Appellant Ralph Armstrong appeals from the circuit court’s denial of his petition pursuant to Ark. R. Crim. P. 37. His sole point on appeal is that pursuant to a recent opinion of the United States Supreme Court, he should be granted a new trial at which evidence of third-party guilt should be admitted. We hold that the circuit court did not clearly err and affirm the circuit court’s order.
Armstrong was found guilty of two counts of capital murder and was sentenced to two concurrent terms of life imprisonment without parole. This court affirmed the judgment in Armstrong v. State,
On July 3, 2006, Armstrong filed a petition for postconviction relief pursuant to Ark. R. Crim. P. 37.1,
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alleging that a United States Supreme Court opinion, Holmes v. South Carolina,
On October 17, 2006, the circuit court held a Rule 37 hearing on Armstrong’s motion. The circuit court denied Armstrong’s petition on July 17, 2006, finding the following:
A claim for relief under Rule 37 is not applicable if the claim on which it is based could have been raised at trial or on appeal, unless it presents a question so fundamental as to render the judgment of conviction absolutely vоid. This issue was adequately presented to this Court both before trial and prior to the case being presented to the jury. Further, the recent United States Supreme Court decision upon which the Petitioner relies did not explicitly overrule the law upon which this Court made its rulings and is otherwise distinguishable. Defendant’s petition for relief pursuant to Rule 37 of the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure is therefore denied.
This appeal arises from the order denying Armstrong’s petition for postconviction relief. We now turn to the current appeal.
Under our standard of review for a proceeding on a Rule 37.1 petition, the denial of postconviction relief is not reversed unless the circuit court’s findings are clearly erroneous or clearly against the preponderance оf the evidence. See O’Connor v. State,
Armstrong contends that, under Holmes v. South Carolina, supra, Zinger v. State, supra, is unconstitutional because it abridges defendants’ rights to present a complete defense, confront and cross examine witnesses, have a jury determine all facts necessary to convict, and the right to have the government prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. First, the State avers that Armstrong is too late in making his claim because he never filed a petition for certiorari, and a Rule 37 petition is not the proper forum for him to request that Holmes be retroactively applied to his case. Furthermore, the State argues that even if Armstrong could raise Holmes now, he is not entitled to relief because Zinger was not overruled, either explicitly or implicitly, as the rule applied in Zinger is distinguishable from the rule at issue in Holmes.
A. The Appropriateness of Armstrong’s Rule 3 7 petition
The State contends that objections to evidentiary rulings at trial are not cognizable under Rule 37. Further, the State argues that Armstrong may not pursue this claim simply because Holmes was issued during the timе that he could have sought certiorari and that he should have petitioned the United States Supreme Court to have his conviction vacated based on Holmes. However, the State fails to cite supporting authority for the proposition that a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court would have been the proper method for Armstrong to pursue this claim.
Rule 37.1 of the Arkansas Rules of Criminal Procedure instructs:
(a) A petitioner in custody under sentence of a circuit court claiming a right to be released, or to have a new trial, or to have the original sentence modified on the ground:
(i) that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States or this state[.]
Ark. R. Crim. P. 37.1(a) (2007). Here, Armstrong petitions for a new trial based on his belief that the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Holmes proves that the circuit court erred in applying Zinger to his case, which he alleges violated his rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Compulsory Process and Confrontation Clauses of the Sixth Amendment. Therefore, a Rule 37 petition was appropriate. In addition, requiring a petitioner to petition the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari instead of bringing a Rule 37 petition does not further judicial economy.
If Armstrong’s allegаtions are correct, the United States Supreme Court has held that “a new rule for the conduct of criminal prosecutions is to be applied retroactively to all cases, state or federal, pending on direct review or not yet final.” Griffith v. Kentucky,
B. The Merits of Armstrong’s Rule 37 Petition
We now turn to the merits of Armstrong’s Rule 37 petition and must decide whether the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Holmes v. South Cаrolina,
The Holmes Court stated that certain rules regarding the admission of evidence proffered by a criminal defendant to show' that someone else committed the crime with which they were сharged are widely accepted and were not the rules being challenged in that case. See Holmes, supra. For example, the Court noted that “[e]vidence tending to show the commission by another person of the crime charged may be introduсed by the accused when it is inconsistent with, and raises a reasonable doubt of, his own guilt; but frequently matters offered in evidence for this purpose are so remote and lack such connection with the crime that they are excluded.” Id. at 327 (citing 41 C.J.S. Homicide § 216 (1991)). Additionally, the Court further stated that “[t]he accused may introduce any legal evidence tending to prove that another person may have committed the crime with which the defendant is charged . . . [Such evidence] may be excluded where it does not sufficiently connect the other person to the crime, as, for example, where the evidence is speculative or remote, or does not tend to prove or disprove a material fact in issue at the defendant’s trial.” Id. at 327 (citing 40A Am. Jur. 2d Homicide § 286 (1999)).
The Holmes Court also accepted a rule established in an earlier South Carolina Supreme Court case, State v. Gregory,
In Gregory, the South Carolina Supreme Court adopted and applied a rule apparently intended to be of this type, given the court’s rеferences to the “applicable rule” from Corpus Juris and American Jurisprudence:
“[E]vidence offered by accused as to the commission of the crime by another person must be limited to such facts as are inconsistent with his own guilt, and to such facts as rаise a reasonable inference or presumption as to his own innocence; evidence which can have (no) other effect than to cast a bare suspicion upon another, or to raise a conjectural inference as to the commission of the crime by another, is not admissible. .... [B]efore such testimony can be received, there must be such proof of connection with it, such a train of facts or circumstances, as tends clearly to point out such other person as the guilty party.”
In Gay, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that “[i]n view of the strong evidence of appellant’s guilt-especially the forensic evidence . . . the proffered evidence . . . did not raise ‘a reasonable inference’ as to appellаnt’s own innocence.”
The Court in Holmes found that the rule as applied by the South Carolina Supreme Court in State v. Gay, supra, and State v. Holmes, supra, “does not rationally serve the end that the Gregory rule and its analogues in other jurisdictions were designed to promote, i.e., to focus the trial on the central issues by excluding evidence that only has a very weak logical connection to the central issues.”
Under this rule, the trial judge does not focus on the probative value or the potential adverse effects of admitting the defense evidence of third-party guilt. Instead, the critical inquiry concerns the strength of the prosecution’s case: If the prosecution’s case is strong enough, the evidence of third-party guilt is excluded even if that evidence, if viewed independently, would have great probative value and even if it would not pose an undue risk of harassment, prejudice, or confusion of the issues.
Id.
The issue this court must now decide is if the rule we applied in Zinger v. State,
We quoted the Supreme Court of North Carolina with favor in both Zinger and Armstrong stating:
A defendant may introduce evidence tending to show that someone other than the defendant committed the crime charged, but, such evidence is inadmissible unless it points direcdy to the guilt of the third party. Evidence which does no more than create an inference or conjecture as to another’s guilt is inadmissible.
Armstrong v. State,
[T]he rule does not require that any evidence, however remote, must be admitted to show a third party’s possible culpability . . . [E]vidence of mere motive or opportunity to commit the crime in another person, without more, will not suffice to raise a reasonable doubt about a defendant’s guilt: there must be direct or circumstantial evidence linking the third person to the actual perpetration of the crime.
Armstrong v. State,
We hold that the rule this court applied in both Zinger and Armstrong is not arbitrary and does not evaluate the strength of only one party’s evidence as the rule overturned in Holmes v. South Carolina, supra. The rule we have applied simply requires that the evidence a defendant wishes to admit to prove third-party guilt sufficiently connects the other person to the crime. In Armstrong v. State, supra, we considered the evidence Armstrong alleged should have been admitted at his trial and concluded that it did “no more than create a suspicion or conjеcture that the Waller sisters may have played a role in Dashunda Armstrong’s death.”
For these reasons, we hold that the circuit court did not clearly err in denying Armstrong’s Rule 37 petition and affirm.
Affirmed.
Notes
While Armstrong had filed a similar pro se petition on June 28,2006, the circuit court granted a motion to substitute it with the Rule 37 petition subsequently filed by his counsel on July 3,2006, with no objection by the State.