Opinion ID: 166437
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Brecht Analysis

Text: “[W]e consider the question of harmless error de novo under the general standard established for habeas cases in Brecht.” Willingham v. Mullin, 296 F.3d 917, 931 (10th Cir. 2002). A state court has not previously heard Herrera’s habeas claim on the merits, so the framework of 28 U.S.C. § 2254 does not apply. Instead, we examine the district court’s legal conclusions de novo. Turrentine v. Mullin, 390 F.3d 1181, 1189 (10th Cir. 2004). Since our Herrera III remand was solely for the purpose of examining the evidence under Brecht, here we need focus solely on the district court’s record review. The Supreme Court has told us to start with the wrongly admitted evidence. The standard of review centers on whether the tainted evidence had a “substantial and injurious effect or influence [on] the jury’s verdict.” Brecht, 507 U.S. at 637. -9- The Supreme Court elaborated in determining the scope of judicial review under Brecht two years after the decision in O’Neal v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432 (1995). There, the Court instructed courts in looking at the record as a whole: If an appellate court has “grave doubt” about the influence of the offending evidence on the verdict, i.e., “in the judge’s mind, the matter is so evenly balanced that he feels himself in virtual equipoise as to the harmlessness of the error,” the court should treat the error as having a substantial and injurious effect. Id. at 435; see also Webber v. Scott, 390 F.3d 1169 (10th Cir. 2004) (applying O’Neal). With these standards in mind, we turn to the evidence at trial.
Herrera contends the admission of the bullet, clip, and casing had a substantial and injurious effect on the jury because it was the only physical evidence introduced in the state’s case in chief and allowed the jury to resolve a number of factual disputes in its favor. Herrera’s theory of defense attempted to point the finger at Phillip Arellanes. According to this argument, Herrera claims that Phillip Arellanes was, in fact, the shooter. Arellanes killed Lovato, concealed the murder weapon from the other witnesses (or they conspired to lie at trial), and then arranged with his cousin to plant the bullet evidence in Herrera’s bedroom. Herrera argues his theory of defense was fatally compromised by the -10- fact the bullet casing from Herrera’s home ballistically matched the casing found at the murder scene. In reviewing this theory against the evidence, the magistrate judge dismissed it as lacking “any convincing support” in the record. And the district court, in reviewing the evidence again, concluded that “a careful de novo review indicates that Mr. Herrera’s speculation and supposition are just that. Mr. Herrera presents no record support for his theory, and the reason for that is obvious: there is none. The recorded admissible testimony presents overwhelming evidence of Mr. Herrera’s guilt.” After conducting our own independent review of the record in this case, including the tape recordings of the trial proceedings, we agree with the district court. The admission of the bullet, casing, and clip found during the search of Herrera’s residence do not cause us “grave doubt” as to the harmlessness of the error. Based on the testimony of five eyewitnesses, three of whom saw Herrera with a gun at the scene, and all of whom positively identified him shortly after the murder, we conclude that the tainted evidence did not substantially influence the jury’s determination that Herrera committed the murder. We summarize the evidence below. Eyewitness Testimony. The state’s case-in-chief was anchored by the five eyewitnesses to the events immediately surrounding the shooting. As we -11- discussed above, Phillip Arellanes, the state’s first witness, saw the shooting from point blank range, and two witnesses—Farrell and Robert Arellanes—saw Herrera holding a gun within seconds of the shooting. Although Phillip Arellanes was the only person who witnessed the actual shooting, his testimony was uncontroverted at trial. Farrell and Martinez, moreover, testified regarding the events leading up to and after the shooting. Together, the three witnesses’ testimony supplies a motive for the shooting (a bar room encounter), the opportunity for the shooting (Herrera was the only one to confront Lovato), and the consequences of the shooting (a bleeding Lovato and a fleeing Herrera). Each positively identified Herrera the day of the crime. The witnesses’ statements were uncontroverted. In addition to the two women accompanying the victim, the other two eyewitnesses were within sight of the shooting and testified regarding the events immediately after the shooting. Those witnesses, Bustamante and Robert Arellanes, testified to seeing Herrera acting suspiciously when leaving the scene of the shooting. They both were able positively to identify him. Robert Arellanes saw him with a gun. Their testimony was also uncontroverted at trial. Herrera argues in the face of this evidence that Phillip Arellanes was the actual gunman. To support this theory, at trial Herrera’s counsel cross-examined Phillip Arellanes and accused him of being the shooter, despite no testimony that Arellanes ever had a gun in his possession. Herrera also offered the testimony of -12- a friend, Richard Roybal, who claimed he was parked outside of Herrera’s residence waiting to pick up Herrera at dawn on the day of the shooting. He claimed that, while waiting for Herrera, he witnessed Robert Arellanes’s cousin get into a car parked in the alley next to Herrera’s residence and leave the area. The implication of this testimony was that Arellanes’s cousin planted the bullet evidence in Herrera’s residence. Complicating this argument, however, was the fact that, prior to trial, Roybal never relayed his story to the police or to anyone involved in the case. Finally, Herrera tried to create reasonable doubt by pointing out inconsistencies and bias in the testimony of the eyewitnesses. For example, trial counsel sought to demonstrate that it was impossible for Herrera to shoot Lovato, turn and threaten Arellanes, and flee across the street all in the few seconds between when Farrell and Martinez heard the shot and when they turned around. Herrera also points to several inconsistencies between statements witnesses gave prior to the trial and their testimony during the trial. Farrell, for instance, testified at a preliminary hearing that she saw Herrera put something down his pants as he crossed the street, but she testified at trial she saw him put a gun down his pants. None of these examples, however, seriously undermine the common story told by all of the eyewitnesses. As the district court observed, and -13- we agree, these discrepancies are the normal inconsistencies that flow from witness recollections of a dramatic nighttime murder. Expert Testimony. Herrera attempted to counter the eyewitness testimony with expert testimony showing he had not recently fired a gun. Anticipating this evidence, the state presented expert testimony to explain the result of the gunshot residue analysis conducted on samples taken from Herrera’s hands after the shooting. According to the state’s expert, the test was inconclusive—he could not say whether Herrera had or had not fired a gun recently. The expert, however, did testify that the absence of gunshot residue on Herrera’s hands could be explained by the fact that such residue wears off easily and the time lapse between the shooting and the test. Herrera’s expert agreed that the samples taken from Herrera’s hands three hours after the shooting showed no sign of gunpowder residue. In addition, he explained how Herrera’s hands could not have been washed in close temporal proximity to the test. However, in the end, both experts testified that gun shot residue wears off rapidly. And both agreed the residue test here was at best inconclusive. Lack of Substantial, Injurious Effect. In short, Herrera has not presented a plausible interpretation of the evidence that would allow us to find that admission of the bullet, clip, and casing had a substantial, injurious effect by allowing the -14- jury to resolve these factual disputes against him. To the contrary, these arguments lack record support and can be readily resolved against him without reference to the bullet, clip, and casing. We have held in other contexts that the emphasis given at trial and at closing to evidence admitted in violation of the Constitution is relevant to harmless error analysis. United States v. Summers, 414 F.3d 1287, 1304 (10th Cir. 2005); United States v. Lauder, 409 F.3d 1254, 1261–62 (10th Cir. 2005). Contrary to Herrera’s claims, the physical evidence was a relatively small part of his trial. It was briefly mentioned in the prosecutor’s opening statement but only after a lengthy exposition of what the anticipated eyewitnesses would say. The casing evidence came in on the fourth day of a five-day trial through a police witness. Similarly, during closing, as the district court noted, the references to the evidence “amounted to only a small fraction” of the prosecutor’s final argument. On the other hand, the prosecution’s case was a powerful collection of eyewitness testimony: it was unchallenged that five witnesses placed Herrera at the scene of the murder, one witness saw him pull the trigger, and two other witnesses saw him with a gun. While we do not dismiss the physical evidence as having no significance to a jury, we cannot conclude the evidence itself and the emphasis placed on it by the state in this case “tip the scales” such that its -15- admission had a substantial, injurious effect on the jury’s verdict. Brecht, 507 U.S. at 637. In sum, the evidence of guilt in this case was overwhelming.