Opinion ID: 1487028
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Newly discovered evidence and the constitutional issue.

Text: We also conclude that the appellants' newly discovered evidence does not provide any previously unavailable support for their contention that the judge committed constitutional error at their trial. Although the appellants have presented new evidence relevant to their claim of actual innocence, that evidence has no logical or legal bearing on the constitutional issue that they now seek to relitigate. Under the standard articulated in Palumbo, a division of this court could properly reconsider the decision in Sousa if the appellants produced newly discovered evidence that could not reasonably have been presented at the original trial .... 608 F.2d at 533. The affidavits secured by the appellants, if true, establish that the exculpatory evidence that they now present was not available in 1975, and that at that time, the appellants had no reasonable opportunity to obtain it. [29] We will also assume, for purposes of this appeal, that at least where newly discovered evidence of actual innocence is relevant to a defendant's claim that his constitutional rights have been violated, that evidence may be presented and considered more than two years after final judgment. But if the court is to reconsider a previously rejected constitutional claim on the basis of newly discovered evidence, then elementary logic surely requires, and Palumbo implicitly contemplates, that the evidence must be relevant to the constitutional issue sought to be relitigated, and not just to the question of guilt or innocence. It is useful, in this connection, to compare the appellants' claim here with that of the defendant in a hypothetical case that we consider paradigmatic. Suppose that a defendant is convicted of murder after the trial judge admits the defendant's confession into evidence, rejecting the defendant's claim that the confession was coerced. The appellate court sustains the finding of no coercion and affirms the defendant's conviction. Ten years later, a conscience-stricken police officer provides the defense attorney with a videotape of the defendant's interrogation. The tape clearly shows the officer's colleagues beating the confession out of the defendant. Armed with his new evidence, the defendant now mounts a collateral attack on his conviction. He contends that his confession was unconstitutionally obtained and that it should have been excluded from evidence. The motions judge denies relief, deferring to the appellate court's earlier ruling that the confession was properly admitted. The defendant appeals again. Under the Palumbo standard, the appellate court is now free to revisit the decision issued on the defendant's direct appeal. This is so because the newly discovered evidence reveals that, contrary to the appellate court's belief at the time of the first appeal, the defendant's constitutional rights have been violated. In our hypothetical, the newly discovered evidence demonstrates that the confession was erroneously admitted and that the defendant was convicted of murder on the basis of evidence that was secured by unconstitutional means. In the present case, on the other hand, the newly discovered evidence provides no previously unavailable information regarding the question whether the trial judge's ruling impaired the appellants' rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. At the trial, the judge precluded the appellants from presenting certain evidence that they sought to elicit from various witnesses. That restriction was either constitutional, as this court held in Sousa, or it was not. The new affidavits by Jones and others which form the basis for the appellants' § 23-110 motion do not illuminate the question whether the judge's restrictions were constitutionally permissible. At most, these affidavits tend to show that, if there was a constitutional violation, then the consequences of that violation would have been even more severe if the appellants had possessed and attempted to adduce the newly discovered evidence, and if the judge had prevented them from doing so. [30] The new information, however, is of no help to appellants in their attempt to establish that the judge's rule was unconstitutional and that significant exculpatory evidence was excluded from the trial. We do not believe that the Supreme Court's decision in Schlup, supra note 23, is contrary to our analysis. [31] In Schlup, the Court held that in an extraordinary case presenting a fundamental miscarriage of justice, 513 U.S. at 321, 115 S.Ct. 851, a defendant who had been sentenced to death was entitled to have a successive (and, in the ordinary case, procedurally barred) federal habeas corpus petition heard on the merits, and could assert grounds previously rejected by the state and federal courts, if he was able to demonstrate, on the basis of newly discovered evidence not previously available to him, that no impartial jury could find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 321-32, 115 S.Ct. 851. Schlup is thus basically about federalism, and its gist is that a capital defendant [32] who presents newly discovered and compelling evidence of actual innocence may obtain federal habeas review of an otherwise defaulted constitutional claim. There is nothing in Schlup to suggest that, on remand, the United States District Judge could simply rule, without new evidence relevant to the constitutional issues, that the prior decisions of the United States Court of Appeals were erroneous and that he was not obliged to follow them. In any event, we conclude that the newly discovered evidence with which the appellants in this case seek to shift blame to two now-deceased Pagans (largely on the basis of an affidavit by a confessed murderer who now admits that he committed perjury at his trial and hearsay statements of uncertain admissibility implicating Jennings and Woods, see Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 598-602, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994)) does not meet the substantive standard articulated in Schlup and in the authorities on which Schlup relies. We therefore conclude that, as a division, we are bound by the disposition in Sousa of the appellants' constitutional contentions. We have no occasion to decide what, if any, action the full court could or should take with respect to these contentions in the event of a petition for rehearing en banc.