Sharp v. JohnsonSharp v. Johnson
- Reporters:
- Before:
- Politz, King, Duhé
POLITZ, Chief Judge:
Michael Eugene Sharp, a Texas death row inmate, appeals the district court‘s denial of habeas corpus relief. For the reasons assigned, we affirm.
Background
Late in the evening on Friday, June 10, 1982, Sharp forcibly abducted Brenda Kay Broadway and her two daughters, Selena Elms, then 14 years of age, and 8-year-old Christy Elms, from a car wash near Kermit, Texas. Sharp then drove them to an isolated location where he forced Broadway and Selena Elms to perform oral sex on each other and then stabbed Broadway and Christy Elms to death. Selena managed to escape and, after she spent the night alone in the woods, oil field workers discovered her the next morning, unclothed and suffering from exposure.
Sharp was arrested on June 16, 1982. On June 19, 1982, he was placed in a police line-up and Selena identified him as the murderer of her mother and sister. On June 21, 1982, a Winkler County grand jury returned three indictments charging Sharp with the capital murders of Brenda Kay Broadway and Christy Elms and the aggravated kidnaping of Selena Elms.
Upon motion for change of venue the defendant‘s trial was moved to Lubbock, Texas where Sharp was tried and convicted of the murder of Christy Elms. Because of a defect in the indictment the death penalty could not be imposed and Sharp was sentenced to life imprisonment. On November 17, 1982, the Winkler County Grand Jury returned a new indictment charging Sharp with the capital murder of Brenda Kay Broadway. The defense moved for change of venue and the case was transferred to Crockett County.
Several months later Sharp was interviewed by Detective Jerry Smith of the Odessa Police Department. Smith, who had interviewed Sharp prior to his first trial, was investigating the disappearance of Blanca Arreola, a young, pregnant Odessa woman who had been missing since May of 1982. Although the record is somewhat unclear whethеr Sharp admitted to murdering Arreola, he led authorities to her buried body in a remote location in Ector County. The position and location of 18-year-old Arreola‘s naked body was exactly as described in Sharp‘s statement to Smith.
On May 19, 1983, Sharp was found guilty of murdering Broadway and the punishment phase of the trial began. The state presented evidence of the Broadway and Christy Elms murders and of Sharp‘s four prior state felоny convictions, including two convictions for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. The state also offered the testimony of Detective Smith regarding Sharp‘s involvement in the Arreola murder. Defense counsel‘s objection to this testimony, on the grounds of surprise and its nature as an extraneous offense, was overruled.
The defense presented no evidence during the punishment phase. The jury returned affirmative answers to the two special issues that same day and Sharp was sentenсed to death. Sharp‘s conviction and death sentence were affirmed on direct appeal by the Court of Criminal Appeals.1 On May 2, 1989, Sharp filed for postconviction relief in state court. The trial court denied relief and the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed in an unpublished order which adopted the trial court‘s findings and conclusions.2
Sharp then filed a habeas corpus petition in the federal district court. The magistrate judge, after several evidentiary hearings, filed findings of fact аnd legal conclusions, ultimately adopted by the district court, which recommended that Sharp‘s petition for habeas relief be dismissed. The district court granted Sharp a certificate of probable cause to appeal.3 This appeal followed.
Analysis
We note at the outset that the magistrate judge found Sharp had not procedurally defaulted any of his claims because the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the last state court to review Sharp‘s case, stated no grounds for its denial of writ. The statе has proffered on appeal, however, and the defendant confirms, that the Court of Criminal Appeals issued an unpublished opinion along with its order in which it adopted the findings and conclusion of the state district court, including rulings on a number of procedural defaults. This written order is of record and constitutes a clear and express reliance on state procedural bars by the last Texas court to consider Sharp‘s case.4 Accordingly, we must apply the doctrine of procedural default, as dictated by that order, to the issues raised in this appeal.
We first consider Sharp‘s claim that evidence of Blanche Arreola‘s murder, an unadjudicated prior offense, was presented during the punishment phase of Sharp‘s trial in violation of Sharp‘s fifth, sixth, and fourteenth amendment rights. This issue, insofar as the contemporaneous objections by counsel were not based upon the grounds urged on appeal, is procedurally barred. Because our recent deсision in Amos v. Scott5 forecloses Sharp‘s argument that the Texas contemporaneous objection rule is not an independent and adequate state ground upon
To show cause, Sharp must demonstrate that “‘some objective factor external to the defense impeded counsel‘s efforts‘” to lodge timely the appropriate objection in the trial court.7 Sharp urges thаt trial counsel was surprised by the evidence of the Arreola murder because the prosecution withheld the relevant files and denied in a pretrial hearing that such evidence existed. Assuming these allegations of prosecutorial obstruction to be true, it cannot be gainsaid that the evidence of the Arreola murder was known to Sharp. He gave the police statements about the murder and led them to the remote location where Arreola was buried, assisting them in the recovery of the body. Because Sharp possessed at the time of trial sufficient information upon which to base a proper objection irrespective of the state‘s conduct, we find no cause for the failure to lodge a proper and timely objection.8
Sharp also contends that trial counsel‘s failure to preserve this error constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel under the two-pronged test of Strickland v. Washington,9 thus establishing cause for the procedural default.10 We find neither deficient
performance nor prejudice in this instance. Agаin, the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the Arreola murder evidence were well known to Sharp; thus, any error which occurred due to Sharp‘s withholding this information from his attorney was not the fault of counsel and did not constitute deficient performance.11 Furthermore, in light of the other evidence introduced during the guilt and punishment phases demonstrating Sharp‘s savage and depraved disposition and the escalating nature of his depredations, we cannot conclude that but for the admission of the Arreola murder evidence there was a reasonable probability that the jury would have responded differently in the penalty phase.
We next address Sharp‘s contention that he was denied his sixth, eighth and fourteenth amendment rights to a fair and impartial trial due to pretrial publicity and its effect upon the jury panel. Sharp‘s counsel did not move for a change of venue or a mistrial; thus, the issue was adjudged procedurally defaulted in state court. As cause to justify this default Sharр again invokes ineffectiveness of counsel under Strickland.
Our review of the record reveals that counsel‘s performance was not objectively unreasonable; only 15 of 72 prospective jurors had an opinion about Sharp‘s guilt and all of the jurors who ultimately sat on Sharp‘s trial were accepted by Sharp‘s counsel only after lengthy and probing questioning. While it is true that trial counsel allowed onto the jury four jurors who knew Sharp had been convicted of Christy Elms’ murder, the record reveаls, and the magistrate
We next consider whether trial counsel was ineffective in failing to discover and present relevаnt mitigating evidence at the punishment phase. The mitigating evidence involved is that Sharp was a family man and a good son. Given the horrendous circumstances surrounding the murder for which he was on trial, and the other evidence presented at the punishment phase, even if we assume deficient performance we cannot conclude that the prejudice prong of Strickland has been satisfied. Simply put, we do not find it reasonably probable that the meager mitigating evidence discussed in Sharр‘s brief, put in its best possible light, likely would have caused Sharp‘s jury to reconsider its answers on the penalty phase issues.13
We next consider whether Sharp‘s trial counsel was ineffective by failing to preserve for direct appeal a Texas procedural defect that would have mandated per se reversal of Sharp‘s conviction. The first two subsections of
After Sharp had been convicted and sentenced, he raised the absence of the required procedures in a motion for a new trial.15
Attached to this motion was an affidavit by the court reporter consisting of a transcript of the defendant‘s arraignment outside of the jury‘s presence at the beginning of trial.16 This transcriрt excerpt purported to demonstrate that, although Sharp‘s plea had been taken during the arraignment, after the arraignment the trial proceeded without the required reading of the indictment
The Court of Criminal Appeals began by stating that the motion for new trial was “a proper method to show error in the record.”17 The court also noted, however, thаt article 44.24(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure created a presumption that the prescribed procedures had been followed.18 The affidavit and transcript
excerpt were adjudged insufficient to rebut this presumption because, addressing only the arraignment at the start of trial, they failed to demonstrate affirmatively that the prescribed procedures had not been followed at some other juncture. The court thereafer applied the article 44.24(a) presumption of regularity to disрose of Sharp‘s claim.
Sharp‘s original brief is unclear regarding the particular acts or omissions of trial counsel which constituted the alleged ineffective assistance of counsel. In oral argument, however, Sharp‘s habeas counsel focused upon the failure of trial counsel to attach the correct affidavit to the motion for new trial. Habeas counsel contends that if the error had been preserved in such a way as to obviate the appellate court‘s ability to rely upon the presumption of regularity in the lower court proceedings, the result would have been automatic reversal. Based upon our review of Texas jurisprudence we conclude that Sharp‘s counsel did not perform deficiently because a reasonably competent attorney could not have known, prior to the Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision in this case, that the motion for new trial would be deemed insufficient to preserve the errоr adequately.19
issue in the trial court,” there would have been no need for Sharp to demonstrate that the trial court‘s failure “appeared affirmatively” from the record and the Court of Criminal Appeals could have reached the merits of his claim. But that was not to be.
In Sharp, the Court of Criminal Appeals states that Sharp “made no objection at trial, so the only part of Art. 44.24(a) that is аpplicable is whether there exists an affirmative showing to the contrary in the record.”22 In support of this proposition, the court cited Warren v. State.23 Warren, however, held only that when the error is discovered after the trial, reintroduction of the prosecution‘s evidence, the method usually employed to cure the absence of the indictment/plea procedure,24 is impracticable, and a new trial is the appropriate remedy.
More importantly, in Warren the error complained of, the prosecutor‘s failure to read enhancement parаgraphs of an indictment to the sentencing jury, was raised by a motion for mistrial after sentence had been rendered and the jury had been dismissed. These circumstances, dispositive in Sharp‘s case, were treated differently by the Warren court:
While appellant‘s objection was not the ‘proper’ trial objection, it did raise the issue before the trial court. The jury had been dismissed and a motion for new trial would have [been] the appropriate remedy: but since appellant presented the ‘issuе’ to the court at that time, it had the same effect as a motion for new trial. Thus, a motion for new trial was unnecessary. It matters not that the showing was subsequent to the conviction.25
Warren went on to declare that in moving for a mistrial postverdict, a procedure which the Warren court had already avowed had the “same effect” as a moving for a new trial, “appellant ‘made an issue’ of the failure to read the indictment and enter a plea in the court below.”26 Despite this plain language, the Sharp court cited Warren as authority for the proрosition that Sharp‘s motion for a new trial was insufficient to make an issue of the procedural defect in the trial court.
We must conclude that Texas law addressing the issue at bar at least was conceptually amorphous and unsettled at the time of Sharp‘s conviction and appeal.27 For this reason, we conclude that Sharp‘s counsel did not perform deficiently by failing to attach
the elusive correct affidavit to his motion for a new trial.28 This conclusion is based on the fact that reasonable investigation into the applicable law, involving of course a review of relevant prior jurisprudence at the time of Sharp‘s trial, would have taught that the
Furthermore, it is clear from trial counsel‘s testimony at the evidentiary hearing that his decision to wait until after the verdict to raise the violation was a calculated move. Had he lodged an objection prior to the verdict the traditional remedy for preverdict violations of the plea/indictment rule, i.e. compliance with the procedural rule followed by resubmission оf the prosecution‘s case,29 would have no doubt been applied. The error
would have been trumped. The result would have been the loss of a claim which offered the real prospect of a new trial, either in the trial court or on appeal. By waiting until the motion for new trial to raise his claim, Sharp‘s counsel sought to pursue what he reasonably perceived to be the wisest possible strategy. The trial judge apparently considered that it had merit. That the Court of Criminal Appeals derailed this strategy does not retrоactively render counsel‘s performance constitutionally deficient.
The procedural defect involved herein is a matter purely of state, not federal, law, and therefore is in and of itself not cognizable on federal habeas corpus review.30
Finally, we find no merit whatever in Sharp‘s mere speculation that counsel was ineffective for failing to secure expert assistance relative to the hair found in the truck or the blood on his knife.
Because Sharp has nоt raised a cognizable constitutional issue, which we may address in this federal habeas review, which puts into question the federal constitutional fairness of his trial or its result, our result is mandated.
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.