petition was pending, an Assistant Attorney General for Arizona turned over to defense counsel a series of letters, and stated they were discovered “by a secretary during an annual house cleaning at the [Pinal] County Attorney's Office.” The State said the letters had “no evidentiary value.”

The letters purported to have been written from jail in 1991, prior to Williams' trial, by a woman named Beverly Sweat, to Detective Tom Solis, the lead investigator in the DeLao murder. In the letters, Sweat expressed the desire to provide information she had about a murder, in return for an early release from jail. Solis has denied ever having seen these letters, but has not testified or given a statement under oath to this effect.

The letters contained information Sweat allegedly obtained from a fellow inmate, Yolanda McKaney, that Williams had paid Patrick...