Williamson v. Ward, 95-7141

• Decision Date: 10 April 1997
• Docket Number: No. 95-7141,95-7141
• Citation: 110 F.3d 1508
• Parties: 97 CJ C.A.R. 516 Ronald Keith WILLIAMSON, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Ronald WARD, Warden, State Penitentiary at McAlester, Respondent-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 1508

110 F.3d 1508

97 CJ C.A.R. 516

Ronald Keith WILLIAMSON, Petitioner-Appellee, v. Ronald WARD, Warden, State Penitentiary at McAlester Respondent-Appellant.

No. 95-7141.

United States Court of Appeals,Tenth Circuit.

April 10, 1997.

William L. Humes and Robert L. Whittaker, Assistant Attorneys General, (W.A. Drew Edmondson, Attorney General of Oklahoma and Sandra D. Howard, Assistant Attorney General, with them on the briefs), Oklahoma City, OK, for Respondent-Appellant.

Janet Chesley, Assistant Federal Public Defender (Vicki Ruth Adams Werneke, Assistant Federal Public Defender, with her on the brief), Oklahoma City, OK, for Petitioner-Appellee.

Before SEYMOUR, Chief Judge, TACHA and EBEL, Circuit Judges.

SEYMOUR, Chief Judge.

Ronald Keith Williamson was convicted in Oklahoma state court of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. His conviction was affirmed on direct appeal, see Williamson v. State, 812 P.2d 384 (Williamson I ), order corrected by, 905 P.2d 1135 (Okla.Crim.App.1991), cert. denied, 503 U.S. 973, 112 S.Ct. 1592, 118 L.Ed.2d 308 (1992), and his petition for state post-conviction relief was denied, see Williamson v. State, 852 P.2d 167 (Okla.Crim.App.1993) (Williamson II ), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1115, 114 S.Ct. 2122, 128 L.Ed.2d 677 (1994). Mr. Williamson then filed a petition for habeas corpus relief in federal court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, asserting that he was convicted and sentenced in violation of the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court granted relief, ruling that both the conviction and the sentence of death were constitutionally infirm on numerous grounds. Williamson v. Reynolds, 904 F.Supp. 1529 (E.D.Okla.1995) (Williamson III ). On appeal, we agree with the district court that Mr Williamson was denied his Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel in two regards and that his conviction must therefore be reversed. However, we also agree with the State that the district court erred in several of its rulings, which we address below in part V in the event of a retrial.

I

The underlying circumstances are as follows. The murder occurred in 1982 in the small town of Ada, Oklahoma. The victim, twenty-one year old Debra Sue Carter, was found dead in her apartment. The door had been broken open and the crime scene showed signs of a struggle. The police found a washcloth forced into Ms. Carter's mouth and a ligature around her neck. The police concluded that Ms. Carter had been sexually assaulted, and suffocated. The police recovered latent fingerprints, hair, and body fluids from the scene, and found a bloody fingerprint on the wall of the bedroom in which the body was located. The only latent prints identified were those of the victim and an Ada police detective who investigated the crime. In a 1983 report, a state fingerprint expert concluded that the bloody print did not match that of the victim or of Mr. Williamson, who was a suspect by that time.

Ms. Carter had worked at the Coachlight Club. The murder took place after she left the Club in the early morning hours of December 8, 1982. Mr. Williamson was known to frequent the Club with Dennis Fritz, ¹ and one witness placed Mr. Williamson at the Club the night of the murder. ² Mr. Williamson was first interviewed by the authorities in March 1983. He denied any involvement and agreed to provide hair and saliva samples. His mother stated that he was home by 10:00 p.m. the night of the murder. Mr. Williamson was interviewed several additional times in 1983 by both the Ada police and agents from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI), and he took two inconclusive polygraph examinations. He continued to assert that he knew nothing about the crime.

From October 1984 through January 1985, Mr. Williamson was incarcerated in the Pontotoc County Jail on an unrelated bad-check charge. In August 1985, Charles W. Amos of the Mental Health Services of Southern Oklahoma determined that Mr. Williamson was not competent to stand trial on this charge, and in September the state district judge in that case ruled him incompetent and sent him to Eastern State Hospital. In October, Dr. R.D. Garcia, Chief Forensic Psychiatrist at Eastern State Hospital, issued an opinion stating that Mr. Williamson was competent and returned him for trial. In February 1986, Terri Holland, who had been incarcerated in the Pontotoc County Jail while Mr. Williamson was held there a year earlier, informed the District Attorney that she had heard Mr. Williamson confess to the murder when they were in jail together. ³ On May 1, 1987, the victim's body was exhumed and another set of her fingerprints was obtained. The state fingerprint expert then changed his opinion and concluded that the bloody print found on the bedroom matched that of the victim. Mr. Williamson was arrested on May 8. On May 9, after being held in the Pontotoc County Jail for twenty-four hours, Mr. Williamson gave a statement to Agent Gary Rogers of the OSBI describing a dream in which he had committed the murder. Mr. Williamson also related the contents of a similar dream to a Pontotoc County jailor on May 22. Neither of these statements was recorded. In September 1987, another man, Ricky Jo Simmons, confessed to killing Ms. Carter in a statement that was videotaped by police. Mr. Williamson was tried and convicted in April 1988.

Mr. Williamson was represented by appointed counsel W.B. Ward, a sole practitioner who was an experienced criminal attorney. Mr. Ward moved the court for additional counsel, citing "the seriousness of the charges against Defendant and the complexity and time consuming nature of the case." Rec. vol. IV, no. 1 at 23. Although the court granted this motion, co-counsel withdrew as attorney for Mr. Williamson three weeks before trial because he had accepted appointment as an assistant district attorney.

The record reveals that Mr. Ward found representing Mr. Williamson demanding and difficult. At his preliminary hearing, Mr. Williamson became abusive and violent, overturning counsel table and threatening his co-defendant. He was physically restrained and the hearing ultimately proceeded without his presence. Mr. Ward's motion to withdraw as counsel was denied. Mr. Ward, who is blind, subsequently stated by affidavit:

Because of my previous experiences with Mr. Williamson I had expected some trouble [during trial], and consequently I arranged to have my son sit behind him during the trial with instructions to bring him to the ground if he made any sudden move toward me. On the whole I found my representation of Mr. Williamson to be an extremely unpleasant experience and I was glad to get this case over with.

Rec. vol. XXII, doc. 31, ex. 1 at 2. ⁴

At one point in attempting to obtain witness names from the State, Mr. Ward stated to the state trial court:

If the Court please, we're not trying a man that's charged with running a stop sign, he's charged with the most serious offense covered by the statutes of the State of Oklahoma. I'm a court-appointed lawyer, as you well know. I don't intend to ... spend any more time than is necessary on this, but I also intend to do a proper job of it.

Rec. vol. VI at 6. Mr. Ward subsequently stated at a motion hearing: "Judge, I've got to make a living. I can't spend all my time on this case." Rec. vol. VIII at 12. Records reveal that Mr. Ward spent twenty-one and one-half hours preparing for the preliminary hearing, thirty-two hours at the preliminary hearing, fourteen hours on trial motions, forty-three and one-half hours preparing for trial and forty-five hours in trial, for which he was paid the maximum fee provided by law, $3200. Rec. vol. IV, no. 3 at 369.

Mr. Williamson has consistently argued in both state and federal court that he was deprived of his right to the effective assistance of counsel in numerous respects. We address only two of Mr. Williamson's contentions, his assertion that Mr. Ward was incompetent in failing to investigate and make use of his history of mental problems, and his assertion that Mr. Ward was incompetent in failing to investigate and present to the jury Ricky Simmons' confession. Because we conclude the district court was correct in ruling that counsel's actions on these two matters violated Mr. Williamson's Sixth Amendment rights, we do not reach the remaining arguments on appeal.

II

Before we deal with the merits of these issues, we address two preliminary matters. We turn first to the question of the applicability of the habeas corpus amendments enacted as Title I of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub.L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214. ⁵ These provisions were signed into law on April 24, 1996. Mr. Williamson filed his petition for federal habeas corpus relief September 22, 1994. The district court decision was filed September 19, 1995, and the notice of appeal was filed October 16, 1995, all before the new amendments were enacted. In Edens v. Hannigan, 87 F.3d 1109 (10th Cir.1996), we considered a claim on federal habeas that a petitioner had been denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel in a virtually identical time-frame. We there held that the new law does not apply under these circumstances. Id. at 1112 n. 1. That holding governs here. ⁶

Second, we address the State's argument that the district court erred in failing to presume correct the state court fact-findings, and in accepting as true affidavits offered by Mr. Williamson without holding an evidentiary hearing. As the State recognizes, however, a claim of ineffective counsel is a mixed question of fact and law, Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 698, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2070, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), which a federal habeas court reviews de novo, Miles v. Dorsey, 61 F.3d 1459, 1474 (10th Cir.1995), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 743, 133 L.Ed.2d 692 (1996). The court is required, of course, to presume correct the " 'basic, primary, or...