Woods v. Dugger

• Decision Date: 05 February 1991
• Docket Number: No. 89-3420,89-3420
• Citation: 923 F.2d 1454
• Parties: Ronald WOODS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Richard L. DUGGER, Respondent-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1454

923 F.2d 1454

Ronald WOODS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Richard L. DUGGER, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 89-3420.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

Feb. 5, 1991.

Billy H. Nolas, Larry H. Spalding, Office of the Capital Collateral Representative, Tallahassee, Fla., for petitioner-appellant.

Gary L. Printz, Richard B. Martell, Dept. of Legal Affairs, Tallahassee, Fla., for respondent-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before KRAVITCH, JOHNSON and CLARK, Circuit Judges.

JOHNSON, Circuit Judge:

This case is an appeal from the district court's denial of Ronald Woods' petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

This case arose out of a disturbance at the Union Correctional Institution in Union County, Florida on May 5, 1983. Woods and his co-defendant, Leonard Bean, attacked a number of correctional officers at the prison, including John Dennard. Woods, who was eighteen at the time, stabbed and killed Dennard.

Trial

On June 7, 1983, Woods and Bean were indicted for first degree murder. The joint trial began on September 26, 1983. On September 30, 1983, the jury returned guilty verdicts against both Woods and Bean. ¹ On October 1, 1983, the trial court conducted an advisory sentencing proceeding. Woods presented the testimony of a court appointed psychologist, Dr. Harry Kropp, that Woods had an I.Q. of 69 which placed him in the mild range of mental retardation. The jury voted seven to five that Woods should receive the death penalty.

The trial court then sentenced Woods to death. The judge found two statutory aggravating circumstances: Woods committed the murder while incarcerated, and the crime impeded the operation of the correctional system. See Fla.Stat.Ann. Sec. 921.141(5)(a) and (g). The trial judge found one statutory mitigating circumstance: Woods' age. See id. at (6)(g). The judge rejected Woods' argument that Woods did not have the mental capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to restrict his actions to the requirements of law. See id. at (6)(f).

Appeals and Collateral Attacks

Woods appealed his conviction and sentence directly to the Florida Supreme Court, which affirmed the trial court. Woods v. State, 490 So.2d 24 (Fla.1986). On November 10, 1986, the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in the direct appeal. Woods v. Florida, 479 U.S. 954, 107 S.Ct. 446, 93 L.Ed.2d 394 (1986). On October 5, 1987, the Governor of Florida signed a death warrant to be carried out on December 10, 1987.

On November 6, 1987, Woods filed a motion in the trial court for post-conviction relief pursuant to Fla.R.Crim.P. 3.850. The trial court denied the motion on December 1, 1987. On December 9, 1987, the Florida Supreme Court stayed the execution of the death warrant. On July 14, 1988, however, the court affirmed the lower court and dissolved the stay. On October 17, 1988, the Governor signed a second death warrant, scheduling execution for the week of November 10, 1988. Woods v. State, 531 So.2d 79 (Fla.1988).

Woods filed the present action, his first federal habeas corpus petition, on November 2, 1988. ² The district court stayed execution of the death warrant in order to consider the petition and allow an appeal to this Court. The district court denied Woods' request for an evidentiary hearing on the petition, but on December 20, 1988, held oral argument. The district court rejected all of Woods' claims, except the claim that the trial court failed to consider nonstatutory mitigating evidence in violation of Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U.S. 393, 107 S.Ct. 1821, 95 L.Ed.2d 347 (1986). The district court granted the petition on the Hitchcock claim, ordering the trial court to resentence Woods within 180 days and to take into account all mitigating evidence as well as the jury's recommendation of death. 711 F.Supp. 586.

Both Woods and the state appealed to this Court. The state, however, did not seek a stay of the district court's order pending appeal. Instead, the state arranged for the trial court to resentence Woods on April 23, 1989. The trial court considered evidence dating back to the crime and evidence that had come to light after the prior sentence. Finding that the two statutory aggravating circumstances (crime committed while in prison, and crime inhibiting operation of prison) outweighed the one statutory mitigating circumstance (youth) and the nonstatutory mitigating circumstances, the trial court again sentenced Woods to death. This Court then dismissed the state's cross-appeal as moot in light of the new sentence.

On May 24, 1990, the state filed a motion with this Court to relinquish jurisdiction so that the district court could amend its judgment under Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b) in order to take into account the new sentence. The Court granted the motion on June 5, 1990. On July 13, 1990, the district court amended its prior judgment and denied Woods' petition on all claims. This appeal is from that judgment.

II. ANALYSIS

In this appeal, Woods alleges that he was denied a fair trial due to the hostile atmosphere in the small rural community in which the trial took place and to the number of prison guards who attended the trial in full uniform. In this case we face a situation which was foreshadowed by dictum from the Supreme Court in Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U.S. 560, 106 S.Ct. 1340, 89 L.Ed.2d 525 (1986). The Holbrook Court held that some courtroom security did not violate the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to receive a fair trial. However, the Court wrote, "[w]e do not minimize the threat that a roomful of uniformed and armed policemen might pose to a defendant's chances of receiving a fair trial." Id. at 570, 106 S.Ct. at 1346.

The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the right of state criminal defendants to be tried by an impartial jury. The Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the essence of the Sixth Amendment right to be tried "by a panel of impartial, 'indifferent' jurors [whose] verdict must be based upon the evidence developed at the trial." Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 722, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 1642, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961) (citations omitted). As Chief Justice Warren noted in his concurrence in Estes v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532, 552, 85 S.Ct. 1628, 1637, 14 L.Ed.2d 543 (1965) (Warren, C.J., concurring) due process requires the courts to safeguard against "the intrusion of factors into the trial process that tend to subvert its purpose." Id. at 560, 85 S.Ct. at 1641. Specifically, the courts must guard against "the atmosphere in and around the courtroom [becoming] so hostile as to interfere with the trial process, even though ... all the forms of trial conformed to the requirements of law...." Id. at 561, 85 S.Ct. at 1642.

There have been several cases in this Court, as well as in the Supreme Court, where criminal defendants have raised the issue of being denied a fair trial due to various incidents harming the "trial process" of which Chief Justice Warren spoke in Estes v. Texas. Id. at 560, 85 S.Ct. at 1641. While some of the cases have focused on questionable security precautions during the trial, see, e.g., Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U.S. 560, 106 S.Ct. 1340; Elledge v. Dugger, 823 F.2d 1439 (11th Cir.), modified in part by 833 F.2d 250 (11th Cir.1987), and other cases have focused on pretrial publicity, see, e.g., Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, 86 S.Ct. 1507, 16 L.Ed.2d 600 (1966); Coleman v. Kemp, 778 F.2d 1487 (11th Cir.1985), we decline to artificially divide these cases into two separate lines of analysis. Instead we follow the command of the Supreme Court in Sheppard v. Maxwell and examine the "totality of circumstances," Sheppard, 384 U.S. at 352, 86 S.Ct. at 1517. Therefore, we evaluate the fairness of Woods' trial in light of both pretrial publicity and occurrences taking place during the trial.

In order for Woods to prevail on his claim of being denied a fair trial he must show either actual or inherent prejudice. ³ Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U.S. 560, 106 S.Ct. 1340, 89 L.Ed.2d 525 (1986); Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961). The test for inherent prejudice is "not whether jurors actually articulated a consciousness of some prejudicial effect, but rather whether 'an unacceptable risk is presented of impermissible factors coming into play.' " Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U.S. at 570, 106 S.Ct. at 1346 (quoting Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501, 96 S.Ct. 1691, 48 L.Ed.2d 126 (1976)). This test requires us to examine two factors: first, whether there is an "impermissible factor coming into play" and second, whether it poses an "unacceptable risk." The Ninth Circuit has found one example of an impermissible factor. In Norris v. Risley, 918 F.2d 828 (9th Cir.1990), the court determined that spectators at a kidnapping and rape trial who were wearing buttons inscribed with the words "women against rape" posed an impermissible factor, "[b]ecause the buttons ... conveyed an implied message [of guilt], and because the buttons were not subject to the constitutional safeguards of confrontation and cross examination, they are clearly the sort of 'impermissible factors' that courts must ensure receive no weight." Id. at 830.

We also must examine the record to determine if these impermissible factors posed an "unacceptable risk." The Williams Court held that a risk becomes unacceptable when there is a "probability of deleterious effects." Williams, 425 U.S. at 504, 96 S.Ct. at 1693. Should Woods be able to prove actual or inherent prejudice due to the presence of the uniformed prison guards then the state must justify their presence with an "essential state interest specific to [the] trial." Holbrook, 475 U.S. at 569, 106 S.Ct. at 1346. ⁴

Turning to the record, we note that the trial was held in Union County, Florida. Union County is a small rural county in Northern Florida. Just over ten thousand people live in Union County, but one-third of...