Wood v. Carpenter
| Decision Date | 09 August 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 16-6001,16-6001 |
| Citation | 899 F.3d 867 |
| Parties | Tremane WOOD, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Mike CARPENTER, Interim Warden, Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Jessica L. Felker, Assistant Federal Public Defender (Jon M. Sands, Federal Public Defender, with her on all briefs, and Amanda C. Bass, Assistant Federal Public Defender, with her on reply and supplemental briefs), Office of the Federal Public Defender, Phoenix, Arizona, for Petitioner.
Jennifer L. Crabb, Assistant Attorney General (Mike Hunter, Attorney General of Oklahoma, with her on the briefs), Office of the Attorney General, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Respondent.
Before TYMKOVICH, Chief Judge, MATHESON, and BACHARACH, Circuit Judges.
An Oklahoma jury convicted Tremane Wood of first-degree felony murder for the killing of Ronnie Wipf during a botched robbery. The jury found Oklahoma had proved three aggravating circumstances associated with the murder, and the mitigating circumstances did not outweigh them. The jury accordingly sentenced Wood to death.
The conclusion of Wood’s trial was only the start of his case’s long legal odyssey. Wood directly appealed his conviction to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, advancing, as relevant here, two primary arguments. First, he claimed his trial counsel performed ineffectively at the sentencing stage. Second, he argued the "heinous, atrocious, or cruel" aggravating circumstance could not be constitutionally applied to this case given the dearth of evidence that Mr. Wipf suffered before death. The OCCA ordered an evidentiary hearing on the ineffectiveness issue, but ultimately affirmed Wood’s conviction and death sentence.
Wood then filed an application for post-conviction relief in state court. He claimed his appellate counsel performed ineffectively on direct appeal, including at the evidentiary hearing. The OCCA again denied relief.
Wood next filed a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the Western District of Oklahoma. The district court denied the petition. We granted Wood certificates of appealability on whether his trial and appellate counsel performed ineffectively.1
During the course of this appeal, we decided Pavatt v. Royal , 859 F.3d 920 (10th Cir. 2017), opinion amended and superseded on denial of rehearing on July 2, 2018 by Pavatt v. Royal , 894 F.3d 1115 (10th Cir. 2017), a challenge to Oklahoma’s application of the heinous, atrocious, and cruel (HAC) aggravator in that case. Based on Pavatt , we granted an additional COA on whether the HAC aggravating circumstance could be constitutionally applied to the facts of this case.
For the reasons discussed below, we AFFIRM the district court’s denial of the petition for habeas relief.
We begin by explaining the underlying facts and the numerous previous proceedings.
On December 31, 2001, Tremane Wood rang in the new year at a brewery in Oklahoma City.2 Wood’s brother Zjaiton,3 Zjaiton’s girlfriend Lanita, and Wood’s ex-girlfriend Brandy joined him. At some point during the festivities, Lanita and Brandy began talking with two fellow brewery patrons—Ronnie Wipf and Arnold Kleinsasser. Wipf and Kleinsasser invited the women back to their motel to continue celebrating. After conferring with Wood and Zjaiton, the women agreed to leave with their new acquaintances.
But something nefarious was afoot. Before leaving, Wood, Zjaiton, and the women concocted a plan. The women would pretend to be prostitutes and, once Wipf and Kleinsasser secured the money to pay them, the Wood brothers would show up at the motel and rob the two men.
The women put the plan into action. At the motel, Wipf and Kleinsasser agreed to pay them $210 to have sex. The men had no cash on hand, however, so they all drove to an ATM. Meanwhile, Wood and Zjaiton waited outside the motel. Once the women, Wipf, and Kleinsasser arrived back at the room, Wood and Zjaiton pounded on the door. Mr. Wipf opened the door and the brothers barged in. Both were armed—Wood with a knife and Zjaiton with a gun.4 The women ran out the door and a fight ensued.
At first, Wood fought Mr. Wipf alone. But Zjaiton eventually joined the fray and helped Wood fight Wipf. After Zjaiton had joined the fight, Kleinsasser saw that Mr. Wipf was covered in blood. At some point during this brawl, Mr. Wipf was fatally stabbed in the chest. Autopsy diagrams and pictures of Wipf’s body reveal his face was bloody and bruised, and he had a deep cut on his right hand.
Oklahoma charged Wood, Zjaiton, Lanita, and Brandy with numerous crimes, including first-degree felony murder. The state sought the death penalty against both Wood and Zjaiton, arguing that four aggravating circumstances warranted the death sentence. One of those circumstances was that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.
John Albert represented Wood at the guilt and sentencing phases of trial.5 Eventually, the court severed Wood’s trial from the other defendants’. At the guilt phase, the jury convicted Wood of first-degree felony murder.6
At the sentencing phase, three witnesses testified on Wood’s behalf. Andre Taylor, a family friend, testified that Wood was well liked, was not a bad person, and loved his children.
Dr. Hand, a licensed psychologist, also testified. He first emphasized how chaos defined Wood’s family life. To demonstrate this, he cited numerous Department of Human Services (DHS) records in which Wood’s mother, Linda, claimed her husband and Wood’s father, Raymond Gross, abused her. And Dr. Hand explained that when Wood did get in trouble, he was usually following Zjaiton’s lead. When cross examined, however, Dr. Hand stumbled a bit. The prosecution asked him about Wood’s juvenile records, specifically those detailing Wood’s previous assault charge. Though Dr. Hand recalled reviewing a large stack of records, he could not recall those specific ones.
Lastly, Wood’s mother Linda testified. She painted a dark portrait of her relationship with Gross. They had, she said, Tr., 04/05/2004, at 91. But Linda, too, floundered a bit on cross examination. The prosecution attacked her allegations of abuse, emphasizing how DHS had found most of them invalid.
The jury sentenced Wood to death.
Wood retained new lawyers for his direct appeal to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. Wood also applied for a Rule 3.11 evidentiary hearing to develop additional evidence about his claim trial counsel performed ineffectively. In support of the application, Wood put forward seventeen affidavits and over 1,200 pages of juvenile records.
The OCCA granted the application and remanded the case to the trial court, instructing it to hold an evidentiary hearing and answer five factual questions.7 The court then held a three-day hearing during which Wood presented twenty-three witnesses. Ten witnesses testified about Wood’s life history, including his mother, his father, and his brothers Andre and Zjaiton. Much of this testimony hit on the same themes Linda and Dr. Hand had testified to at trial—albeit, in far more detail.
But the evidentiary hearing did not merely recite the trial testimony with a few extra details; new evidence did emerge. For example, Andre Wood testified that Gross abused Wood as well as Linda. And Gross testified for the first time. He admitted to once handcuffing Linda to his car as punishment for sleeping with his nephew. He also confessed to pushing Linda in front of his sons. But Gross denied other instances of abuse, such as knocking Linda’s teeth out or dragging her on the ground after he handcuffed her. Similarly, Gross admitted he had whipped his sons before, but insisted he never did so sadistically.
Trial counsel, Mr. Albert, also signed an affidavit and testified at the hearing. In his affidavit, he acknowledged time constraints caused him to "not prepare enough of a mitigation case to effectively represent and defend" Wood. EH Vol. 1 Ex. M. In his testimony, Mr. Albert similarly admitted he failed to hire an investigator. But he stressed that he had interviewed Wood, Linda, and Zjaiton. And he emphasized that he and Dr. Hand had successfully employed this same strategy in other cases.
Wood’s counsel at the evidentiary hearing also wanted to introduce testimony from Dr. Kate Allen, a sociologist with a doctoral degree in family sociology who had worked as a social worker and professor for thirty-five years. The trial court granted the state’s objection to Dr. Allen testifying. She was not qualified as an expert witness, the trial court concluded, and her testimony would have been cumulative.
After hearing three days of testimony, the trial court entered findings of fact answering the OCCA’s questions. The OCCA then permitted the parties to submit ten-page supplemental briefs to challenge these findings. Wood’s counsel did so, and the brief attacked the court’s answers to the five questions. The brief did not, however, mention the exclusion of Dr. Allen’s testimony.
The OCCA ultimately affirmed Wood’s conviction and sentence.
Next, Wood moved for post-conviction relief in the OCCA on a number of grounds. As relevant here, Wood alleged his appellate counsel performed ineffectively on direct appeal, including during the Rule 3.11 evidentiary hearing. The OCCA denied relief on all of these claims.8
Wood filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition in the Western District of Oklahoma, raising ten issues. The district court denied relief on all of them. Wood then sought certificates of appealability on numerous claims; we granted COAs on two issues. First, whether Wood’s trial counsel performed ineffectively at the sentencing stage by (1) failing to adequately investigate, select, prepare, and...
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