Opinion ID: 6323110
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Also saw clothes near the victim &

Text: another location saw blood on the ground a foot or two from the gun. .... USCA11 Case: 18-13524 Date Filed: 03/14/2022 Page: 166 of 182 18-13524 JORDAN, J., dissenting in part & concurring in part 7 Mark and Diane suspect girl [Hallock] did it, She changed her story couple times. . . . [?] She [?] said she tied his hands behind his back. [. . . . ] 52. The first sentence indicates that Flynn went down right where he was shot. That the gun was four to five feet away from the victim and that there was no indication that he had moved indi- cates that he was not in possession of the gun at the time he was shot. This con- tradicts Ms. Hallock’s version of a gun- fight. The fact that Ms. Hallock refused to lead the police to the scene where her companion lay bleeding to death, gave bad directions, coupled with other evi- dence such as the fact that she drove past the hospital when supposedly flee- ing the scene, strongly suggest that she did not want the victim to live to tell the truth. The statements should have been disclosed to defense counsel, but were not. Id. at 63–65 (emphasis added). Given this level of detail, the state post-conviction court understood and addressed Mr. Green’s Brady claim concerning the handwritten notes on the merits when it issued its first order in July USCA11 Case: 18-13524 Date Filed: 03/14/2022 Page: 167 of 182 8 JORDAN, J., dissenting in part & concurring in part 18-13524 of 2002. In Section H of that first order, which addressed “Suppression of Favorable Impeaching and/or Exculpatory Evidence,” the state post-conviction court expressly considered the Brady claim. Subsection 4 of Section H, entitled “Handwritten police statement dated 8/28/89,” explained that Mr. Green claimed a Brady violation based on the undisclosed handwritten notes and the statements contained in those notes. See D.E. 3-78 at 31 (“The Defendant next alleges that a handwritten police statement dated 8/28/89 with the names, Diane Clark and Mark Rixey, which the defense obtained through the Chapter 119 process[,] should have been disclosed pre-trial. The note contains the following statements . . . .”). The state post-conviction court denied the Brady claim on two grounds. First, “[a]ll of the information in the above notes was disclosed and known by defense counsel before trial; therefore[,] the Defendant has shown no prejudice.” Id. at 32. Second, the undisclosed evidence was not admissible. See id. See also id. at 32–34 (further explaining reasoning for the denial of the Brady claim). 1 In sum, Mr. Green devoted five to six pages of his post-conviction motion to laying out the facts underlying his Brady claim— the suppression of Mr. White’s notes indicating that Ms. Haddock 1 After issuing this order, the state post-conviction court held additional evidentiary hearings regarding certain other claims, after which it issued a second order granting Mr. Green’s post-conviction motion for a new penalty phase trial and denying the motion insofar as it sought a new guilt phase trial. Once that second order was issued, Mr. Green’s appeal to the Florida Supreme Court followed. USCA11 Case: 18-13524 Date Filed: 03/14/2022 Page: 168 of 182 18-13524 JORDAN, J., dissenting in part & concurring in part 9 had said she was the one who tied Mr. Flynn’s hands behind his back and that the officers on the scene suspected her of the murder. He cited to Brady, and explained why the evidence mattered (i.e., why it was material). The state post-conviction court correctly understood the claim and denied it on the merits with several pages of analysis. Mr. Green therefore exhausted the Brady claim in the state post-conviction court. B In the Florida Supreme Court, Mr. Green presented his Brady claim in roughly the same way he had presented it to the state post-conviction court. Argument VI of his brief was entitled “THE COURT ERRED IN DENYING GREEN’S CLAIM FOR RELIEF BASED ON INDIVIDUAL INSTANCES OF INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL AND NONDISCLOSURE OF EXCULPATORY EVIDENCE.” Mr. Green’s Br. to the Florida Supreme Court, 2006 WL 2363999, at  (Aug. 2, 2006). The introduction to Argument VI asserted that “[w]here exculpatory evidence was suppressed or concealed, Mr. Green is entitled to relief under Brady and/or Giglio,” and explained that this claim was pled as Claim III in the state post-conviction court. See id. at –. Mr. Green did not again set out the elements of a Brady claim, as he had already done so in Argument II, which presented a different Brady claim. See id. at  (“There are three elements of a Brady claim . . . .”) (citing, in part, to United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 107 (1976)). USCA11 Case: 18-13524 Date Filed: 03/14/2022 Page: 169 of 182 10 JORDAN, J., dissenting in part & concurring in part 18-13524 In the body of Argument VI, Mr. Green included a separate subsection entitled “Exculpatory and impeaching evidence relating to the initial police investigation.” In that subsection, which was several pages long, Mr. Green set out the contents of the non-disclosed notes: “A handwritten police statement dated 8/28/89 with the names Diana Clarke and Mark Rixey underlined on the front page was obtained through the Ch. 119 [process.] . . . It contains the following statement: ‘Mark & Diane suspect girl did it, she changed her story couple times . . . [?] She [?] said she tied his hands behind his back.’” Id. at . Mr. Green also argued that these notes were “not disclosed to the defense at trial.” Id. Finally, Mr. Green explained that, due to the non-disclosure of the notes, defense counsel did not confront Ms. Hallock at trial with either the drug deal gone bad scenario or with her statement that she had been the one to tie Mr. Flynn’s hands. The evidence set out in the notes, he continued, “was inconsistent with the [s]tate’s entire theory of the case. It tends to show that the killing was the result of a prearranged plan committed by one or more persons who knew the victim, not a chance encounter robbery gone bad.” Id. at . 2 2At oral argument, the state conceded that Mr. Green raised a Brady claim in his brief to the Florida Supreme Court as to the improper withholding of Mr. White’s handwritten notes but argued that he failed to raise a “discrete” theory with respect to the significance of the notes: JUDGE JORDAN: We need to go step by step . . . Did Mr. Green identify—if you want to say quote, that is fine too—[Mr. White’s USCA11 Case: 18-13524 Date Filed: 03/14/2022 Page: 170 of 182 18-13524 JORDAN, J., dissenting in part & concurring in part 11 handwritten notes] in his brief to the Florida Supreme Court? STATE: Yes. JUDGE JORDAN: Did he claim that there was an improper withholding of [Mr. White’s handwritten notes] from the defense? STATE: His claim was entitled something to the effect of he was denied effective assistance of counsel, there was a Brady claim and there was a Giglio claim, and that was pretty much the extent of his argument. JUDGE JORDAN: Did he say that the Brady claim was based on the withholding of [Mr. White’s handwritten notes]? STATE: If you really read into it, it could have. For example, Judge, the first question you asked me – the state trial court made this find- ing, is that a correct materiality finding? That was never argued to the state court. If that’s the basis of his argument, that had to have been presented to the state court. None of these arguments were ever presented to the state court. JUDGE JORDAN: So, your argument is that it wasn’t a Brady claim that wasn’t presented – it was the Brady theory that wasn’t presented? Because what I’m hearing is that he made a Brady claim on appeal, whatever you thought of it. STATE: Yes, he said, “I have a Brady claim,” and that’s all he said. USCA11 Case: 18-13524 Date Filed: 03/14/2022 Page: 171 of 182 12 JORDAN, J., dissenting in part & concurring in part 18-13524 Unlike the state post-conviction court, the Florida Supreme Court did not address Mr. Green’s Brady claim concerning the nondisclosure of Mr. White’s handwritten notes. See Green v. State, 975 So. 2d 1090, 1101-03 (Fla. 2008). Instead, the Florida Supreme Court discussed a separate Brady claim based on a box of loose photographs, but not the state’s failure to disclose the notes. See id. The Florida Supreme Court’s omission does not, however, change the fact that Mr. Green met the exhaustion requirement when he presented his claim in his brief. See generally O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 845 (1999) (holding that, to ensure exhaustion a petitioner must present their claims throughout “one complete round of the State’s established appellate review process.”). C In his second state post-conviction motion—filed in Febru- ary of 2011—Mr. Green again raised a Brady claim based on the JUDGE JORDAN: And he identified [Mr. White’s handwritten notes]? STATE: And he said, “here’s these notes.” He didn’t say why they were Brady material, how they provided any exculpatory evidence, or impeaching evidence, how they were material, no. He never argued any of that as a discrete point in his brief. Because if he had, we’d have all those findings to rely on now. Oral Argument at 29:54, Green v. Sec., Dep’t Corr., No. 18-13524 (11th Cir. 2022), https://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/oral-argument-recordings?title=1813524. USCA11 Case: 18-13524 Date Filed: 03/14/2022 Page: 172 of 182 18-13524 JORDAN, J., dissenting in part & concurring in part 13 non-disclosure of the handwritten notes containing the impressions of Deputies Rixey and Clarke about the crime scene and Ms. Hallock. Under the heading “The State Withheld Exculpatory Evidence,” Mr. Green quoted Mr. White’s notes and the sworn affidavits of Deputies Rixey and Clarke, which “point[ed] out that . . . [Ms.] Hallock changed the details of her story several times that night, including . . . who tied [Mr.] Flynn’s hands[.]” D.E. 26-9 at 11–12. Mr. Green argued that the notes were Brady material and that he suffered prejudice as a result of the state’s non-disclosure. See id. at 13. Both the state and the state post-conviction court understood that Mr. Green had already raised this Brady claim in his first state post-conviction motion. The state’s response to Mr. Green’s motion reveals as much. Under the heading “EXCULPATORY EVIDENCE WAS WITHHELD,” the state argued that Mr. Green sought to “revisit the allegations made in the prior post[-]conviction motion” regarding Mr. White’s handwritten notes and asserted that the “argument [was] barred because it was previously heard” and “[a] successive 3.850 is not intended as a second appeal.” Id. at 47 (emphasis added). The state post-conviction court agreed with the state, holding that Mr. Green’s Brady claim regarding Mr. White’s handwritten notes was barred as successive because it “was addressed in the first post-conviction motion . . . and affirmed on appeal to the Supreme Court of Florida.” Order in State v. Green, No. 05-1989-CF-004942-AXXX-XX, at ___ (Fla. 18th Cir. Ct. Aug. 31, 2011) (emphasis added). In 2011, then, both the state and USCA11 Case: 18-13524 Date Filed: 03/14/2022 Page: 173 of 182 14 JORDAN, J., dissenting in part & concurring in part 18-13524 the state post-conviction court were satisfied that Mr. Green had exhausted his Brady claim concerning the handwritten notes in his first round of post-conviction proceedings. Nothing has changed since then. In concluding that Mr. Green did not exhaust his Brady claim concerning the handwritten notes, the majority has focused (fixated might be a better word) on the numbering of the claims in the Florida post-conviction proceedings instead of analyzing the substance of the arguments that Mr. Green presented. That is not the correct approach, for “the ‘policy of federal state comity’ underlying the exhaustion doctrine does not compel the triumph of form over substance.” Henry v. Dep’t of Corr., 197 F.3d 1361, 1367 (11th Cir. 1999) (citation omitted).