Wright v. Cowan
| Decision Date | 11 July 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 93-2105.,93-2105. |
| Parties | Patrick H. WRIGHT, Petitioner, v. Roger COWAN, Warden of Menard Correctional Center, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Central District of Illinois |
Alan Freedman, Bruce H. Bornstein, Gary Prichard, Freedman & Bornstein, P.C., Chicago, IL, for plaintiff.
Arleen C. Anderson, Michael M. Glick, Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, for defendant Roland W. Burris.
William L. Browers, Colleen M. Griffin, Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, for defendant Roger Cowan.
Patrick H. Wright filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 on May 26, 1993. The matter was stayed pending resolution of state court matters, but is now ready for a ruling. For the following reasons, the court denies the petition for a writ of habeas corpus with respect to the guilt-innocence phase of the trial, but grants the writ with respect to the death sentence subject to the conditions discussed below.
Wright was charged with murder, attempted murder, attempted rape, armed robbery, home invasion, and residential burglary. The state alleged that Wright broke into the home of Carol Specht and her daughter, Connie, and attempted to rape them both. He then stabbed Carol Specht in the back, and slashed Connie Specht's throat. Connie survived, but her mother did not. In support of those allegations, the state offered Wright's taped confession, the testimony of Connie Specht, and corroborating physical evidence.
Wright did not contest the state's version of events at trial, but asserted that he suffered from a serious mental illness amounting to insanity. The sole evidence offered in support of that defense was Wright's own testimony. He testified about abuse his natural parents inflicted upon him before his adoption at age four. He discussed his fetish for women's shoes, and stated that he believed it constituted a mental disease or defect. Since the age of seven, he had used women's shoes for sexual gratification, causing his adoptive mother to beat him out of frustration. When he was thirteen, Wright began a fifteen-year period of institutionalization at various mental hospitals. He testified that his shoe fetish was the reason for the institutionalization, and that he believed he had never been cured. He explained that he served time in jail intermittently between 1973 and 1982 for crimes such as theft and burglary, which he committed in an effort to gratify his desire for women's shoes.
Wright testified that he committed the crimes at issue after entering the victims' apartment to look for shoes. Once inside, he had "this out-of-mind situation", which led to the death of Carol Specht and the attempted murder of her daughter. He stated that he was simply unable to control his conduct while in the apartment. In rebuttal, the state offered the testimony of a psychiatrist, Dr. Gerald Fowler, who said that Wright was not insane or mentally ill. He classified Wright's disorder as a nonpathological psychosexual disorder. Dr. Fowler believed that at the time he entered the Spechts' apartment, Wright was able to appreciate the criminality of his conduct and to conform to the law's requirements.
On September 19, 1983, Wright was convicted in the Circuit Court of Coles County, Illinois of murder, attempted murder, attempted rape, armed robbery, home invasion, and residential burglary. He waived a jury for sentencing, and the trial court sentenced him to death. It concluded that he was under extreme mental stress at the time of the crimes as "the result of the personality disorder he suffered, his women's shoe fetish." Nevertheless, the court noted that defense counsel "did not point out any other mitigating factors that the court should consider at this point," and refused to consider any sympathy engendered by Wright's pitiful life story. The court found that the crime was premeditated, and that the victims were defenseless. The court also found it significant that Wright was capable of trying to dispose of evidence within an hour of the crime.
Wright appealed directly to the Illinois Supreme Court, and raised the following issues: (1) probable cause did not support his warrantless arrest; (2) the trial court erred when it prevented defense counsel from cross-examining the surviving victim as to Wright's sanity at the time of the offense; (3) the state deprived Wright of the right to a fair trial when it failed to comply with discovery rules; (4) Illinois' death penalty statute is unconstitutional; and (5) the trial court erred when it refused to consider its sympathy for Wright as a mitigating factor. The court affirmed his conviction and sentence on October 19, 1985. People v. Wright, 111 Ill.2d 128, 95 Ill.Dec. 787, 490 N.E.2d 640 (1985) ("Wright I"). The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari the following year. Wright v. Illinois, 479 U.S. 1101, 107 S.Ct. 1327, 94 L.Ed.2d 179 (1987).
Wright filed a petition for post-conviction relief on August 18, 1987. That petition was denied without an evidentiary hearing on January 19, 1990. On appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court, Wright raised the following issues: (1) trial counsel was ineffective for failing to discover additional records of petitioner's mental health treatment; (2) the trial court erred when it refused to appoint a third psychiatric expert on post-conviction proceedings; and (3) the trial court's improper reliance on residential burglary to justify in part its decision to impose the death penalty warranted a new sentencing hearing. The court affirmed the trial court's dismissal of the petition on June 25, 1992. People v. Wright, 149 Ill.2d 36, 171 Ill.Dec. 424, 594 N.E.2d 276 (1992) ("Wright II"). The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari the following year. Wright v. Illinois, 506 U.S. 1004, 113 S.Ct. 613, 121 L.Ed.2d 547 (1992).
On May 26, 1993, Wright filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus. The court appointed counsel. On July 13, 1993, the respondent filed an answer. Shortly thereafter, on September 1, 1993, Wright moved for summary judgment. Later that month, however, he filed a second amended post-conviction petition in state court. He then moved to stay the proceedings in this court pending exhaustion of state court remedies. The court granted the stay.
The trial court eventually dismissed Wright's second amended petition, and he once again appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court. He alleged the following claims: (1) the trial judge had presided under a conflict of interest because he had previously prosecuted Wright for the armed violence conviction, which the state used as impeachment at trial and in aggravation at sentencing; (2) trial counsel was ineffective for not raising the issue of the judge's conflict, and appellate counsel was ineffective for not raising trial counsel's ineffectiveness on appeal; (3) the prosecutor had a conflict of interest because she served as Wright's attorney on the previous armed violence case; (4) trial counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate, argue, and introduce available evidence that Wright should be found guilty but mentally ill ("GBMI"); and (5) trial counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate and introduce available mitigating evidence of Wright's mental deficiency and psychological problems. On November 18, 1999, the court affirmed the trial court's dismissal of the petition. People v. Wright, 189 Ill.2d 1, 243 Ill.Dec. 198, 723 N.E.2d 230 (1999) (Wright III). The United States Supreme Court then denied certiorari. Wright v. Illinois, 531 U.S. 836, 121 S.Ct. 94, 148 L.Ed.2d 54 (2000).
In his original petition, Wright alleged ten claims. He has since withdrawn three of them. Accordingly, only the following seven claims remain:
1) Wright was deprived of effective assistance of counsel at trial because counsel failed to argue, investigate, and introduce available evidence about Wright's mental health;
2) His rights under both the Fourteenth and Eighth Amendments were violated because the trial judge believed that the law precluded him from considering Wright's traumatic childhood and lifelong history of mental health problems as mitigating evidence in imposing a sentence;
3) Wright was deprived of his right to due process of law because the trial court considered and relied on evidence from outside the record of other murder cases in sentencing Wright to death;
4) The Illinois Supreme Court, after finding that the trial court used an improper aggravating factor, erred by failing to re-weigh independently the aggravating and mitigating facts, remand the case, or engage in harmless error analysis;
5) The trial judge who presided over Wright's trial and sentenced him to death had a conflict of interest arising from his role as the prosecutor in Wright's 1979 armed violence conviction, which was relied upon by the judge as an aggravating factor;
6) Wright was deprived of his right to due process of law because the prosecutor in this case had represented Wright in the 1979 armed violence charge; and
7) The Illinois Death Penalty Statute is unconstitutional.
Wright filed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus before April 24, 1996, the effective date of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA"). Because the AEDPA's amendments to the habeas corpus statute do not apply, the court will analyze Wright's claim under the prior law. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997); Abrams v. Barnett, 121 F.3d 1036, 1037 (7th Cir. 1997). Before the AEDPA, federal courts deferred to a state court's findings of fact, but disregarded its legal conclusions and reached independent judgments on constitutional issues. Koo v. McBride, 124 F.3d 869, 872 (7th Cir.1997). The pre-AEDPA scheme also permitted reliance on other courts' jurisprudence in addition to Supreme Court case law...
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