Opinion ID: 524119
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Other Person Allegedly Exculpatory Evidence

Text: 35 On the night of the murder, the police sought any information which might give them a lead on any individual who might have committed the crime. They did have reports which showed that the victim had received phone calls with heavy breathing and harassing phone calls during the period of a week or more prior to her death. There was in the reports that she had other boy friends than her fiancee. There was a reported statement that the father of the victim's daughter was unhappy about the victim's proposed marriage. As with the Gray reported interviews the Court is of the opinion that these reports should have been produced under the Brady rule. As with the Gray reports, however, the Court concludes that there is not a reasonable probability that the disclosure of the evidence would have altered the result. 36 D. Broken Eyeglasses and Evidence that Mr. Sanders Did Not Know of Bobo Nickname Exculpatory Evidence 37 Petitioner also contends that a statement in the police files that the victim's father did not know anyone named Bobo and that a pair of broken glasses were found at the murder scene would have been exculpatory. The Court fails to see the materiality of the glasses. As for the father not knowing the defendant by the name of Bobo, there was evidence at the trial from a friend of the victim that when she was in the presence of the victim and defendant on two occasions, she never heard him called Bobo (Tr. 263). On the other hand, in addition to Ms. Wheeler's statement that Susie was going to talk with her cousin Bobo, Susie's mother and Jessie Bullard had heard Susie refer to defendant as Bobo, although Ms. Bullard was not clear as to whether the name was Bobo, Lobo, Jabbo, or something similar. Defense counsel made an issue at the trial as to whether persons knew defendant as Bobo. Defense counsel knew even before the first trial that the victim's father would be a witness. If the defense deemed his testimony on this point as critical, it certainly could have made inquiry. The Court does not deem his testimony as anything more than cumulative of the fact established by the defense without dispute that certain friends of the victim had never known of the nickname Bobo. The Court does not deem the failure to produce Mr. Sanders' statement as justifying the issuance of a writ. United States v. Bagley, supra. E. Inventory List Exculpatory Evidence 38 Petitioner told Mr. Clayton on the day Mr. Clayton lent petitioner his car that petitioner only had eight cents. When Mr. Clayton met petitioner about 6:30 p.m. on the afternoon of the murder, petitioner had money. He had bought gas for the car and offered to give some money to Mr. Clayton. He told Mr. Clayton that a girl had given him the money when they went to a motel together. 39 The State showed that the victim's fiancee had given her thirty dollars the morning of her death. This created a basis for believing that petitioner had taken this sum from the victim. Among the documents delivered to defense counsel in December, 1988, was a property inventory reflecting that a twenty-dollar and a ten-dollar bill were recovered by the police from the victim's residence. 40 The Montgomery County Circuit Court found that petitioner failed to show that the basis of this claim was unknown to him or that his counsel could not have ascertained this information through reasonable diligence at least by the time of petitioner's second trial, or at the time of the first coram nobis proceeding in 1985. The Circuit Court pointed out that defense counsel never sought the property inventory. The knowledgeable Circuit Judge expressed the opinion with which this Court has no basis for disagreeing that had it been sought it would have been produced. Finally, the Circuit Judge referred to the testimony of petitioner's present counsel that if he had read the trial transcript from the 1978 and 1982 trials, and had exercised reasonable diligence in tracking the chain of custody of the currency, he would have discovered the property inventory. Since defense counsel must concede that due diligence would have enabled him to obtain the information on the property inventory, procedural default appears to be correct. Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478, 488, 106 S.Ct. 2639, 2645, 91 L.Ed.2d 397 (1986). 41 The presence of the money in the house does not rule out the contention of the State that the defendant took money from the house after strangling the victim. Petitioner's relative, Mr. Clayton, testified as to defendant's implausible explanation relative to the money. The Court is not of the opinion that the property inventory would have been of such materiality as to justify granting the writ. 42 F. Exculpatory Evidence and Procedural Default 43 Judge Gordon, who conducted a lengthy evidentiary hearing on the instant petition on January 21, 1989, concluded that the claims based on allegedly newly discovered exculpatory evidence were procedurally barred because the petitioner or his counsel knew of the material or through the exercise of reasonable diligence could have secured the material. In part Judge Gordon may have logically based this opinion on the fact that as soon as petitioner's counsel in December of 1988 asked attorneys at the Attorney General's office if there was any Brady material in the police reports, the attorneys immediately set about to collect all the materials in the files of the Montgomery Police Department and made the files available to counsel for petitioner. This surely could have been done on petitioner's appeal or on his 1985 habeas petition. In both of these proceedings, the State was also represented by the Office of the State Attorney General. 44 Petitioner's attorneys assert that they did not ask earlier for the police files because they had assumed the Montgomery district attorney's office had provided the Brady material. They state that they had cause to suspect this might not be true when the Supreme Court of Alabama in Ex Parte Clarance Womack, 541 So.2d 47 (Ala.1988), reversed a conviction because of failure of the Montgomery district attorney's office to provide clearly exculpatory materials in violation of Brady. 45 This Court is unwilling to hold on the facts of this case that, if the prosecutor failed to produce evidence which was required to be produced under Brady and which failure was unknown to defendant's counsel, the claim is procedurally barred because defense counsel did not ferret out the violation. Such a ruling would reward the wrongdoer because he was not timely found out. This Court feels strongly that the repeated delays and appeals which take many years of almost endless litigation are serious and flagrant flaws in our judicial system. The rule that invokes a procedural bar in most instances is a much needed and salutary rule, but not if it is to be applied because the defendant's counsel was too trusting and accepted the representations of the prosecutor. Defense counsel should be able to rely on a belief that prosecutors will comply with the Constitution and will produce Brady material on request. 2 46 Although concluding that a procedural bar is not appropriate, this Court nevertheless has denied the writ because it has found that, even if such reports should have been produced it is not reasonably probable that they would have caused a different result. Because the state courts have not considered this newly produced evidence on the merits, viewing such issue as procedurally barred, this Judge is the only judge who has considered petitioner's claims with respect to this evidence. The Court believes that in this capital case another court should review this Court's conclusion as to whether such evidence requires an issuance of the writ under Bagley. For this reason, this Court has found probable cause for the appeal and has stayed petitioner's execution until such review has been effected. 47