Opinion ID: 3062180
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion of Evidence of a Third-Party Culprit

Text: -13- Defendant claims that he was denied his constitutional right to present a complete defense when the trial court excluded evidence that somebody else had committed the murders. The OCCA rejected this claim on the merits. See Dodd, 100 P.3d at 1032–34. We cannot say that this decision was contrary to or an unreasonable application of law clearly established by the Supreme Court. 2
Before trial, Defendant filed a notice of intent to present evidence that a person other than the accused had committed the murders. The motion listed more than a dozen items of potential evidence; but we recite only the items that Defendant emphasizes in this appeal. Robert McInturff, father of victim Shane McInturff, made a statement to the police on November 7, 1994, the day the bodies were discovered. In it he recounted Shane’s telling him the prior June that Shane had run up a debt with a woman named Gidget, whom he had met at a pool hall, and that Gidget and some Asians had forced him to sign over the title to his 1990 Grand Am under threat of death. Shane’s mother Anne McInturff made a similar statement the same day. She repeated Shane’s story of Gidget, the Asians, and the car, but she added that Shane had told her that Gidget had initially taken his $350 pool cue in satisfaction of the debt. She also said that Shane was 2 Defendant also complains that the court improperly kept him from introducing certain evidence at the sentencing phase. Because we grant relief from his sentences in Part III.D of this opinion, we do not reach this claim. Our discussion here addresses only the guilt-phase exclusion of Defendant’s proffered evidence of a third-party culprit. -14- “scared to death” after losing his car and “would look out the window before answering the door.” Supp. Crim. App. Original R. at 16, State v. Dodd, No. CF-94-7724 (D. Okla. May 9, 2003). Both parents told the police that the victims had moved into their home while they were away on vacation in June 1994. In addition, Defendant cites the statement of another resident of the victims’ apartment complex, who told the police that “on the night of the 6th around 2:00 A.M. (Monday morning),” 3 she was awakened by the sound of a gunshot and then heard people running next to the building “saying something in another language.” Id. at 33. This resident testified at Defendant’s first trial that the language may have been Middle Eastern. Finally, Defendant cites the police statement of a friend of Shane McInturff who said that roughly a week before the murders, Shane had called her to say he had too large a quantity of drugs, needed to get rid of it, and would cut the price on the pot he had. She said that Shane had “sounded very nervous.” Id. at 36. The trial court excluded Defendant’s proffered evidence of a third-party culprit, ruling that the evidence failed to comply with Oklahoma’s overt-act rule. 3 Defendant says that in a later affidavit this witness clarified that she had been awakened in the early morning hours on Sunday morning. But because Defendant never presented the affidavit to the OCCA, we may not consider it in deciding whether the OCCA’s determination on this issue was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. See Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1398 (2011) (“[R]eview under § 2254(d)(1) is limited to the record that was before the state court that adjudicated the claim on the merits.”). -15- At the time of trial, Oklahoma courts had interpreted this rule to mean that “evidence offered to show that some other person committed the crime charged must connect such other person with the fact; that is[,] some overt act on the part of another towards the commission of the crime itself.” Dennis v. State, 879 P.2d 1227, 1232 (Okla. Crim. App. 1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). Evidence showing merely “a possible motive on the part of another,” unaccompanied by “evidence of acts or circumstances that tend clearly to point to another, rather than the accused,” would not satisfy this rule. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). On direct appeal the OCCA affirmed the trial court’s ruling. It said that Defendant’s proffered evidence “not only failed to establish an overt act by a third party, but more fundamentally, it failed to establish an identifiable third party with a motive to harm either [victim].” Dodd, 100 P.3d at 1033. It further observed regarding the various items of evidence that “the more specific one item was, the more likely it was inconsistent with the others.” Id. And it concluded: “Because the proffered evidence was ambiguous and entirely speculative as to a potential alternative suspect, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding it from the guilt stage of trial to avoid confusion of the issues.” Id. The OCCA then “reject[ed] [Defendant’s] claim that barring this evidence violated his constitutional right to a fair trial, because it prevented him from mounting a defense.” Id. It explained: -16- [Defendant] has not demonstrated that the general rules of relevancy, codified in our Evidence Code, worked to deny him this right. [Defendant] was simply barred from presenting what, in the trial court’s discretionary determination, did not tend to be probative of any fact in issue. Id. The court also emphasized that Defendant had been permitted to put on substantial evidence that someone else must have committed the murders: [Defendant] was able to present evidence and argument on many of the subjects he lists as alternative-suspect evidence. For example, the jury was made aware that the victims possessed paraphernalia not only for ingesting drugs, but for distributing them as well. Expert testimony showed that some DNA recovered from the bloody hand towel did not match either victim or [Defendant], and that numerous latent fingerprints lifted from the crime scene did not match either the victims or [Defendant.] In addition, [Defendant] presented expert testimony as to the unlikelihood that a lone assailant could have held two victims in submission without restraining them in some manner, and testimony was presented that the manner of killing was reminiscent of gang violence. Id. The court concluded: Thus, [Defendant] was permitted, within the parameters of the Evidence Code, to advance and attempt to support his claim that a reasonable doubt existed that he was the perpetrator. Id.
Defendant argues that the denial of his constitutional claim was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established law set forth in a number of Supreme Court precedents. Two statements by the Court are probably the most helpful to his position. The first is: “Whether rooted directly in the Due Process -17- Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or in the Compulsory Process or Confrontation clauses of the Sixth Amendment, the Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense.” Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 683, 690 (1986) (even after trial court had decided that confession was admissible, defendant was constitutionally entitled to put on evidence of circumstances of confession to show that it was unreliable) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The second is: “Restrictions on a criminal defendant’s rights to confront adverse witnesses and to present evidence ‘may not be arbitrary or disproportionate to the purposes they are designed to serve.’” Michigan v. Lucas, 500 U.S. 145, 151 (1991) (Constitution did not necessarily require admission of evidence of prior sexual relationship between rape victim and defendant when defense did not comply with requirement of notice to prosecution) (quoting Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 56 (1987) (rejecting per se rule excluding hypnotically refreshed testimony when applied to defendant’s own testimony)). At the same time, however, the Supreme Court has never questioned the traditional reasons for excluding evidence that may have some relevance. The formulation in Federal Rule of Evidence 403 sets them forth as follows: “The court may exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or -18- needlessly presenting cumulative evidence.” Fed. R. Evid. 403. Thus, Crane said: We acknowledge . . . our traditional reluctance to impose constitutional constraints on ordinary evidentiary rulings by state trial courts. In any given criminal case the trial judge is called upon to make dozens, sometimes hundreds, of decisions concerning the admissibility of evidence. As we reaffirmed earlier this Term, the Constitution leaves to the judges who must make these decisions “wide latitude” to exclude evidence that is “repetitive . . . , only marginally relevant” or poses an undue risk of “harassment, prejudice, [or] confusion of the issues.” Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679 (1986). Moreover, we have never questioned the power of States to exclude evidence through the application of evidentiary rules that themselves serve the interests of fairness and reliability—even if the defendant would prefer to see that evidence admitted. 476 U.S. at 689–90. As the Court recently observed, “[o]nly rarely” has it “held that the right to present a complete defense was violated by the exclusion of defense evidence under a state rule of evidence.” Nevada v. Jackson, 133 S. Ct. 1990, 1992 (2013) (per curiam). Of the four cases cited by Jackson for this proposition, three predated the OCCA’s decision in this case. All are readily distinguishable. In the first, Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 16 (1967), the defendant wished to call as a witness his previously convicted accomplice, who would testify that the defendant had tried to persuade the accomplice to leave and then fled before the accomplice fired the fatal shot. “It [was] undisputed that [the accomplice’s] testimony would have been relevant and material, and that it was -19- vital to the defense.” Id. But under a state rule of evidence, testimony by accomplices was generally excluded. See id. at 16–17. The Court held that the rule was absurd, particularly since it had exceptions if the accomplice had been acquitted or was testifying for the prosecution, when the danger of perjury would be enhanced. See id. at 22–23. As Jackson summarized, the state evidentiary rule in Washington “could not be rationally defended.” 133 S. Ct. at 1992. The next cited decision was Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284 (1973). The defendant was charged with murder. See id. at 287. Another person (McDonald) had made a written confession and had orally confessed to three different friends. See id. at 287–89. The defendant called McDonald as a witness, and the written confession was admitted into evidence. See id. at 291. On cross-examination the state elicited that McDonald had repudiated the confession, and McDonald explained why he had falsely confessed. See id. Defense counsel then sought to cross-examine McDonald as an adverse witness but, because of a state voucher rule forbidding a party to impeach his own witness, he could not cross-examine McDonald about his confessions. See id. at 291–92, 295–96. Also, because of the state hearsay rule the defendant was not permitted to call the three friends to testify about McDonald’s confessions. See id. at 292–93. The Court noted that the state had not sought to defend its voucher rule “or explain its underlying rationale,” id. at 297, and it held that there were strong indicia of reliability of the oral confessions, see id. at 298–303. To -20- exclude all this evidence, it ruled, violated the defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial. See id. at 302–03. The third decision was Rock. In that case the defendant himself was prevented from testifying to the extent that his memory had been hypnotically refreshed. See 483 U.S. at 47–48. The Court held that the state’s per se rule excluding hypnotically refreshed memories must yield to an individualized examination of the reliability of the testimony in the particular case. See id. at 61–62. In each of these cases the excluded evidence could not have been more relevant. If believed, the evidence in itself would have established the defendant’s innocence. Yet the state court either had provided no rationale for the exclusion, see Chambers, 410 U.S. at 297, could not defend an absurd rule, see Washington, 388 U.S. at 22–23, or had failed to examine the reliability of the specific evidence in that case, see Rock, 483 U.S. at 61–62; Chambers, 410 U.S. at 298–303. Not so in this case. The excluded evidence merely suggested the possibility of other culprits. The OCCA examined the evidence and found it “ambiguous and entirely speculative as to a potential alternative suspect.” Dodd, 100 P.3d at 1033. And, it said, exclusion would eliminate what “amounted only to evidence of the victim’s bad character” and would “avoid confusion of the issues.” Id. Nor did the court rely on a rigid rule to require exclusion. The OCCA noted that “the defense . . . failed to establish an overt act by a third -21- party,” but its analysis of the admissibility of the evidence and Defendant’s fairtrial claim addressed traditional factors in evidentiary rulings. Id. We may well have ruled differently on the admissibility of the evidence, but the OCCA’s assessment of the evidence was not irrational and it did not contradict or unreasonably apply clear Supreme Court precedent. 4 We briefly address three other decisions on which Defendant relies. He cites Crane as supporting his complete-defense argument. The opinion is relevant but unhelpful to Defendant. In Crane the state court, after ruling that the defendant’s confession was voluntary and therefore admissible, excluded testimony about the circumstances of his confession. See 476 U.S. at 684–86. The Supreme Court held that the exclusion violated the defendant’s constitutional right to present a complete defense. See id. at 690. The evidence was certainly relevant; the defendant could be acquitted only if he could convince the jury that his confession was unreliable. Yet neither the state courts nor the prosecution briefs “advanced any rational justification for the wholesale exclusion of this 4 Defendant argues that in addressing his constitutional claim, the OCCA improperly reviewed the trial court’s actions for abuse of discretion. He contends that application of the abuse-of-discretion standard to a constitutional claim is improper, citing Richie v. Workman, 599 F.3d 1131, 1137–38 (10th Cir. 2010). But Richie was considering only the sufficiency of the evidence to support a lesser-included instruction, an issue we have described as one of law. See Gilson v. Sirmons, 520 F.3d 1196, 1234 (10th Cir. 2008). Evidentiary rulings, in contrast, are generally reviewed for abuse of discretion because of the trial judge’s superior vantage point in assessing probative value and the considerations favoring exclusion. In any event, a fair reading of the OCCA decision indicates that it was making an independent determination of the relevant factors. -22- body of potentially exculpatory evidence.” Id. at 691. Again, the evidence here was not as relevant and there were rational grounds for exclusion. The other Supreme Court case cited by Defendant, Holmes v. South Carolina, 547 U.S. 319 (2006), concerns a relevant legal issue, but because it postdated the OCCA decision in this case it could not establish law benefitting Defendant under § 2254(d)(1). See Williams, 529 U.S. at 412. We describe it, however, because it actually weakens Defendant’s argument. In Holmes a state rule barred evidence that the crime was committed by a third party if there was “‘strong forensic evidence’” of the defendant’s guilt. 547 U.S. at 324. The Court unanimously held that the evidence could not be excluded because of the strength of the state’s case, as opposed to the weakness of the proffered evidence or the risk of undue confusion or the like. See id. at 328–31. At the same time, however, it noted the wide acceptance of rules limiting “the admission of evidence proffered by criminal defendants to show that someone else committed the crime with which they are charged.” Id. at 327. Even by the time of Holmes it was not clearly established that all such evidence must be admitted. Defendant’s third case is our decision in Paxton v. Ward, 199 F.3d 1197 (10th Cir. 1999). He relies on the statement in that case that Supreme Court precedents like Rock and Chambers “make[] clear that a state court may not apply a state rule of evidence in a per se or mechanistic manner so as to infringe upon a defendant’s constitutional right to a fundamentally fair trial.” Id. at 1214. But as -23- we have just explained, that is not what the OCCA did in Defendant’s case. Rather than applying the overt-act rule mechanistically or inflexibly, it analyzed Defendant’s evidence on the merits and found it “ambiguous and entirely speculative as to a potential alternative suspect.” Dodd, 100 P.3d at 1033. Finally, Defendant argues that regardless of whether the initial evidentiary exclusion was constitutional, during guilt-phase closing arguments the prosecution improperly commented on the absence of evidence of a third-party perpetrator by challenging defense counsel to “cut to the chase” and asking, “What is the reasonable theory of innocence . . . ?” Tr. of Proceedings, Vol. 16 at 105–06, Dodd, No. CF-94-7724 (D. Okla. May 30, 2002) (Tr.). These remarks, Defendant suggests, infringed on his constitutional right to present a complete defense because they “double[d] down by highlighting the defense failure to present the very evidence prosecutors succeeded in excluding.” Aplt. Br. at 21. He relies on our decision in Paxton. We are not persuaded. After the defendant in Paxton had been found guilty of murdering a friend, the prosecution presented evidence during the sentencing stage that he had been charged in the shooting death of his wife years earlier. See 199 F.3d at 1202–03. The circumstances of the wife’s death occupied “the bulk of the state’s evidence” during this stage. Id. at 1212. The defendant offered into evidence a court order stating that the charge against him had been dismissed because he had been cleared by a polygraph examination. See id. at 1211. But the trial court excluded -24- the evidence under a state rule that polygraph results could not be admitted for any purpose. See id. At closing argument the prosecutor told the jury that the defendant had failed to introduce any evidence countering the state’s version of events and that nobody knew why the charges had been dismissed. See id. at 1212–13. We ruled that the evidentiary exclusion had violated the defendant’s Eighth Amendment right to present mitigating evidence at the sentencing phase, and that the defendant had been denied his due-process right to explain or deny the evidence against him. See id. at 1215–16. Two key distinctions set Paxton apart from this case. First, in Paxton the problematic closing argument occurred during the sentencing phase. We substantially relied on Supreme Court cases relating to a defendant’s opportunity to present mitigating evidence not admissible under ordinary evidentiary rules. See id. at 1213–14. Second, the prosecutor in Paxton outright lied to the jury. He knew the reason why the charges against the defendant had been dismissed; but knowing that evidence of that reason was excluded, he falsely asserted that the reason was unknown. That is not what happened here. Defendant’s principal challenge is to the following remarks in the State’s closing argument (we emphasize the portions specifically referred to in Defendant’s opening brief): I know that as you all listen to the argument of Defense Counsel that you’re going to be thinking about the evidence in this case. And you could pick this case apart, but I know that the thing -25- you’re going to want Ms. Hammarsten [defense counsel] or whoever argues over there on their side, is to take a look at that circumstantial evidence case and say, Ms. Hammarsten, from the evidence in the case taken together, what is the reasonable theory of innocence consistent with all of the evidence taken together, inconsistent with guilt and consistent with innocence, not picking it apart, not just this or that, Ms. Hammarsten, I think what you all want to know— [Defense counsel raises objection, which court overrules.] What you all want Ms. Hammarsten to know when she gets up here, is let’s cut to the chase, Ms. Hammarsten. What is the reasonable theory of innocence, not consistent with one item or two, but consistent with all of the evidence showing that [Defendant], the guy right here, is the one who had the motive, the opportunity, the capacity, and he’s the one who did the killer stuff. What is the reasonable theory of innocence? That’s, I believe, what you want Ms. Hammarsten to tell you right now. Tr., Vol. 16 at 105–06 (emphasis added). In rebuttal closing argument the State continued this attack, asserting, “[Y]ou still have no reasonable theories of innocence.” Id. at 165. Fairly understood, the State’s argument was simply that there was no reasonable view of the evidence other than Defendant’s guilt. This was a permissible comment on the evidence at trial. And there was no assertion of a fact known by the prosecutor to be untrue. In particular, the State did not assert that there was no piece of evidence that supported innocence. On the contrary, the closing argument appeared to concede that point. And we cannot say, as was true in Paxton, that the prosecution knew that excluded evidence contradicted what was said in closing. Indeed, the prosecutors here could have made the same -26- argument even if the excluded evidence had been admitted. It would not be unreasonable, as we have already said, to view that evidence as speculative. Under AEDPA deference we cannot sustain this claim.
At oral argument before this court, defense counsel’s first contention was that the trial court had violated Defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause by restricting the cross-examination of Anne McInturff, whose son was one of the victims. On direct examination she testified that her son would have told her if he had been in any trouble or needed help and that at the time of his death she had no information suggesting that he was in trouble or danger of any kind. Counsel argued to us that the court should not have forbidden trial counsel from cross-examining her about her statement to the police that her son had been scared to death after the loss of his car. This argument has substantial merit. But it comes too late. Although one might be able to extract the Confrontation Clause argument from Defendant’s opening brief in this court, it was never raised before that. At trial, in responding to the testimony of Anne McInturff, defense counsel re-urged her prior motion to permit evidence of a third-party perpetrator, but she did not distinguish Ms. McInturff’s prior inconsistent statement in particular and say that the Confrontation Clause guaranteed Defendant the right to elicit it on crossexamination. And after the motion was denied, defense counsel did not conduct -27- any cross-examination of Ms. McInturff. The trial court would not have been alerted to the special reason to allow cross-examination about the prior inconsistent statement. Likewise, Defendant’s brief on direct appeal to the OCCA mentioned Ms. McInturff’s testimony, but the only constitutional claim in that discussion was that the exclusion of substantive evidence had denied Defendant’s right to present a complete defense. Nowhere did Defendant argue that he had also been denied the right to cross-examine Ms. McInturff under the Confrontation Clause. His applications for state postconviction relief contained no Confrontation Clause argument, either. Nor was the argument raised in federal district court. We know of no precedent authorizing us to review an issue not exhausted in state court and not presented to the federal district court.