Woods v. Anderson
| Decision Date | 02 February 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. IP99-0520-C-M/S.,IP99-0520-C-M/S. |
| Citation | 302 F.Supp.2d 915 |
| Parties | David Leon WOODS, Petitioner, v. Rondale ANDERSON, Superintendent, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Indiana |
Teresa D Harper, Attorney at Law, Bloomington.
William Van Der Pol Jr, Martinsville.
Thomas D Perkins, Deputy Attorney General, Indianapolis.
ENTRY DISCUSSING PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS
Petitioner David Leon Woods was convicted in an Indiana state court of the murder and robbery of Juan Placencia. For the murder, Woods was sentenced to death. He now seeks a writ of habeas corpus.
For the reasons explained in this Entry, Woods' petition must be denied.
Woods' convictions were affirmed on direct appeal in Woods v. State, 547 N.E.2d 772 (Ind.1989) (Woods I). He was sentenced to death for the murder and to a separate 50-year sentence for the robbery. The sentence of death was affirmed in the direct appeal, though the separate 50-year robbery sentence was vacated as a multiple sentence in violation of Woods' federal and state double jeopardy rights. Id. at 795. A second opinion, issued on rehearing, affirmed the convictions and sentence of death. See Woods v. State, 557 N.E.2d 1325 (Ind.1990), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1259, 111 S.Ct. 2911, 115 L.Ed.2d 1074 (1991). The Indiana Supreme Court then affirmed the trial court's denial of post-conviction relief in Woods v. State, 701 N.E.2d 1208 (Ind.1998)(Woods II), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 861, 120 S.Ct. 150, 145 L.Ed.2d 128 (1999).
The evidence at trial favorable to the jury's verdict showed the following:
At approximately 4:00 a.m. on April 7, 1984, appellant David Woods, along with Greg Sloan and Pat Sweet, proceeded to the apartment of the victim, Juan Placencia, to steal a television. This occurred in Garrett, Indiana, a small town. Placencia was a seventy-seven-year-old man who had medical problems with a knee. Woods, nineteen years old at the time, was armed with a knife and told Sloan and Sweet that he was going to scare Placencia with it.
Sweet stayed in the yard. Appellant Woods and Sloan approached the door of the apartment and rang the bell. Placencia answered the door, whereupon appellant Woods immediately jumped in and stabbed him several times with the knife. Placencia fell back into a chair, directed them to his money, and began to make noise, asking for help. Woods took the money from Placencia's wallet and then stabbed him again repeatedly. Placencia died from three wounds which pierced his heart.
Woods and Sloan carried out the television and hid it in a trash bin. Later they picked it up and sold it. They also washed their clothes and threw the knife and other items in a creek.
In the exercise of its habeas jurisdiction, a federal court may grant relief only if the petitioner shows that he is in custody "in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a).
Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2254, ("AEDPA"), "habeas relief may be granted if a state court's adjudication of a matter `resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.'" Dixon v. Snyder, 266 F.3d 693, 699 (7th Cir.2001) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)).
A state court decision is "contrary to" Supreme Court precedent [1] "if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by the Supreme Court on a question of law" or [2] "if the state court confronts facts that are materially indistinguishable from a relevant Supreme Court precedent and arrives at a result opposite to [that reached by the Supreme Court]." An "unreasonable application" of Supreme Court precedent occurs when "the state court identifies the correct governing legal rule ... but unreasonably applies it to the facts of the particular state prisoner's case" or "if the state court either unreasonably extends a legal principle from [the Court's] precedent to a new context where it should not apply or unreasonably refuses to extend that principle to a new context where it should apply."
Id. at 700 (). The Seventh Circuit has explained that the "unreasonable application" prong of § 2254(d)(2) "is a difficult standard to meet":
"unreasonable" means "something like lying well outside the boundaries of permissible differences of opinion." Hardaway v. Young, 302 F.3d 757, 762 (7th Cir.2002). We have held that under this criterion, habeas relief should not be granted if the state court decision can be said to be one of several equally-plausible outcomes. Boss v. Pierce, 263 F.3d 734, 742 (7th Cir.2001).
Jackson v. Frank, 348 F.3d 658 (7th Cir.2003).
Factual issues determined by a state court are presumed to be correct, and the petitioner bears the burden of rebutting this presumption by clear and convincing evidence. Werts v. Vaughn, 228 F.3d 178, 196 (3d Cir.2000) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1)). This is a "rigorous burden of proof." Sanchez v. Gilmore, 189 F.3d 619, 623 (7th Cir.1999). See also Green v. White, 232 F.3d 671, 672 n. 3 (9th Cir.2000) ().
In addition to the substantive standard set out above, "habeas corpus has its own peculiar set of hurdles a petitioner must clear before his claim is properly presented to the district court." Keeney v. Tamayo-Reyes, 504 U.S. 1, 14, 112 S.Ct. 1715, 118 L.Ed.2d 318 (1992) (O'Connor, J., dissenting) (internal citations omitted). Breard v. Greene, 523 U.S. 371, 375, 118 S.Ct. 1352, 140 L.Ed.2d 529 (1998) (citing Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977)). The purpose of the rules of procedural default is to "afford[ ] to the state courts an opportunity to correct a constitutional violation." Duckworth v. Serrano, 454 U.S. 1, 4, 102 S.Ct. 18, 70 L.Ed.2d 1 (1981).
Procedural default occurs either: (1) when a petitioner failed to exhaust state remedies and the court to which he would have been permitted to present his claims would now find such claims procedurally barred, Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 735 n. 1, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991); or (2) "if the decision of [the state] court rests on a state law ground that is independent of the federal question and adequate to support the judgment." Id., at 729, 111 S.Ct. 2546.
Thus, "[a] state prisoner ... may obtain federal habeas review of his claim only if he has exhausted his state remedies and avoided procedurally defaulting his claim." Thomas v. McCaughtry, 201 F.3d 995, 999 (7th Cir.2000). If a prisoner commits procedural default with respect to his claim in habeas,
he may obtain federal habeas relief only upon a showing of cause and prejudice for the default or upon a showing that a failure to grant him relief would work a fundamental miscarriage of justice. A fundamental miscarriage of justice occurs when "a constitutional violation has probably resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent."
Id. ().
"Cause" for a procedural default exists if the petitioner can demonstrate that "some objective factor external to the defense impeded counsel's efforts to comply with the State's procedural rule." Murray, 477 U.S. at 488, 106 S.Ct. 2639. Prejudice is demonstrated by showing that the errors worked to the petitioner's "actual and substantial disadvantage." United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 170, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 71 L.Ed.2d 816 (1982).
On April 9, 1984, Woods was charged in DeKalb County with the murder and robbery of Juan Placencia in Garrett, Indiana. He appeared in court and an attorney entered an appearance on behalf of Woods that same day. The State of Indiana filed a Request for Sentence of Death on April 12, 1984. The aggravating circumstance alleged by the State in seeking the death penalty was that Woods had committed "an intentional murder in the commission of a robbery." This is an aggravating circumstance under Indiana law. IND. CODE § 35-50-2-9(b)(1).
Trial of the charges against Woods occurred in the Boone Superior Court. His trial by jury commenced in February 1985. Woods was convicted of murder and robbery. At the penalty phase, the jury returned a recommendation of death. On March 28, 1985, Woods was sentenced to death.
Woods' claims are the following:
1. He was not afforded a fair trial and penalty phase because he was not competent;
2. He was denied the effective assistance of counsel when his attorneys failed to tender an instruction on the presumption of innocence to be read to the jury at the penalty phase and failed to present significant mitigating evidence;
3. He was denied the right to heightened reliability in death penalty sentencing determinations when the prosecuting attorney committed misconduct and used unfair tactics in violation of the Eighth Amendment;
4. He was denied his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments when the trial court refused the defense's tendered penalty phase instructions;
5. He was denied his rights under the Fifth Amendment when the statements he made to the officers were not voluntary;
6. He was denied...
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