Opinion ID: 810014
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: State Post-Conviction Relief

Text: 7 On October 20, 1999, Boyd, now employing new counsel, filed a motion for relief from his conviction and sentence pursuant to Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure. We set out the rest of the procedural history surrounding Boyd’s state collateral attack because it is central to understanding the issues raised in this appeal. The State moved to dismiss several of Boyd’s claims; thereafter Boyd filed motions for discovery. In January 2002, the State moved to amend its answer to the petition and filed an amended answer. On March 15, 2002, the trial court set a hearing date (June 14, 2002) for all pending motions. Some thirty-one months after filing the first petition, on May 15, 2002, Boyd filed an amended petition. At no time, however, did he move the court for leave to amend, nor did the trial court ever grant the petitioner leave to amend his Rule 32 petition. In the amended petition, he reasserted the claims he had set out in his original one, but added several new ones. As for some of the original claims, he provided more detail. Boyd raised three claims in both his original and amended petitions that are particularly relevant. First, in the original petition, he argued ineffective assistance based on his trial counsel’s failure to investigate mitigation evidence for the penalty phase. According to the petitioner, his counsel should have obtained information relevant to his medical history, educational history, employment and 8 training history, family and social history, correctional history, and any religious or cultural influences. Boyd argued that this information would have “revealed a host of mitigating factors.” While conceding that trial counsel had called numerous witnesses at the penalty phase to testify about his character, the petitioner complained that counsel never interviewed them prior to offering their testimony. Boyd also listed the names of several other witnesses whom trial counsel failed to call even though they could have testified about Boyd’s widespread, positive impact on the community, his leadership abilities and how he mentored young children in his community. Boyd also added new penalty-phase ineffectiveness claims in the amended petition. Boyd asserted for the first time that trial counsel was ineffective at sentencing because the mitigation expert utilized by defense counsel needed more time to investigate. He also suggested that trial counsel should have investigated whether chemical pollution in the Anniston area might have caused a drop in his IQ, and, thereby, an increase in his propensity toward criminality. Boyd also claimed in his original petition that his trial counsel was ineffective at the guilt phase in failing to adequately investigate and challenge the State’s capital murder charge. Specifically, Boyd urged that his counsel failed to thoroughly investigate each available avenue of defense, improperly relied on the 9 State’s version of events, failed to interview the defense’s witnesses prior to trial, failed to uncover exculpatory evidence, failed to contest the constitutionality of his arrest, and failed to object to irrelevant and prejudicial evidence introduced during the trial. The petitioner also claimed that his trial counsel failed to adequately examine or cross-examine several witnesses. Boyd raised this claim again in his amended petition, asserting for the first time however that, among other things, six alibi witnesses were not interviewed, were spoken to only briefly or were not asked about events during the alleged time of the victim's death. He also proffered a brief summary of the putative testimony these witnesses would have given. Finally, Boyd argued in his original petition that the State had violated Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), by failing to disgorge exculpatory evidence. He claimed that the State failed to provide exculpatory statements made by Boyd while he was in police custody and at the District Attorney’s office prior to being charged. He also claimed the State failed to turn over exculpatory evidence learned from interviews with the petitioner’s co-defendants, Quintay Cox, Shawn Ingram and Marcel Ackles. Boyd also suggested the State failed to provide the defense with conflicting accounts made by several of the State’s witnesses and also failed to disclose some unspecified deals purportedly made 10 with some of the State’s witnesses who had criminal records.2 Still other claims were raised in the original and amended petitions, and we touch on them, briefly, below. On June 14, 2002, a hearing was held on the State’s motion to dismiss. After the hearing, Boyd submitted an offer of proof and affidavits in support of the claims contained in his amended petition. On July 8, 2002, the State objected to the offer of proof and the amended petition, observing that the petitioner was unnecessarily dilatory in making these claims and presenting the offer of proof. The State argued that the trial court would be well within its discretion to deny any amendment because of Boyd’s lack of diligence. The state trial court had scheduled an evidentiary hearing for October 2324, 2002. However, on August 28, 2002, the trial court dismissed Boyd’s original 2 In the amended petition, Boyd added new Brady claims. This time, he asserted that, on the evening of July 31, 1993, Officer Raines chased Boyd for trespassing in the Glen Addie housing project, but no logs or reports that would have helped establish a timeline were produced. He also claimed that on the night of July 31, 1993, and into the early morning of August 1, 1993, an incident when Boyd was present occurred at the Executive Inn in Oxford, Alabama, that caused the Anniston Police Department to be dispatched to that location, but that the State again failed to produce logs which would have established the time of the altercation. Boyd further accused the State of having failed to turn over the investigating officers’ field notes, which, he claims, he had a right to inspect. Finally, Boyd noted that the State informed the court that it had a tape recording of the petitioner threatening Roderick Dye if he testified, but the State never produced this tape or evidence of other threats supposedly made by Boyd to various witnesses. 11 Rule 32 petition without any reference to the upcoming hearing. Notably, the court never ruled on the claims contained in Boyd’s amended Rule 32 petition. The petitioner appealed the trial court’s determination to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, but was denied relief there as well. Boyd v. State, 913 So. 2d 1113 (Ala. Crim. App. 2003). The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals first addressed Boyd’s claim that the trial court had erred in dismissing his Rule 32 petition without considering the additional facts and claims he presented in his amended petition. The Court of Criminal Appeals agreed that the trial court did not consider or rule on the additional facts and additional claims he presented in the amended petition. It noted, however, that Boyd had never moved the court for leave to file an amended petition, that the trial court had never entered an order granting Boyd leave to do so, that Boyd had never objected in any way to the trial court’s failure to rule on his amended petition, and that the trial court had never taken any action suggesting that it had granted Boyd leave to file an amended petition, or even that it would consider the claims presented in an amended petition. Because Boyd had failed to invoke any ruling on the amended pleading and voiced no dissatisfaction with or objection to the trial court’s failure to rule until his case arrived in the appellate court, where the matter was raised for the first time, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that any of the 12 allegations he raised only for the first time in his amended petition had not been preserved for review, and thus were not properly before the Court of Criminal Appeals. Id. at 1123-24. The state appellate court did consider the claim in Boyd’s original petition that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to adequately investigate and present mitigation evidence critical at the penalty phase. Boyd had made numerous unsupported claims offering little or no specificity, in violation of Alabama Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.6(b) (“Rule 32.6(b)”). The court found that Boyd’s petition did not suggest an alternate defense that counsel should have pursued during the penalty phase. Nor did Boyd disclose any mitigating factor that would have been revealed had counsel properly investigated and prepared for the penalty phase. Nor, finally, did petitioner disclose the substance of the expected testimony of any of the potential mitigation witnesses. Id. at 1138-39. The court also found that to the extent Boyd claimed potential mitigation witnesses would have attested to Boyd’s positive impact in his community, this testimony would have been cumulative. Id. at 1139. Because Boyd failed to allege how his trial counsel was deficient or, indeed, how the outcome of the trial would have been different had his counsel performed differently, the appellate 13 court concluded that Boyd failed to state a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). Id. The appellate court also considered the petitioner’s guilt-phase ineffectiveassistance-of-counsel claim raised in the original petition. It agreed with the trial court’s findings -- that the claim was properly dismissed pursuant to Rule 32.6(b) because the claim was insufficiently specific and because the defense put on by trial counsel was a reasonable one. Boyd’s claim did not disclose any critical exculpatory evidence that trial counsel should have uncovered, nor any specific piece of evidence that went uncovered based on ineffective assistance, nor did it offer any reason why Boyd’s arrest and pretrial detention were unlawful, nor did Boyd even suggest how counsel had failed to adequately cross-examine witnesses or what information had been omitted as a result of inadequate cross-examination. Indeed, Boyd had not so much as suggested what kind of defense counsel should have investigated or mounted. Id. at 1131-32. The appellate court also found that Boyd had not alleged how the outcome of his trial would have been different had counsel performed differently. Thus, it concluded once again that petitioner failed to state a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland. Finally, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals addressed Boyd’s claim found in his original petition that the prosecution violated Brady v. Maryland. 14 First, it found that the Brady claims were procedurally barred because Boyd could have, but did not raise these claims at trial or on direct appeal. Moreover, the court determined that, in any event, these claims were insufficiently specific as required by Rule 32.6(b) because Boyd failed to allege the substance of his purportedly exculpatory statements or those of his co-defendants, nor did he identify any specific witnesses who supposedly had criminal records or gave conflicting accounts or what agreements were allegedly made with them. Finally, the appellate court agreed with the trial court’s findings that the petitioner’s Brady claim based on the prosecutor’s failure to turn over exculpatory statements made by Boyd himself while in police custody failed to state an independent ground for relief. Thereafter, the Alabama Supreme Court denied Boyd’s petition for writ of certiorari on May 27, 2005.