Williams v. Cain ( 2000 )

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 99-31243
MILTON WILLIAMS,
Petitioner-Appellant,
v.
BURL CAIN, Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary,
Respondent-Appellee.
_______________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Louisiana
99-CV-676-J
_______________________________
September 8, 2000
Before REAVLEY, BENAVIDES, and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
Appellant Milton Williams (“Williams”) appeals from the
district court’s dismissal with prejudice of his habeas petition.
Because we find no merit to Williams’s Doyle or Brady claims, nor
to his assertion that the state tried him while shackled and
wearing prison garb, we affirm.
I. Factual and Procedural Background
On the afternoon of October 21, 1993, Williams left his
*
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this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except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.
house to attend to a plumbing job. When he left, his wife,
Karen, and his son, Milton, Jr., were both at home, as was a man
doing tile work in the upstairs bathroom. He returned home that
night, whereupon he became embroiled in an argument with Karen.
Williams accused Karen of flirting with the tile layer, and she
protested her innocence. Their altercation carried them upstairs
to their bedroom, where Williams’s .357 Smith & Wesson sat on the
night stand, placed there earlier in the day by Milton, Jr., who
had found the gun lying on the family entertainment center
uncocked. From his vantage point on the couch in the den next to
his parents’ bedroom, Milton, Jr. saw his mother, but not his
father, during the fight. Milton, Jr. heard Williams tell Karen
to leave him alone “before I have to hurt you.” About five
minutes later, after Karen refused to desist her protestations,
Williams shot Karen in the face, near her right eye.
Milton, Jr. watched his mother fall to the floor. He raced
to the bedroom, where he found Williams crying and the gun on the
floor. Williams told Milton, Jr. that he had not intended to
shoot Karen; he complained that the gun had been in his hand and
just went off. Milton, Jr. picked up the phone and dialed 911;
Williams spoke to the operator and begged her not to let his wife
die.
Officers Euclid Talley (“Talley”) and Lawrence Zapata
(“Zapata”) responded to Williams’s 911 call. After a preliminary
investigation revealed that Karen was still breathing, Officer
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Talley handcuffed Williams and informed him that he was under
arrest for aggravated battery. Officer Talley advised Williams
of his Miranda rights and then asked him what had happened.
Williams related that he had accidentally shot his wife. He
claimed that he and Karen were not arguing, that they had been
getting ready for bed when he placed the gun on the night stand,
and it accidentally discharged.
Officer Talley then left to attend to Karen, while Officer
Zapata guarded Williams, who wanted to go upstairs to see Karen
and was becoming agitated. Officer Zapata chided Williams to
calm down, reminded him that he was under arrest for aggravated
battery, and read him his Miranda rights again. Saying that he
understood his rights, Williams confessed to Officer Zapata that
he and Karen had been arguing. Williams admitted that he wanted
to scare his wife, so he picked up the gun and slammed it down on
a piece of furniture, at which point it fired accidentally.
Officers Donald Clogher (“Clogher”) and Meunier (“Meunier”)
arrived after Officers Talley and Zapata. Officer Clogher
interviewed Williams to prepare the incident report. Williams
had already received Miranda warnings. When Officer Clogher
inquired about Williams’s name, address, date of birth, and other
vital statistics, Williams told him that he and Karen had been
preparing for bed when the gun fell from the night stand onto the
floor and discharged.
When Karen’s death appeared inevitable, New Orleans Homicide
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Detective Anthony Small (“Small”) arrived at Williams’s residence
to direct the investigation and transport Williams to the
homicide office. Detective Small alerted Williams that he was
under arrest for Karen’s murder and read him his Miranda rights.
At this point, Williams chose not to waive his rights and
remained silent.
At the trial, Officer Kenneth Leary (“Officer Leary”)
testified that Williams’s .357 Smith & Wesson had an internal
block covering the firing pin which could only be released by
pulling the trigger. Officer Leary therefore concluded that, had
the gun fallen or been dropped, it would not have discharged.
Officer Leary also stated that, based on the stippling around the
gun-shot wound, the gun was between 3 and 3½ feet from Karen when
Williams fired it. Finally, Officer Leary affirmed that the gun,
when cocked, had a 5 lb. trigger pull, but the uncocked gun had a
trigger pull of 11½ lbs.
In addition to Officer Leary’s testimony, Sheila Craig,
Karen’s sister, Kimberly Johnson, Karen’s daughter and Williams’s
step-daughter, Cinnamon Billy Smith, an employee at the
Metropolitan Battered Women’s Program, and Linda Brion, Karen’s
friend, all testified that Williams had a prolonged history of
physically abusing Karen, including two incidents when Williams
hit Karen with a baseball bat, two occasions when he beat her
while she was pregnant, and numerous accounts of bruises, black
eyes, swollen lips, and threats against Karen’s life.
4
The jury found Williams guilty of second degree murder, and
the judge sentenced Williams to life in prison. After the
rejection of his direct appeals and state petitions for post-
conviction relief, Williams filed a federal habeas petition in
March, 1999. The magistrate issued a Report and Recommendation,
advising dismissal with prejudice of the petition, and the
district court adopted the Report and Recommendation, entering
judgment against Williams on October 26, 1999.
Williams requested a certificate of appealability, which the
district court granted as to issues 5 (Doyle claim), 7 (Brady
violation), and 9 (shackles and prison garb).
II. Doyle Claim
Williams claims that the following exchange during the
prosecution’s direct examination of Detective Small constitutes a
Doyle violation that necessitates reversal of his conviction:
Q. Did you take custody of the defendant Milton Williams?
A. Yes, upon leaving the scene.
Q. And you ordered him placed under arrest?
A. Yes.
Q. Did he make any statement to you?
A. No, sir, he didn’t make any statements to me.
Q. Did he refuse to make a statement and waive his rights?
A. Yes, upon arriving at the homicide office he was
formally advised of his charges and constitutional
rights as per the Miranda warning. Mr. Williams
refused to waive his rights and give a statement.
Williams’s counsel objected at this point in the questioning
and moved for a mistrial. The district court denied Williams’s
motion and refused to give a limiting instruction to the jury.
5
Pursuant to Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976), “the use for
impeachment purposes of [a defendant’s] silence, at the time of
arrest and after receiving Miranda warnings, violate[s] the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id. at 619(footnote omitted). This rule finds its rationale in the fact
that “every post-arrest silence is insolubly ambiguous because of
[the Miranda warnings.]” Id. at 617 (footnote omitted). Because
the Miranda warnings implicitly assure an arrestee that he will
not be penalized for his silence, “it would be fundamentally
unfair and a deprivation of due process to allow the arrested
person’s silence to be used to impeach an explanation
subsequently offered at trial.” Id. at 618 (footnote omitted).
Although “virtually any description of a defendant’s silence
following arrest and a Miranda warning will constitute a Doyle
violation,” United States v. Shaw, 701 F.2d 367, 382 (5th Cir.
1983), Doyle violations are susceptible to harmless error
analysis. See Chapman v. State of California, 386 U.S. 18, 22-24
(1967). “[B]efore a federal constitutional error can be held
harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at 24. To ascertain
whether a Doyle error is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, a
reviewing court must inquire whether the error “‘had a
substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the
jury’s verdict.’” Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 638 (1993)
(quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 766 (1946)).
6
In this Circuit, we have long used the three categories set
forth in Chapman v. United States, 547 F.2d 1240 (5th Cir. 1977),
to guide our harmless-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt determination:
[First,] [w]hen the prosecution uses defendant’s post-
arrest silence to impeach an exculpatory story offered
by defendant at trial and the prosecution directly
links the implausibility of the exculpatory story to
the defendant’s ostensibly inconsistent act of
remaining silent, reversible error results even if the
story is transparently frivolous.
[Second,] [w]hen the prosecutor does not directly
tie the fact of the defendant’s silence to his
exculpatory story, i.e., when the prosecutor elicits
that fact on direct examination and refrains from
commenting on it or adverting to it again, and the jury
is never told that such silence can be used for
impeachment purposes, reversible error results if the
exculpatory story is not totally implausible or the
indicia of guilt not overwhelming.
[Third,] [w]hen there is but a single reference at
trial to the fact of defendant’s silence, the reference
is neither repeated nor linked with defendant’s
exculpatory story, and the exculpatory story is
transparently frivolous and evidence of guilt is
otherwise overwhelming, the reference to the
defendant’s silence constitutes harmless error.
Id. at 1249-50 (citations and footnote omitted).
The context of the comment on the defendant’s silence also
influences our determination of error. Where the reference
occurs before the defendant has offered an exculpatory story,
“the evidence [can] have . . . only a minor effect as slight
substantive evidence or remote impeachment-in-advance.” United
States v. Carter, 953 F.2d 1449, 1463 (5th Cir. 1992).
Applying these strictures, we hold that Detective Small’s
response to the prosecution’s questions about whether Williams
made a statement did violate Williams’s due process rights under
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Doyle, but that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
The prosecution made only a single reference to Williams’s
silence, which reference occurred on the direct examination of
Detective Small, and the prosecutor failed to link the silence to
Williams’s exculpatory story, which was yet to be offered. As
such, the Doyle violation falls beyond the purview of the first
Chapman category. Whether it falls within the scope of the
second or third Chapman categories depends on whether the
exculpatory story is “totally implausible” or whether the indicia
of guilt is “overwhelming.”
Williams had long caused serious bodily injury to Karen. He
had repeatedly made threats on her life. Just before he shot
Karen, Milton, Jr. heard Williams tell Karen that he would “have
to hurt [her]” if she did not stop talking. Williams shot Karen
in the face while standing approximately 3 to 3½ feet away from
her, using a gun that had been uncocked earlier in the day when
Milton, Jr. placed it on the night stand, and which would not
have discharged accidentally when dropped because it had an
internal block covering the firing pin. Williams’s .357 Smith &
Wesson had a 5 lb. trigger pull when cocked, and an 11½ lb.
trigger pull when uncocked. In other words, to have shot Karen,
Williams either had to cock the gun and pull the trigger, or pull
the trigger with considerable effort. After he shot Karen,
Williams told four different versions of the event to the police
and Milton, Jr., all of which involved the gun firing without him
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having pulled the trigger.
In these circumstances, Williams’s multiple versions of the
shooting are transparently frivolous. Though he consistently
maintained that the shooting was an accident, he never
consistently accounted for how it could have mistakenly happened.
All of his versions of the story require the gun to fire without
his having pulled the trigger, an event that could not have
occurred absent a malfunction of the gun’s internal block, a
scenario for which Williams offered no proof.
Moreover, the evidence at trial presented overwhelming
indicia of Williams’s guilt. Second degree murder under
Louisiana law requires the specific intent to kill or inflict
great bodily harm. La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14:30.1(A)(1).
Williams had in the past beaten Karen with a baseball bat and
inflicted injuries while she was pregnant. He threatened to kill
her many times. Just before he shot her, he told her he would
“have to hurt [her].” He stood within 3 to 3½ feet of her,
pointing a gun at her face, and he pulled the trigger. This
evidence constitutes overwhelming indicia of his intent to
inflict serious bodily injury.
However, even were Williams’s exculpatory story not
transparently frivolous or were the indicia of Williams’s guilt
not overwhelming, the Doyle violation would still be harmless.
After the shooting, Officers Talley and Zapata and Detective
Small all administered Miranda warnings. Williams nevertheless
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spoke freely to Officers Talley, Zapata, and Clogher. Although
Williams did refuse to waive his rights and make a statement to
Detective Small, the prosecution could hardly argue successfully
that Williams’s silence with Detective Small somehow contradicts
his exculpatory story at trial, for the simple reason that
Williams asserted his exculpatory story—namely, that the shooting
was an accident—to Officers Talley, Zapata, and Clogher
immediately after the shooting.
For the aforestated reasons, we find the Doyle violation
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
III. Brady Claim
Williams complains that the state suppressed Milton, Jr.’s
interview with the police, conducted on the night of the
shooting. In it, Milton, Jr. states:
This as [sic] best as I can remember. I was comin’ in
to study with my mom. And my dad was comin’ in fussin’
because he was mad. They was havin’ an argument about
somethin’. And then he, he had went in the bedroom, in
the bedroom, got ready for bed. While he was puttin’
away the gun, she was also fussin’ back, sayin’ that
she wasn’t doin’ what he said. But [pause] he, he had
the gun and the gun went off [pause] by mistake and
then my mama had fell down on the floor.
Williams avers that he could have used this statement of
Milton, Jr.’s to impeach his testimony at trial, where Milton,
Jr. testified that, after the shooting, Williams told him the
shooting had been an accident. This statement to the police,
10
Williams contends, indicates that Milton, Jr. independently
concluded that the shooting was an accident and did not merely
rely on Williams’s characterization of it as such.
“[S]uppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to
an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence
is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the
good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.” Brady v. State of
Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963). “To establish a Brady claim, a
habeas petitioner must demonstrate that (1) the prosecution
suppressed evidence, (2) the evidence was favorable to the
petitioner, and (3) the evidence was material.” Little v.
Johnson, 162 F.3d 855, 861 (5th Cir. 1998). “[F]avorable
evidence is material, and constitutional error results from its
suppression by the government, ‘if there is a reasonable
probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense,
the result of the proceeding would have been different.’” Kyles
v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 433 (1995) (quoting United States v.
Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682 (1985) (opinion of Blackmun, J.)).
The question is not whether the defendant would more
likely than not have received a different verdict with
the evidence, but whether in its absence he received a
fair trial, understood as a trial resulting in a
verdict worthy of confidence. A “reasonable
probability” of a different result is accordingly shown
when the government’s evidentiary suppression
“undermines confidence in the outcome of the trial.”
Id. at 434 (quoting Bagley, 473 U.S. at 678).
Williams’s Brady claim must be rejected because it fails all
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three requirements of a Brady violation. First, the prosecution
did not suppress Milton, Jr.’s interview. Williams was aware of
both the existence and contents of Milton, Jr.’s statement to the
police the night of the shooting because Williams’s counsel
cross-examined Milton, Jr. regarding it. Significantly,
Williams’s counsel chose not to attempt to impeach Milton, Jr.
with the above quoted passage.
Williams’s counsel’s strategic choice in this regard is
likely a function of the fact that the statement fails the second
prong of the Brady test: Milton, Jr.’s interview is simply not
favorable to Williams. Had Williams sought to impeach Milton,
Jr. with the above quoted statement, the prosecutor would have
pointed to the following exchange occurring later in the
interview:
Q. You, you said that your father said it was a mistake
that he shot your mother?
A. Yes.
Q. But you couldn’t see if it was a mistake or not?
A. No. I couldn’t.
In short, Milton, Jr.’s statement to the police is wholly
consistent with his testimony at trial: his father had told him
that the shooting was an accident, and he had no independent
basis for assessing the veracity of his father’s account.
Finally, Milton, Jr.’s statement is not material. No
reasonable probability exists that, had Milton, Jr.’s statement
been disclosed to Williams, that a different outcome would have
ensued. Milton, Jr.’s interview with the police in no way
12
undermines confidence in the verdict against Williams. Even had
Williams not been aware of Milton, Jr.’s statement and its
contents, the statement is not favorable to Williams and merely
reiterates Milton, Jr.’s testimony at trial. The jury’s decision
would have been unchanged had the statement been admitted into
evidence.
Therefore, we must reject Williams’s Brady claim as
meritless.
IV. Standing Trial in Shackles and Prison Garb
Williams alleges that the state tried him in prison garb,
with his legs shackled. He claims this sent a message to the
jury that the he was dangerous and an escape risk, and denied him
the full benefit of the presumption of innocence.
“[T]he state may not compel an accused to appear before the
jury in prison garb.” United States v. Nicholson, 846 F.2d 277,
278 (5th Cir. 1988) (citing Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501(1976)). Similarly, shackling “pose[s] a threat to the fact-
finding process and [must] . . . be closely scrutinized.” Id.(citing Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U.S. 560 (1986)).
Two problems exist with Williams’s claim. First, Milton,
Jr. identified Williams at trial as “that man in the white
shirt,” an identification that is inconsistent with Williams’s
claim that he stood trial in that mainstay of prison fashion, the
orange jumpsuit. Second, Williams made no objection to his being
13
forced to wear prison garb and leg irons at trial, a fact that
led the district court to conclude that Williams was not actually
so dressed. Inasmuch as the trial record is devoid of any
indication that Williams was tried in prison garb and reflects
the contrary, we conclude that Williams has not carried his
burden of showing a violation of his asserted constitutional
right.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district
court dismissing the habeas claims is
AFFIRMED.
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