Sosa v. Johnson ( 1999 )

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
_____________________
No. 99-50438
_____________________
PEDRO SOLIS SOSA,
Petitioner-Appellant,
versus
GARY L. JOHNSON, Director,
Texas Department of Criminal
Justice, Institutional Division,
Respondent-Appellee.
_________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Texas
(95-CV-586)
_________________________________________________________________
September 27, 1999
Before JOLLY, BARKSDALE, and EMILIO M. GARZA, Circuit Judges.
E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge:*
I
On November 4, 1983, two men kidnaped Deputy Sheriff Ollie
Childress, used his patrol car in a Texas bank robbery, and later
shot him as he lay in the trunk. The police first arrested Leroy
Sosa (“Leroy”) and then arrested his uncle, Pedro Sosa (“Sosa”),
along with Sosa’s wife who happened to be with Sosa at the time of
the arrest. Sosa later confessed to the police. At trial, Leroy
*
Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that
this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except
under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. R. 47.5.4.
testified that Sosa had been the one who shot Officer Childress.
The jury convicted Sosa and sentenced him to death.
In May 1993, Sosa filed a state habeas corpus petition
followed by two supplemental petitions that together made the
following claims:
(1) Denial of defense counsel’s pleas for assistance
deprived Sosa of his right to due process and
effective assistance of counsel.
(2) The jury selection procedures used in Sosa’s
indictment and trial were unconstitutional.
(3) The court’s preclusion of consideration of certain
mitigating factors during sentencing was
unconstitutional.
(4) The police did not give Sosa an adequate Miranda
warning and coerced his confession by threatening
him and his wife.
(5) The state did not disclose that witnesses had been
hypnotized, neglected procedural safeguards when
hypnotizing them, such as using an independent
expert and conducting the hypnosis without anyone
else in the room, and withheld notes and videos
from those hypnosis sessions.
(6) The state withheld exculpatory evidence, including:
(a) An FBI report containing witness descriptions
of the two bank robbers inconsistent with the
state’s allegations as to who was in charge of
the robbery.
(b) Polygraph test results from Sosa’s interview
with police several weeks after his arrest.
(c) Analysis of sixty-one fingerprints, three palm
prints, and one impression from the crime
scene, none of which matched Sosa’s prints.
(d) The existence of another set of suspects, Earl
Hunter and Gilbert Garza, and information
about them, including a tip that Hunter had
planned the robbery, photographs of the two
men, and hair samples collected at a hotel
where police believe Garza had stayed.
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(e) The state’s presentence report on Leroy
discussing his drug and alcohol addictions.
(7) Misrepresentations by a juror during voir dire
denied Sosa a fair trial and deprived him effective
use of his peremptory challenges.
(8) The court’s refusal to allow cross-examination of a
confidential informant was unconstitutional.
(9) The court’s refusal to order production of witness
statements, FBI reports, and photos shown to
witnesses, and to order disclosure of potentially
useful information, such as bad acts by state
witnesses and the identity of the confidential
informant, were unconstitutional.
(10) The sentencing instructions misled the jury.
(11) Texas’ aggravating circumstance criteria were
unconstitutionally vague.
(12) Allowing consideration of Sosa’s prior
unadjudicated offenses was unconstitutional.
(13) The lack of instruction on consideration of
unadjudicated offenses gave the jury an
unconstitutional amount of discretion.
(14) Since rights under the Texas Constitution were
broader than those of the U.S. Constitution, the
court would need to evaluate each habeas claim
under both state and federal law.
(15) The police obtained false testimony from Leroy by
conditioning his plea on it.
(16) The court had undisclosed ex parte communications
with a juror, Rosalio Orta.
(17) The state improperly contacted Orta concerning
these ex parte communications.
(18) The cumulative impact of these errors mandated
habeas relief.
The Texas trial court summarily denied these claims, but the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals remanded the petition for an evidentiary
hearing. Sosa then filed several discovery motions and requested
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subpoenas for members of the FBI who had investigated the case. In
the fall of 1993, however, the state court denied the motions,
quashed the subpoenas, and went ahead with the hearing, after which
it denied the habeas petition. The court of criminal appeals
affirmed in the spring of 1995.
That fall, Sosa filed a discovery motion in federal district
court. He followed that with a federal habeas corpus petition in
November, a first amended petition in December, and another
discovery request in the spring of 1996.
In August 1997, the district court granted Sosa discovery of
nearly everything requested:
(1) Documents related to witnesses hypnotized during
the investigation.
(2) Depositions of those witnesses.
(3) Depositions of people involved in the
investigation.
(4) Fingerprint evidence.
(5) Documents related to other suspects identified by
the authorities.
(6) Witness descriptions of the bank robbers.
(7) Documents related to the voluntariness of Sosa’s
post-arrest statement.
Sosa included seven volumes of these materials with his second
amended federal petition for habeas relief. These materials have
never been submitted to a state court.
In his second amended petition, Sosa pared his list of claims
down to the following:
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(1) Denial of defense counsel’s pleas for assistance
deprived Sosa of his right to due process and
effective assistance of counsel.
(2) The police did not give Sosa an adequate Miranda
warning and coerced his confession by threatening
him and his wife.
(3) The state withheld exculpatory evidence, including:
(a) Inconsistencies between witness testimony at
trial and statements made to police the day of
the robbery, including who was in charge of
the robbery and the behavior of the two
robbers.
(b) The existence of five other sets of suspects
investigated by the police, the extent of
investigations into each of them, and the
information collected during those
investigations, including molds of tires, a
tip from a confidential informant, physical
descriptions of the suspects and their
vehicles, outstanding arrest warrants, hair
samples, photographs, and witness interviews.
(c) The absence of any prints at the crime scene
identifying Sosa despite analysis of sixty-one
fingerprints, three palm prints, and one
impression.
(d) Polygraph results from an interview of Irene
Villarreal and Bruno Escamilla. The
investigators had suspected that Villarreal’s
car had been used by the robbers. Villarreal
told the investigators that Escamilla had her
car the day of the robbery. When asked
whether she had any further information about
the robbery, she answered “no,” but the
polygraph indicated she was lying. Similar
results also suggested that Escamilla was
lying when he told investigators that he had
not had possession of the car that day.
(e) That witnesses had been hypnotized, that
procedural safeguards for hypnosis, such as
using an independent expert, conducting the
hypnosis without anyone else in the room, and
conducting the hypnosis in a non-suggestive
manner, had not been followed; that one of the
hypnotized witnesses had remembered several
license plate numbers on a suspect’s car that
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did not match Sosa’s plate numbers; and notes
and videos from those hypnosis sessions.
(f) Information about Leroy’s drug and alcohol
addictions.
(4) The trial court’s refusal to order disclosure of
witness statements and FBI reports was
unconstitutional.
(5) The jury selection procedures used in Sosa’s
indictment and trial were unconstitutional.
(6) The cumulative impact of these errors mandated
habeas relief under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Each of the claims above arose from the claims that Sosa had
presented to the state courts. The evidence he obtained after the
federal district court granted him discovery, however, augmented
several of them, specifically, federal claims (2), (3), and (4).
The newly-available deposition testimony supports claim (2),
that the police coerced Sosa’s confession by arresting his wife and
holding her in custody for two days solely to obtain that
confession. First, Sosa points to an officer’s deposition
testimony admitting that the police “considered” arresting Sosa’s
wife “in order to assist in obtaining [his] confession.” Other
deposition testimony reveals that the police had Sosa’s wife under
surveillance for “quite a period of time” prior to her arrest and
raises doubts about whether the officers believed she had committed
any crime when they arrested her.
Claims (3) and (4), the failure to disclose claims, are
stronger with the addition of FBI reports containing witness
statements, polygraph results, information about the hypnosis
sessions, and a report on one such session. First, the statements
6
in the FBI reports are inconsistent, both with each other and with
testimony at trial. Second, some FBI reports provide information
on other suspects. Third, polygraph results from the interviews
with Villarreal and Escamilla raise questions about their
credibility concerning the location of Villarreal’s car the day of
the robbery. Fourth, witness deposition testimony about the
hypnosis sessions raises questions about the procedures used.
Fifth, an FBI report from one of those sessions reveals that a
witness remembered several possible license plate numbers on a car
possibly used in the robbery.
In January 1998, Sosa filed a set of pro se motions with the
district court raising additional issues, including several asking
for the suppression of evidence and one motion for acquittal,
retrial, or an evidentiary hearing because Leroy’s lawyer had
coached Leroy’s testimony during Sosa’s trial.
In March 1999, the district court denied Sosa’s habeas
petition, citing lack of exhaustion of state remedies. The court
dismissed the case without prejudice in order to give Texas state
court the opportunity to review the additional documentary evidence
and Sosa’s pro se motion. The court order also removed the stay of
execution, which a Texas court rescheduled for October 21, 1999.
Sosa then filed, and the district court denied, both a motion to
alter and amend the judgment and a request for a CPC. Sosa now
seeks a CPC from this court and another stay of execution. The
appellee, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, argues that Sosa
has not shown abuse of discretion by the district court in
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dismissing the case. In short, the state’s attorneys have not
objected to the district court’s conclusion that the state courts
should have another look at Sosa’s claims.
II
A
We must issue a CPC before we can hear Sosa’s appeal to the
district court’s denial of habeas relief. 28 U.S.C. § 2253;
Sterling v. Scott, 57 F.3d 451, 453 (5th Cir. 1995).1 Determining
whether to issue a CPC is a two-step inquiry. First, a petitioner
must demonstrate exhaustion of remedies in state court. Sterling,
57 F.3d at 453. Second, if, and only if we find all claims
presented have been exhausted, there must be substantial showing of
1
This is not a review of the district court’s denial of the
CPC request. Such an order is not appealable. Greenwalt v.
Stewart, 105 F.3d 1268, 1272 (9th Cir. 1997). See also Robinson v.
Johnson, 151 F.3d 256, 258-60 (5th Cir.)(after district court
denial of CPC, court of appeals making own determination as to
whether one was warranted rather than reviewing the district court
order), cert. denied 119 S.Ct. 1578 (1999); Tucker v. Johnson, 115
F.3d 276, 281 (5th Cir. 1997)(same); Murphy v. Johnson, 110 F.3d
10, 11 (5th Cir. 1997)(same); Sterling, 57 F.3d at 453 (same);
Sawyers v. Collins, 986 F.2d 1493, 1497 (5th Cir. 1993)(same).
Accordingly, we must make our own determination as to whether a CPC
is warranted. Since this is not a review of the district court
decision, therefore, we need not decide whether Sosa’s January 1998
pro se motions constitute additional claims for habeas relief
because he did not file them with us.
The certificate at issue is one of probable cause, not one of
appealability. Prior to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), Pub.L.No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214,
1217-18 (1996), a CPC was required. But that Act changed the term
to a certificate of appealability (“COA”). The AEDPA does not
apply to Sosa’s claims for relief, however, because he filed his
original federal habeas corpus petition on November 17, 1995,
before the AEDPA’s active date on April 24, 1996. Lindh v. Murphy,
521 U.S. 320, 324-26, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 138 L.Ed.2d 481 (1997). The
distinction between a CPC and a COA does not matter in this case
because the standard for obtaining either is the same. Murphy v.
Johnson, 110 F.3d 10, 11 (5th Cir. 1997).
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denial of a federal right. Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U.S. 880, 893
n.4, 103 S.Ct. 3383, 77 L.Ed.2d 1090 (1983)(cited with approval in
Sterling, 57 F.3d at 453).
The central issue before us, obviously, is whether Sosa has
exhausted his state remedies. Issuing a CPC would contradict the
district court’s holding. We would, therefore, need to determine
whether the district court’s holding on exhaustion was an abuse of
discretion. Brewer v. Johnson, 139 F.3d 491, 492 (5th Cir. 1995).
If it were, we would remand the case to the district court for a
hearing on the merits.
It seems clear that Sosa has not demonstrated exhaustion of
his claims, and that we should deny his CPC request. “To have
exhausted his state remedies, a habeas petitioner must have fairly
presented the substance of his claims to the state courts.” Vela
v. Estelle, 708 F.2d 954, 958 (5th Cir. 1983)(cited in Sones v.
Hargett, 61 F.3d 410, 414-15 (5th Cir. 1995)). Petitioners fail to
exhaust their state remedies when they resort to material
evidentiary support in federal court that was not presented in
state court. Graham v. Johnson, 94 F.3d 958, 968 (5th Cir. 1996).
See also Knox v. Butler, 884 F.2d 849, 852 n.7 (5th Cir.
1989)(refusing to consider census data, even though judicial notice
was available, since notice sought for the first time in federal
court); Joyner v. King, 786 F.2d 1317, 1320 (5th Cir. 1986)(holding
that “new factual allegations in support of a previously asserted
legal theory” must be presented in state court); Rodriguez v.
McKaskle, 724 F.2d 463, 466 (5th Cir. 1984)(holding ineffective
9
assistance of counsel claim not exhausted due to new facts); Brown
v. Estelle, 701 F.2d 494, 495-96 (5th Cir. 1983)(holding that
reliance on three additional affidavits in federal court rendered
claims unexhausted); Burns v. Estelle, 695 F.2d 847, 849-50 (5th
Cir. 1983)(holding claims unexhausted because factual bases of
claim not presented in state court). The case most analogous to
this one is Graham, 94 F.3d 958. In that death penalty case,2 the
petitioner relied on nine pieces of evidence in federal court that
he had not presented in state court. Id. at 959, 965. These were
primarily affidavits and various police reports. Id. The court
held that this new evidence rendered the claims for habeas relief
unexhausted. Id. at 969. Sosa has presented us with seven full
volumes containing ninety-four exhibits, most of which are new.
Though his present claims largely may rest on the same
constitutional ground as when earlier presented to the state
courts, Sosa has fundamentally altered them by augmenting them to
this degree.
The cases Sosa cites for the proposition that adding
supporting evidence does not render a claim unexhausted are
distinguishable. In Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U.S. 254, 259-60, 106
S.Ct. 617, 88 L.Ed.2d 598 (1986), the new evidence was merely
statistical analysis that “added nothing to the case that this
2
Sosa points to two cases standing for the proposition that
the standard for a CPC is more lenient in capital cases, Barefoot,
463 U.S. at 893, and Buxton v. Collins, 925 F.2d 816, 819 (5th Cir.
1991). But as both cases also explain, “the severity of the
penalty does not in itself suffice to warrant the automatic issuing
of a certificate.” Barefoot, 463 U.S. at 893; Buxton, 925 F.2d at
819.
10
Court has not considered intrinsic to the consideration of any
grand jury discrimination claim.” The district court, moreover,
had specifically requested the evidence to “supplement and clarify”
the record. Id. at 257. In Miller v. Estelle, 677 F.2d 1080, 1084
(5th Cir. 1982), the new evidence was cumulative, and “differed
only in number, not in kind” from the evidence presented in the
state habeas proceedings. Finally, in Walker v. Lockhart, 763 F.2d
942, 955 n.26 (8th Cir. 1985), the court took the position that
exhaustion was not an issue because the state had waived it. None
of these circumstances is present here.
It is therefore clear that Sosa does not meet the exhaustion
prerequisite to issuance of a CPC.
B
Sosa could evade the exhaustion requirement if returning to
state court would be futile, but it appears that Sosa still has a
remedy under Texas law. The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure,
Article 11.071, Section 5, provides:
Sec. 5.(a) If an initial application for a writ of
habeas corpus is untimely or if a
subsequent application is filed after
filing an initial application, a court
may not consider the merits of or grant
relief based on the subsequent or
untimely initial application unless the
application contains sufficient specific
facts establishing that:
(1) the current claims and issues have
not been and could not have been
presented previously in a timely
initial application or in a
previously considered application
filed under this article or Article
11.07 because the factual or legal
basis for the claim was unavailable.
11
There is a dearth of Texas case law analyzing this new writ-abuse
statute. It seems likely, however, that a Texas court would
consider these claims based on the new evidence since a Texas court
had originally refused to order its disclosure. The court of
criminal appeals, moreover, has shown flexibility with the statute.
See Ex parte Ramos, 977 S.W.2d 616 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998)(en
banc)(refusing to read the restrictions literally in the face of a
good-faith application for habeas relief). Regardless, a Texas
court ought to determine whether Texas law imposes a procedural
bar in this situation. We cannot say that it would be “futile” for
Sosa to bring his habeas claims in state court for a hearing on the
merits.
III
With respect to Sosa’s request for a stay of execution,
because Sosa’s habeas claims should be heard in Texas state court,
that forum should be the one to grant his stay of execution.
IV
Because there is no exhaustion due to Sosa’s new evidence and
no clear futility in having him take his claims to state court, the
district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the
federal habeas petition without prejudice for failure to exhaust
state remedies. The state court is the appropriate forum for these
claims and the one to stay his execution. For these reasons,
Sosa’s requests for a CPC and a stay of execution are
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D E N I E D.3
3
The appellant’s motion for leave to file in excess pages the
motion for stay of execution scheduled for October 21, 1999, is
GRANTED.
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