Opinion ID: 2785252
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Murder of Valerie Hill

Text: At approximately 11:45 a.m. on Monday, March 30, 1987, Randall Hill (‚Randall‛) discovered the lifeless body of his twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Valerie Hill (‚Hill‛), on the living-room floor of her apartment on Hickok Avenue in Syracuse, New York. Transcript of the Trial of Hector Rivas (March 17, 1993) (‚Trial Tr.‛) at 103. Randall had last seen his daughter on Friday night, March 27, when the two met for dinner at a nearby restaurant. He later recalled that Hill seemed upset during their meeting and did not eat anything. Id. at 96–98. During their conversation, Hill informed her father that she was planning to spend the weekend visiting a friend in the Albany area and would not return until Sunday evening. Id. at 99. Hill left the restaurant at approximately 8:15 p.m. on Friday. Id. at 97–98. The friend Hill planned to visit, Laura Adams, later testified that she called Hill ‚dozens of times‛ on Friday night and throughout the weekend, but never 1 Although our previous recitation of the facts drew from both the record of Rivas’s state collateral proceeding and the evidentiary hearing held by the District Court, id. at 518, our review under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) ‚is limited to the record that was before the state court that adjudicated the claim on the merits,‛ Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1398 (2011). The footnotes within the quoted passages are numbered as in the original. Brackets are used to correct typographical errors. 8 reached her, although she encountered at least one ‚busy‛ signal. Id. at 217–19, 221. Randall also had no success when he attempted to call Hill on Sunday night and again Monday morning. Id. at 99–100. On Monday morning, Randall went to the hospital where Hill was employed as a pediatric nurse (and where Randall’s wife was then admitted as a patient) and discovered that Hill had not reported to work. Id. at 101, 103. Concerned, he drove to Hill’s apartment, where he found her car parked in the driveway. Randall let himself in through the unlocked side door and discovered Hill lying ‚face down on the carpet‛ in her living room. She was wearing a bathrobe, which was pulled ‚up around her shoulders,‛ and was otherwise naked. Id. at 100–03. The belt of the bathrobe was wrapped around her neck. Id. at 157. Randall immediately called the police, as well as his son, David. Id. at 104. Arriving at the scene, police investigators found no signs of forced entry into Hill’s apartment, which was on the bottom floor of a two- family house. Id. at 107, 228–29. The apartment was ‚very neat,‛ and nothing appeared to be out of order. Id. at 228. A number of cigarettes of the brand Rivas smoked were found in an ashtray in Hill’s kitchen. Id. at 150–51, 638. Later testing revealed that fingerprints on the ashtray, as well as on a bottle of wine, belonged to Rivas. Id. at 591–93.2 In addition to Rivas’s and Hill’s 2Rivas, having dated Hill, had been in her apartment many times before and it was undisputed at trial that he had been 9 fingerprints, an unidentified set of prints was taken from the telephone. Id. at 588. Missing from the apartment was an airline ticket that Hill had collected from her travel agent on the afternoon of Friday, March 27. After learning from Randall and David that Hill had recently broken up with Rivas, police officers went to Rivas’s house in Cazenovia, a town about twenty miles southeast of Syracuse. Id. at 235. Rivas agreed to accompany the officers to the Syracuse police station. Sergeant John D. Brennan later testified that Rivas appeared nervous,3 but was cooperative and did not inquire as to why he was being questioned. Id. at 237– 28. At the police station, Rivas was taken to an interrogation room where police proceeded to question him for approximately twelve hours. Despite the fact that he was interrogated at length regarding his activities the weekend of Hill’s death, Rivas was never informed of his Miranda rights because, the police officers later insisted, he was not regarded as a suspect at that time. Trial Tr. at 239. At approximately 5:30 p.m., after over two hours of questioning, police informed Rivas that Hill had been killed. According to Brennan, in her apartment as recently as Thursday, March 26, 1987. Id. at 240. 3 However, another officer who interviewed Rivas that day, Frank Pieklik, testified at a pretrial motions hearing that Rivas ‚appeared, as I recall, quite normal.‛ Transcript of Feb. 24, 1993, Hearing (‚Pretrial Hearing Tr.‛) at 30 (Feb. 24, 1993). 10 Rivas exhibited no discernible reaction upon hearing this news. Id. at 247. During the interview, Rivas told the police that he had last seen Hill four days earlier, on the evening of Thursday, March 26, 1987, when he had gone to her house and talked to her for half an hour. Id. at 240. He had also driven by Hill’s apartment at 2:00 p.m. the following day, Friday, March 27, and again approximately four hours later, at 6:00 p.m. He claimed he did not linger on either occasion after discovering that Hill was not home. Id. at 240–41. Rivas said that he had spent most of Friday evening with friends at various bars in Syracuse and Cazenovia. See Trial Exh. 1. He stated that he was at Coleman’s Bar (‚Coleman’s‛) in Syracuse from about 6:00 to 11:00 p.m. He then went to Albert’s Bar (‚Albert’s‛) in Cazenovia and stayed there until 2:00 a.m., before returning to Syracuse to get breakfast at an all-night diner. He finally went home and fell asleep at 4:00 a.m. Rivas claimed that he awoke at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday and returned to Albert’s to do some plumbing work. He remained for lunch and then went home to take care of some yard work. He then returned to Albert’s to watch Syracuse compete in the ‚Final Four‛ of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. He remained at Albert’s until approximately 8:00 p.m., whereupon he went to a party at a friend’s house until 4 a.m. on Sunday, March 29, before returning home to bed. As Rivas stated in the interview, many people saw him and spoke with him on Saturday night. Id. 11 While Rivas was being questioned at the station, other police officers put together an application for a warrant to search his residence. Attached to the application was an affidavit signed by Officer Timothy Phinney, attesting that there was probable cause to believe that several items would be found in Rivas’s home, including a key to Hill’s apartment and clothing soiled with blood, fecal matter, or other contaminants. See Motion to Vacate Sentence Pursuant to Criminal Procedure Law 440.10 (‚Section 440.10 Mot.‛) Exhs. 1 & 2. The affidavit also stated that the Onondaga County Medical Examiner, Dr. Erik Mitchell, had preliminarily estimated the time of Hill’s death to be ‚sometime [between] [S]aturday the 28th of March afternoon and S+unday morning the+ 29th of March 1987.‛ Id. Exh. 2.4 4 Contemporaneous newspaper articles also reported that Mitchell had estimated the time of death to have been sometime late Saturday night, March 28, to early Sunday morning, March 29. See, e.g., Mike McAndrew, ‚As Wife Lay Dying, Man Found His Daughter Slain,‛ The Syracuse Post–Standard, Apr. 1, 1987, at A1 (‚Onondaga County Medical Examiner Erik Mitchell has determined that Hill was strangled late Saturday or early Sunday, Deputy Police Chief Robert Galvin said.‛); John Doherty, ‚Police Have No Clues into Slaying of Nurse,‛ The Syracuse Post–Standard, Apr. 1, 1987, at B3 (‚An autopsy has determined that Valerie J. Hill . . . was strangled to death with the cloth belt of her bathrobe, police said. The report also indicated that she died sometime Saturday or early Sunday morning, police said.‛). We take judicial notice of ‚the fact that press coverage contained certain information, without regard to the truth of [its] contents.‛ Staehr v. Hartford Fin. Servs. Grp., 547 F.3d 406, 425 (2d Cir. 2008). 12 In the basement of Rivas’s house, investigators discovered a damp jacket draped over a clothesline. Trial Tr. [at] 274–75. Although a search of household trash was not expressly contemplated by the warrant, investigators also seized and reconstructed a torn-up note, which they found in a trash bag in Rivas’s kitchen.5 The note was from Hill to another former boyfriend, Bob Lucas, expressing her thanks for their time together. See Trial Exh. 5.6 Finally, inside a bedroom closet, investigators observed what they described as a ‚shrine,‛ consisting of a large statue of the Virgin Mary surrounded by two small candles and a photograph of Hill. Trial Tr. at 270–74, 316. Although photographs were taken of the trash bag that contained the note, as well as other items in Rivas’s house, no photograph was taken of the ‚shrine.‛ See id. 5 Rivas later argued that the note had been recovered from Hill’s apartment and not his. See Mem. Supp. § 440.10 Mot. at 34. 6 The note was admitted at trial over Rivas’s objection. On direct appeal, the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court held that the note should have been suppressed because it was not within the scope of the warrant and did not fall under the ‚plain view‛ exception, but that its improper admission at trial constituted harmless error. See People v. Rivas, 214 A.D.2d 996, 626 N.Y.S.2d 640, 641 (4th Dep’t 1995). [In our prior opinion, we explained that, because] in reviewing a claim of actual innocence we consider ‚all the evidence ... without regard to whether it would necessarily be admitted under rules of admissibility that would govern at trial,‛ House, 547 U.S. at 538, 126 S. Ct. 2064 (internal quotation marks omitted), we need not ignore the contents of the note. 13 Despite a thorough investigation, neither Rivas nor anyone else was charged with, or even publicly identified as a suspect in, Hill’s murder, which remained a ‚cold case‛ for five years.